You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO comes from Katy, who is searching for a series with sister heroines:
The series is three books, each about one sister: a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette.
The redhead is some sort of nature or trail guide, and her hero is a nerdy type who literally washes up on the shore of whatever lake or ocean they’re near. The blonde sister’s hero was a bad boy type. I think the brunette’s story might have been a second-chance romance.
These would have been published in the late 1980s or early 1990s, I think.
Does anyone recognize this series?
Courting Catherine
by Nora Roberts
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This sounds like Nora Roberts’ Coulters books, although there were four of them plus a fifth book with a cousin.
I thought maybe Debbie Macomber’s orchard valley series because I remembered that on each cover there was a sister with different colored hair however the good reads summaries don’t fit this description.
I think it is the Calhouns by Nora Roberts. Courting Catherine, A Man for Amanda, For the Love of Lilah, and Suzanna’s Surrender. The 5th book is a sister-in-law titled Megan’s Mate.
Ahh! ChrisZ is right!! I looked up the series and that’s exactly it… Amazing how many of my barely-remembered past favorites turn out to be Nora books. Thanks!
Hah. Good job bitchery!
Just reading the headline I thought it was going to be Loretta Chase’s seamstress trilogy because I remember so clearly how annoyed I was that she’d gone with the “each sister has a different hair color” trope.
And reading the description I thought of Nora Roberts – not sure I’ve read this series but I’ve read several of her series of sisters.
Darn, I knew it, and someone beat me to it. I remember being really irked by the whole “sisters with different hair colors” when I read it because I could not figure out how that would work genetically. *sigh* Suspension of disbelief wasn’t something I was great at in certain situations.
For all those thinking sisters with different hair color is unlikely, growing up I knew two different families of sisters with exactly this: one family with 5 girls: red-headed twins, black hair, blonde, brown; the other with 4 girls, redhead, blonde, 2 brunettes. No adoptions or steps–all genetically related and born of same parents. So it does happen!
I think the following combination of grandparent hair colors could make this happen:
R1+Br = Br
R2 + Bl = Bl (maybe strawberry blonde)
Then with one brunette and one blonde parent, their kid could be:
R1+R2 = R (the recessive red from each side)
And then
R2+Br = Br
R1 + Bl = Bl
Make sense?
I’ve never commented but really need to share that 25 years ago I babysat triplet girls—one blonde, one redhead, and one with brown hair…it’s definitely possible!
And this is why I love the Bitchery…Nora Roberts and Punnett squares in one post!
Aw, I knew one and someone beat me to it. That series has a grouchy elderly aunt that I really enjoy.
I misread the headline and thought the heroines each had multi-colored hair. As the mother of daughters who change their hair color with every haircut (one is currently Smurfette blue while another is giving Anne of Green Gables a run for her money in the brightest red hair sweepstakes), that premise seemed entirely plausible.
Yep! Different color hair is totally possible in one family. And eyes! I have brown hair and eyes like my mom, grandad and only one other cousin. My dad and sister have red hair and grey eyes. My sister and I barely look related, though we do both look like other relatives on both sides so we def are. My other cousins on both sides and one grandma all have blonde hair and blue eyes. So, red, blonde and brown within the extended family. Red and brown between two sisters. I bet if my parents had more kids they would have all been different mixes. Genetics are weird.
So, did the fourth sister have brown hair? And what about the cousin? Pink?
My aunts family is a case study for this! My mother and my aunt are red haired identical twins. My mum married a dark haired man and had 3 brown haired children. My aunt married a blond man and had 6 children as follows- strawberry blond, dark brown, flame red, pale blond, light brown, pale blond.
@Anna
My grandmother had six siblings. The hair colors were dark brown for the oldest, blond for the youngest, and those in between had gradations in between (one sister had bright red hair; my grandmother’s was auburn). Don’t ask me why it worked that way, but it did.