Author Guide · Romantic Comedy
Books Written by
Katherine Center wrote her first novel in sixth grade: Duran Duran fan fiction. Her published ones began in 2007 with a Houston woman whose fiancé walks out the day before she gives birth, and they have kept that habit of putting real trouble at the centre of a comedy: a plane crash and a spinal injury, a firefighter called back to an estranged mother, a painter who can no longer recognise faces after brain surgery. Two of her novels have become Netflix films and a third, The Bodyguard, is due on Netflix in November 2026 as Guarding Stars. She still lives in Houston, where she was born. This guide covers her 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 2007–2026 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Katherine Center has published 13 novels. The best known are How to Walk Away (2018), Things You Save in a Fire (2019), The Bodyguard (2022) and The Rom-Commers (2024); The Lost Husband (2013) and Happiness for Beginners (2015) became Netflix films. Start with How to Walk Away, the book where her mix of hard subject and romantic comedy first came fully together.
Where to Start with Katherine Center
If you want the book that made her name
→ How to Walk Away (2018) — a plane crash, a spinal injury and a stubborn physical therapist.
If you want a heroine with an unusual job
→ Things You Save in a Fire (2019) — a Texas firefighter in an old-school Boston firehouse.
If you want the lightest, most purely comic one
→ The Bodyguard (2022) — a fake-girlfriend setup on a Texas ranch.
If you want to watch first, then read
→ The Lost Husband (2013) — the novel behind the 2020 Netflix film.
13 Katherine Center Books, in Order
The Bright Side of Disaster
Jenny Harris is pregnant and engaged when her fiancé, Dean, leaves her; she gives birth to her daughter the next day and has to learn to be a mother on her own, with help from her outspoken mother, her friends and a neighbour. Center’s debut, published by Ballantine, set the pattern of a comic voice for a painful situation.
Everyone Is Beautiful
Lanie Coates, a former painter with three boys under five, moves from Houston to Cambridge, Massachusetts, so her husband Peter, a composer, can start graduate school. Left largely on her own with the children, she takes a photography class to get her old self back, and the marriage nearly breaks under the strain.
Get Lucky
Sarah Harper loses her job at a New York advertising agency after emailing the whole company to criticise her own bra campaign. She moves back to Houston to stay with her older sister Mackie and Mackie’s husband Clive, and offers to help the couple have the baby they have not been able to have.
The Lost Husband
After her husband Danny dies suddenly, Libby Moran takes her two children to the Texas Hill Country goat farm of an aunt she barely knows, Aunt Jean, and learns to work alongside the farm manager. The 2020 film, with Leslie Bibb and Josh Duhamel, reached number one on Netflix.
Happiness for Beginners
Helen Carpenter, newly divorced at 32, signs up for a hard-core wilderness survival course in Wyoming at her younger brother’s urging, and finds his best friend Jake on the same course. Netflix released the film, with Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes, in 2023.
How to Walk Away
Margaret Jacobsen’s life is mapped out until the small plane her fiancé, Chip, is flying crashes and she is left with a spinal injury. In hospital she has to deal with Chip’s self-pity, the return of her estranged sister Kit, and a physical therapist, Ian, who will not let her give up. It was a New York Times bestseller.
Things You Save in a Fire
Cassie Hanwell, one of the few women firefighters in Texas, moves to an old-school Boston firehouse when her estranged, ailing mother asks for help. The crew doubt her, and a rookie on the same shift makes things harder. A New York Times bestseller and a Book of the Month pick.
What You Wish For
Samantha Casey is the librarian at a small school on Galveston Island. When its beloved founder dies, the new principal turns out to be Duncan Carpenter, a man she once had a crush on, who has become rigid and obsessed with safety.
The Bodyguard
Hannah Brooks, an executive protection agent, is hired to guard the film star Jack Stapleton from a stalker. When he goes home to his family’s Texas ranch to help his sick mother, she has to pose as his girlfriend. It entered the New York Times list at number 11; Netflix’s adaptation, Guarding Stars, with Leighton Meester and Jared Padalecki, is due in November 2026.
Hello Stranger
Sadie Montgomery, a struggling portrait artist, is selected for a major portrait competition just before emergency brain surgery leaves her with face blindness (prosopagnosia), probably temporary. She has to keep painting, and keep dating, without being able to read faces.
The Rom-Commers
Emma Wheeler, an aspiring screenwriter, is hired to rewrite a script with the famous Charlie Yates, who does not want a partner and thinks his own romantic comedy is terrible. Emma sets out to prove that love stories matter. A New York Times bestseller.
The Love Haters
Katie Vaughn, a videographer from Texas, is sent to Key West to film a profile of her boss’s brother, Hutch, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, while a severe hurricane approaches.
The Shippers
JoJo Burton, who once left a fiancé at the altar, joins an eight-day cruise to the Bahamas and Cozumel for her sister’s wedding, planning to win over her recently divorced childhood crush, Finn. She recruits her childhood best friend, Cooper, to help, and they end up sharing a cabin. Published by St. Martin’s in May 2026.
In What Order to Read Katherine Center
Every Katherine Center novel stands alone, so you can start anywhere. The only overlap is small: Duncan Carpenter, the heroine’s younger brother in Happiness for Beginners, returns as the new principal in What You Wish For, which reads better if you know the earlier book, though it does not require it.
Publication order does show a shift. The first five books are what she calls bittersweet comedies, about motherhood, marriage and grief. From How to Walk Away (2018) on, the books are built more clearly as romantic comedies, and from The Bodyguard (2022) the tone gets lighter.
A reading path
1. How to Walk Away (2018)
2. Things You Save in a Fire (2019)
3. The Bodyguard (2022)
4. The Lost Husband (2013)
5. The Rom-Commers (2024)
The years · 1972–2026
Quick facts about Katherine Center
- Known for
- Romantic comedies that put a real hardship, from a spinal injury to grief to face blindness, at the centre of the love story.
- 1972
- Born in Houston, Texas
- 2007
- Debut: The Bright Side of Disaster
- 2018
- How to Walk Away
- 2026
- The Shippers; Guarding Stars on Netflix
- Born
- 4 March 1972, Houston, Texas, as Katherine Sherar Pannill
- Education
- Vassar College (Vassar College Fiction Prize); MA in fiction, University of Houston
- Lives
- Houston, with her husband and two children
- Family
- Her sister is the US Representative Lizzie Fletcher
- Adaptations
- The Lost Husband (2020), Happiness for Beginners (2023), Guarding Stars (2026)
- Talk
- TEDx Bend, 2018, on why boys should read stories about girls
The red mark is 2018: How to Walk Away, the novel that made her a New York Times bestselling author.
How Katherine Center Writes: The Laugh-and-Cry Novel
Center starts with something going badly wrong. Her heroines lose a fiancé the day before giving birth, a husband to sudden death, the use of their legs, the ability to recognise faces. The comedy comes from how the heroine copes, and the romance arrives alongside the recovery rather than replacing it.
Her early books were what she calls bittersweet comedies, centred on motherhood and marriage. Reading widely in romance changed her approach, and from How to Walk Away on she has built the books as romantic comedies while keeping what she wanted from women’s fiction: the struggle and the personal growth. Many of the heroines do physical, specialised work — firefighter, bodyguard, rescue swimmer’s videographer — and much of the action happens in or near Texas.
She is also open about defending the genre. The Rom-Commers is in part an argument that love stories matter, and her 2018 TEDx talk argued that boys should be given stories with female main characters. For writers with the same mix of warmth and weight, see Authors like Katherine Center.
Watch
Katherine Center at TEDx Bend
At TEDx Bend in 2018, Center argues that boys should be given great stories that happen to have female main characters.
Frequently asked questions about Katherine Center’s books
How many books has Katherine Center written?
Thirteen novels, from The Bright Side of Disaster (2007) to The Shippers (2026). All 13 are listed on this page.
What are Katherine Center’s books in order?
The Bright Side of Disaster (2007), Everyone Is Beautiful (2009), Get Lucky (2010), The Lost Husband (2013), Happiness for Beginners (2015), How to Walk Away (2018), Things You Save in a Fire (2019), What You Wish For (2020), The Bodyguard (2022), Hello Stranger (2023), The Rom-Commers (2024), The Love Haters (2025) and The Shippers (2026).
What is the best Katherine Center book to start with?
How to Walk Away (2018). It is the book where her mix of a hard subject and romantic comedy first came fully together. If you would rather start light, try The Bodyguard.
What is Katherine Center’s most famous book?
How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire made her a New York Times bestselling author; The Bodyguard (2022) is now her best known because of the Netflix adaptation.
Have any Katherine Center books been adapted into movies?
Yes. The Lost Husband (2020), with Leslie Bibb and Josh Duhamel, reached number one on Netflix; Happiness for Beginners (2023), with Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes, is a Netflix film; and The Bodyguard becomes Guarding Stars, with Leighton Meester and Jared Padalecki, due on Netflix on 18 November 2026. Hello Stranger has not been filmed.
Do Katherine Center’s books need to be read in order?
No. Each novel stands alone. Duncan Carpenter, Helen’s brother in Happiness for Beginners, returns in What You Wish For, but you can read either first.
Are Katherine Center’s books romance novels?
Her recent books are romantic comedies with a happy ending. Her first five she described as bittersweet comic novels, closer to women’s fiction, with romance as one strand among family and grief.
What is Katherine Center’s newest book?
The Shippers, published by St. Martin’s on 19 May 2026: a friends-to-lovers romance on a wedding cruise to the Bahamas and Cozumel.
Where does Katherine Center live?
In Houston, Texas, her hometown, with her husband and two children. Many of her novels are set in Texas, including Houston, Galveston and the Hill Country.
Footnotes
- Katherine Center — Wikipedia
- Katherine Center — Houstonia, 2025
- Guarding Stars: release date and cast — What’s on Netflix
- The Shippers — Kirkus Reviews
- What You Wish For — BookPage
- Girl Books for Boys — katherinecenter.com
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I want the personal growth. I want the struggle that you get in women’s fiction.”
— Katherine Center, interview with Houstonia (2025)
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