Kirsten Pursell
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Kirsten Pursell is a bestselling and award-winning American author whose novels and memoirs focus on the emotional lives of women navigating love, loss, divorce, and reinvention. Known for blending romance with emotional depth and wit, her work resonates with readers drawn to stories of second chances and coming-of-age—at any stage of life.
She is the author of The Unabridged Life of Missy Kinkaid; Finding Scarlet (originally published as The Scarlet D, which earned multiple literary awards including two TheBookFest honors); Long Enough to Love You, an Amazon bestseller and multi-award-winning novel in women’s fiction and contemporary romance; and On Becoming Me: Memoir of an ’80s Teenager. Her earlier novels include Harvard and Company Clown. Pursell’s books have been purchased or downloaded nearly 30,000 times and have reached #1 in select Amazon categories. A member of Romance Writers of America, she recently completed Amber's story, Amber Unscripted, the final installment in the Scarlet’s Harlots trilogy. She lives in Southern California.
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The Unabridged Life of Missy Kinkaid
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Upmarket Women's Fiction
Missy Kinkaid has always been the light of Sullivan’s Island—bold, unapologetic, and the emotional center of her family, her friendships, and the renegade group of divorced women known as Scarlet’s Harlots. The Unabridged Life of Missy Kinkaid is the second novel in the Scarlet’s Harlots Trilogy, following characters first introduced in Finding Scarlet. When the death of her estranged mother sends Missy into an unexpected breakdown in the cereal aisle, she is forced to confront the grief, unfinished love stories, and fractured family ties she’s spent a lifetime outrunning. Surrounded by her closest friends—and a cousin harboring secrets of her own—Missy begins a reckoning that challenges everything she believes about strength, forgiveness, and independence. As old wounds resurface and long-buried truths come to light, she learns that real empowerment isn’t about bravado, but about owning your story, scars and all. Witty, raw, and emotionally layered, The Unabridged Life of Missy Kinkaid is a deeply uplifting novel about friendship, loss, reinvention, and the complicated paths women take toward self-discovery after divorce and heartbreak. 
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Finding Scarlet
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Upmarket Women's Fiction, Contemporary Romance
A coming-of-middle-age romance about self-discovery, friendship, and starting over after divorce. It is the first novel in the Scarlet’s Harlots Trilogy, a series centered on women reinventing their lives later in love. After a thirty-year marriage ends, Scarlet leaves behind the familiar—and the expectations shaped by too many Nicholas Sparks novels—to reinvent herself on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. Divorce offers her a rare opportunity: a clean slate, far from the reminders of a life that no longer fits. Seeking connection, Scarlet joins a divorced women’s book club and quickly learns that new beginnings come with unexpected complications. When she reveals her past, judgment is swift, forcing her to confront who she was—and who she wants to become. As her dormant desires awaken, Scarlet finds herself torn between Ben, an attractive younger man who reignites her confidence, and Beau, a self-assured, age-appropriate man who offers the possibility of something deeper. But when the man who nearly broke her resurfaces, Scarlet must decide whether she’s truly ready to move forward—or still tethered to the past. An emotionally rich novel about love after divorce, second chances in midlife, and the courage it takes to begin again in your fifties. 
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Amber Unscripted
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Upmarket Women's Fiction
Back in the childhood bedroom she never thought she'd return to—complete with irremovable My Little Pony stickers—Amber begins the messy work of reinvention. Supported by the honesty and sass of her fellow Harlots, she finally tells the story she's long avoided. A runner-up on The Bachelor. A seemingly glamorous life. A marriage that ended. Amber didn’t get the final rose, but she now has something better: a second chance on her own terms. Growing up on Sullivan’s Island was never perfect. The house never quite felt like home. Sisters clashed. Parents who loved her yet hid secrets that shaped everything. The men she loved—some disappointed her, and one story remains unfinished. When a trip to Greece offers a new start, Amber must choose: stay safely in the life she knows, or step into the unknown and write her own unscripted story. Amber Unscripted is the final novel in The Scarlet’s Harlots Trilogy, bringing everything full circle, celebrating the power of friendship, courage, and the conviction to live life unapologetically. Coming June 2026 |
Long Enough to Love You
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Contemporary Romance, Women's Fiction
Jenn is fifty-something and newly empty-nesting, living in a picture-perfect home that feels anything but full. Her marriage is safe, stable—and quietly suffocating. With her children grown and the silence growing louder, Jenn finds herself torn between two voices: one urging her to stay for the life she's built, and another whispering that it's not too late to become the woman she's never fully been. When Jenn stumbles upon her long-forgotten diaries, memories of a first love resurface—along with the painful truth that the most powerful loves are sometimes wasted on the young. Reconnecting with Tripp awakens a version of herself she thought had been lost, forcing Jenn to confront what she wants, what she's settled for, and what it might mean to choose herself. Long Enough to Love You by Kirsten Pursell is an emotionally rich novel about marriage, divorce, and self-discovery in midlife. With honesty, vulnerability, and heart, it explores what it means to question "happily ever after," challenge middle-age stereotypes, and decide whether love—real love—can still be worth the risk. 
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On Becoming Me: Memoir of an 80's Teenager
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Memoir
Award-winning memoir of adolescence, identity, and coming of age in the 1980s On Becoming Me by Kirsten Pursell is a raw, honest coming-of-age memoir told entirely through the author's teenage diaries, journals, poetry, and letters. Set against the backdrop of the 1980s, the book traces the emotional evolution of a confident young girl who becomes a lost teenager—wild, reckless, confused, and longing to disappear—before slowly finding her way back to herself. Written in real time, without the filter of adult hindsight, this memoir captures the intensity of adolescence as it was lived: first love, self-doubt, identity formation, moral confusion, and the fragile hope of becoming okay. The diary format offers rare immediacy and intimacy, allowing readers to experience growth as it unfolds rather than as it's later explained. On Becoming Me is both deeply personal and universally relatable, resonating with readers who grew up in the 1980s as well as those drawn to authentic stories of teenage identity, emotional survival, and self-discovery. It is a nostalgic, unflinching portrait of adolescence that speaks across generations. 
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Harvard
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Contemporary Romance
Helena "Harvard" Schmitt could not leave her life on the mountain soon enough. A life of academic rigor at Harvard was made possible by her extraordinary athletic gift: running. Thor Himmel was the Harvard equivalent of a movie star: attractive, intelligent, and unattainable. As Helena and Thor run from their demons, their paths inevitably and abruptly cross far from where they ever imagined forcing them to confront the past that might destroy their future. 
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