Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Coming Up Roses | 2002 | Alice Duncan | Buy |
| 2 | Just North of Bliss | 2002 | Alice Duncan | Buy |
| 3 | A Bicycle Built for Two | 2002 | Alice Duncan | Buy |
The Meet Me at the Fair series uses the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition – better known as the St. Louis World’s Fair – as a shared setting for three separate historical romance novels. Coming Up Roses, Just North of Bliss, and A Bicycle Built for Two were all published in 2002 and each follows a different couple navigating romance against the backdrop of one of the great public events of the Edwardian era.
The World’s Fair setting provides a naturally vivid and colorful backdrop: the exhibition halls, the rides, the crowds, the sense of a nation celebrating its own modernity. Duncan uses the setting to ground each romance in a specific historical moment while providing the romantic tension and resolution the genre requires.
The three books can be read independently, but reading all three gives a fuller sense of the fair as a setting. They are light, warm reads that deliver on the pleasures of historical romance while making good use of a specific and memorable historical occasion.