One love story. Three possible lives.
My Maddie and Nate series asks: What if the same two people met at different moments in time?
Through three standalone yet interconnected novels, we follow brilliant engineer Maddie Cole and principled lawyer Nate Jacobs as they find each other in three distinct timelines. From a chance encounter in their golden years on the Maine coast that proves it's never too late for love, to a forbidden connection in the professional upheaval of 1970s Toronto, to their first meeting as ambitious young professionals in 1960s Japan, each book explores how the same two hearts connect under completely different circumstances.
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Love is forever. But timing is everything.
Is your soulmate always your soulmate, no matter when — or how — you meet?
For unconventional, ambitious engineer Maddie and loyal, strait-laced lawyer Nate, there seems no way to stop their worlds colliding. And when they do, the spark ignites. Every time.
From the first flush of youth, to the frustrations and responsibilities of middle age, to the cautious freedom of the golden years...love grows in the cracks of each fractured heart, following them across continents and challenging their plans. But depending on when they meet, Time either plays nice, or makes a fool of their principles and those they abandon. Because some people are meant to be together — whatever the cost.
Maddie & Nate is a dual POV series that follows two soulmates through three variations of their lives — each time with a different meeting point: late in life (Out of Time), mid-life (Next Time), and early (Our Time). Their story explores the complexities of romance and intimacy at every stage.
Out of Time
Octogenarian Nate Jacobs has always taken pride in doing things the ‘right’ way. He built a successful legal career by following the rules, and now, retired and widowed, he runs a tight ship at the Hope Point Lighthouse B&B. Perhaps that’s why Maddie, with her disregard for convention, catches his eye.
When Anne is unexpectedly called away on work business, Maddie finds herself compelled to stay on at Hope Point, alone. Over breakfast conversations and long walks, Nate and Maddie’s friendship deepens, even as old memories return to haunt them.
Except this time, the past starts to clear a path for the future...
Life has a time limit. Love doesn’t.
For most of her 78 years, Maddie Cole has done things the ‘wrong’ way. But throwing out the societal rule book meant sacrificing romantic success for career highs — a move she’s never regretted...much. Now retired, she relishes the freedom to travel with her only daughter, Anne. Their latest trip is a long weekend in picturesque Bar Harbor, and Maddie is determined to enjoy every last minute.
Out of Time
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Out of Time
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Out of Time
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Next Time
Two strangers. One bar. Bad timing?
The night Maddie Cole and Nate Jacobs find themselves in the same place, at the same moment, with an hour to kill...a spark ignites. Engineer Maddie’s determination to conquer a male-dominated industry captivates Nate’s imagination, even as his steadfast loyalty starts a glow in Maddie’s heart.
But with marriages and children in tow, anything more than friendship would mean social and emotional carnage.
As Maddie and Nate’s paths continue to cross professionally, their affections blossom into a force that can’t be ignored. And one night, when nature conspires to force them together, their resolve unravels completely.
The question is, will imploding their personal lives end in heartache, or a soulmate?
This is the second iteration of Maddie and Nate’s love story, set in the midst of the 1970’s where the constraints of the era and their responsibilities change this love’s trajectory forever
Next Time
Special Edition Hardcover
This jacketed hardcover edition is not available everywhere! Get it here!
Next Time
Paperback
Next Time
Ebook
Maddie and Nate Series FAQ
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It’s the term I coined because nothing else quite fit. The series blends literary fiction, women’s fiction, and love story, using ideas from quantum physics (parallel timelines, entanglement, observation) as a structural lens for asking “what if.” There’s no science content to follow and no sci-fi setting. If you enjoy Jodi Picoult, Kristin Hannah, or Audrey Niffenegger, you’re in the right place.
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No, each book stands alone and readers have started with any of the three. That said, I’d recommend reading them in publication order (Out of Time, then Next Time, then Our Time) for the richest experience, since later books occasionally echo or deepen moments from earlier ones in ways that land best if you’ve already met Maddie and Nate elsewhere.
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Both, depending on what you mean. The technical and historical details on the page are accurate. Maddie is an engineer, and where her career or the world around her touches on real science or technology, I research it carefully. What you won’t find is quantum physics as on-page content or explanation. It lives underneath the story as metaphor and structure, shaping how the series asks “what if you’d met at a different point in your life,” not as something the characters discuss or that you need to understand going in.
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Item descriptionA few ideas run through all three books. Entanglement is the sense that Maddie and Nate remain connected across time and circumstance, regardless of distance or which version of their lives we’re watching. The observer effect shows up in how every choice they make settles one reality into being while closing off countless others, for better or worse. And déjà vu appears literally on the page, in moments where a character feels they’ve lived something before, as a kind of echo from another version of their story. None of this requires a physics background. It’s there for readers who want to dig deeper, and invisible if you’d rather just read a love story.
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Likely yes. Readers drawn to The Time Traveler’s Wife, Life After Life, Dark Matter, or This Is How You Lose the Time War for their philosophical use of time and possibility will find a similar spirit here, where the question isn’t what happens, but what if it had happened differently. The Maddie & Nate series treats the observer effect less as physics and more as a way of saying that people become who they are partly through being truly seen by another person. Each book is a different observation of the same two souls, collapsing one version of their story into being while countless others remain unwritten.
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This series was written for that kind of reader. In spirit, it shares something with novels like The Midnight Library, Version Control, or Cloud Atlas, books that use love and loss to ask bigger questions about identity, choice, and time, and with authors like Kate Morton, whose work braids emotional depth with structural ambition. If you’ve found yourself wishing romance took its ideas more seriously, or wished literary fiction let itself feel more, this is the space between those two shelves.
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Item descriptionThey share characters, core personalities, and the central relationship, but each book is its own complete story with its own timeline, setting, and stakes. Think of them as three parallel realities rather than three chapters of one story.
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In Out of Time, Maddie is 78 and Nate is 83, meeting at his lighthouse B&B in Bar Harbor, Maine. In Next Time, Maddie is 38 and Nate is 43, in 1970s Toronto, where both are married. In Our Time (forthcoming), Maddie is 28 and Nate is 33, in 1960s Japan.
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Yes, and discussion guides are available for each book. The quantum and timing themes tend to generate especially rich conversations, and Next Time in particular sparks debate.
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Hopeful, even when the subject matter is complex. The core emotion I want readers to walk away with is that connection, joy, and transformation are possible at any age and any life stage. Readers consistently tell me they cry, but in a good way.
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Yes, every recipe that appears is one I’ve tested myself.