Lisa Kleypas

Biography Lisa Kleypas was born on November 5, 1964 in Temple, Texas, to Linda and Lloyd Kleypas, an architect. She started writing at sixteen, during a summer camp at Wellesley College; her parents encouraged her, sending her to a writers' conference in Bretton Woods.

In October 1998, Kleypas's Texas home flooded and her family lost everything except the clothes they were wearing. Her colleagues sent clothes and books. After the flood, she and her mother (whose home had also flooded), made a trip to purchase necessities. Separately, each of them also chose a romance novel, a necessity to them in helping them escape the stress they were currently under. To Kleypas, this realization validated her decision to write romance novels instead of more literary works.

Though primarily known for her historical romance novels, Kleypas made an announcement in early 2006 concerning her momentary departure from historical romances to delve into the contemporary romance genre. Her debut contemporary novel, Sugar Daddy, reached the New York Times bestsellers list.

In 2026, Kleypas announced a novel, Queen of Lombard Street, to be released October 20, 2026, her first new novel since 2021's Devil in Disguise.

Kleypas lives in California with her husband, entrepreneur Gregory Ellis, and their two children. She also believes that reading biographies enriches her as a writer, as much as reading reviews of her books, claiming that a critique of Somewhere I'll Find You which described it as "lacking urgency" "changed [her] for the better as a writer".

Kleypas's participation in beauty pageants influenced her characterization, leading her to never write physically perfect and self-confident heroines, while for the heroes of her stories she prefers a "masculine man who is able to express himself well but never speaks in flowery prose. He possesses innate strength of character and is self-made or has risen above difficult circumstances. Eventually he loves the heroine with a Heathcliff-level of intensity, and demonstrates this both verbally and physically". For romance, Kleypas believes that the two lovers should encourage each other to pursue their individual goals and that the heroine should improve as a person thanks to the presence of the hero in her life. As her career progressed, Kleypas began to add more history into her historical romance novels: for the Ravenels series, she was inspired by the achievements of Victorian women such as inventor Elizabeth Magie and doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson to create female protagonists who seek professional fulfillment outside of marriage, and she consciously decided not to include the heroine expecting a child or having become a mother in the finale of Devil in Spring. Her personal rules for writing historical romance novels include "no hitting ever. No physical abuse ever between the hero and heroine. ... Even in terms of verbal abuse, I have pretty strict boundaries with that, because once you feel like that respect is no longer there, if someone's willing to hurt someone to that extent, to me you can't recover from that."

She writes her contemporary novels from a first-person perspective. Only with Your Love (1992)

Gamblers of Craven's series Then Came You (1993) Dreaming of You (1994) Against the Odds, in the anthology Where's My Hero with Julia Quinn and Kinley MacGregor (2003)

Stokehurst Family series Midnight Angel (1995) Prince of Dreams (1995)

Capitol Theatre series Somewhere I'll Find You (1996) Because You're Mine (1997) I Will, in the anthology Wish List with Lisa Cach, Claudia Dain and Lynsay Sands (2001)

Bow-Street Runners series The series features the Bow Street agents, who carried out detective investigations and served as London magistrates before the city had its own police force. Some characters from the Wallflowers series return, and Cam Rohan from Devil in Winter is the male protagonist of the first volume. Mine Till Midnight (2007) Seduce Me at Sunrise (2008) Tempt Me at Twilight (2009) Married By Morning (2010) Love In The Afternoon (2010) The series also consists of a short story titled A Hathaway Wedding (2009), which takes place right after Seduce Me at Sunrise.

The Ravenels series Set in the Victorian era, Devil in Spring is inspired by the story of Elizabeth Magie, inventor of The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly, while the heroine of Hello Stranger, Dr. Garrett Gibson, is based on the first female British doctor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. Devil in Disguise serves as a further crossover between the two series. Cold-Hearted Rake (2015) Marrying Winterborne (2016) Devil in Spring (2017) Hello Stranger (2018) Devil's Daughter (2019) Chasing Cassandra (2020) Devil in Disguise (2021)

Standalone novels Love, Come to Me (1988) Give Me Tonight (1989) Stranger in My Arms (1998) Where Dreams Begin (2000) Suddenly You (2001)

Novellas Surrender, in the anthology Christmas Love Stories (1991) with Diane Wicker Davis, Shannon Drake, Kay Hooper Promises, in the anthology Three Weddings and a Kiss (1995) with Catherine Anderson, Loretta Chase and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Contemporary novels

Travis series The series, set in Houston, Texas, marks Kleypas' first exploration of contemporary rather than historical romance fiction and follows the adventures of the four Travis brothers, oil magnates. Sugar Daddy (2007) Blue-Eyed Devil (2008) Smooth Talking Stranger (2009) Brown-Eyed Girl (2015)

Friday Harbor series

Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor (2010) Rainshadow Road (2012) Dream Lake (2012) Crystal Cove (2013)

Awards 2002 – RITA Award for best Romantic Novella, I Will in Wish List 2004 – RITA Award for best Short Historical, Worth Any Price

The Wallflowers series had a 2-volumes manga adaptation in 2015. The Hathaways series has been adapted into manga between 2011 and 2017 with drawings by Reiko Kishida, Akino Nanami, Jun Hasegawa, Chiho Saito, and Hibiki Sakuraya.