Adriana Herrera

A Caribbean Heiress in Paris opens at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, where Luz Alana Heith-Benzan, a Dominican-Scottish rum distiller, agrees to a marriage of convenience with James Evanston Sinclair, Earl of Darnick, so that she can keep hold of the business her family built over generations. It was Adriana Herrera's first historical romance and the opening book of Las Leonas, a trilogy following three Dominican women through that same Paris season. Herrera comes from the Dominican Republic and settled in New York, where she has worked for years as a social worker supporting survivors of violence, and she began writing because the romance shelf held almost nothing with Dominican, Latina or queer leads on the cover. Her contemporary Dreamers series, which began with American Dreamer in 2019, follows four Afro-Latinx friends who grew up together in the South Bronx, and three of its first four books centre same-sex couples. American Love Story took the Ripped Bodice Award for Excellence in Romantic Fiction in 2019, the audiobook of On the Hustle won an Audie in 2023, and the New York Public Library has listed her titles among its best books more than once. She names Edith Wharton as an influence.