Judith Arnold

She is a graduate of Smith College, where she learned to aim for the stars, and she got her master’s degree in creative writing from Brown University, where she took her aim at a good looking graduate student in the chemistry department and wound up marrying the guy. Before she got married, she had a job in California and he was working on a PhD in Rhode Island. She got sick, and he hopped on a plane and flew across the country in order to be with her.

The best place to start is the Keeping the Faith series, the earliest of Judith Arnold's multi-book series: it opens with Promises (1987) and runs to 3 books across 1987, ending with Dreams (1987). Judith Arnold's other series stand alone, so they can be read in any order.

Judith Arnold has 251 books catalogued in this guide, published between 1983 and 2023. 188 of them belong to 21 named series — the largest being the Family Man series with 32 books — and 63 are standalone titles, collections or anthologies.

Read each series in publication order — the numbered entries in each series follow the year each book first appeared. Judith Arnold's series do not depend on one another, so they can be started in any order; by start date they are Keeping the Faith (1987, 3 books), Yorktown Towers (1988, 1 book) and Life's a Beach (1990–2018, 6 books), plus 17 more.

This guide splits Judith Arnold's 251 books into 21 named series and 63 titles that stand alone or appear only in collections: Family Man (32 books, 1994–2000); Delta Justice (12 books, 1997–1998); Hotel Marchand (12 books, 2006–2007); The Magic Jukebox (10 books, 2014–2021); By The Year 2000 (10 books, 1998–1999), plus 16 further series.