what is book 1 of this Shipping series?

[Cathiecaffey]

This book is landless as book 2 in the "Shipping" series but see nothing about which is book one and if there is a book 3 or more. Thanks.

[Pisceschick]

Hi, Cathie!

I have been wondering about this myself, so I decided to be a good Goodreads Librarian and investigate! Here's what I found...

To start, I looked at the author's website and see nothing on her "Connected Books" page.

The other Maxwell title that seems to have been connected to Seduction is Temptation of a Proper Governess, the first book in the Cameron series. They were both published in 2004, Seduction in January and Temptation in September. The only things these books have in common is Cathy Maxwell and the Lancashire setting. Temptation is set 13 years earlier. I own both e-books plus the rest of the Cameron series (haven't read them-- wanted to get this figured out first, as I must read in order!), and I found no crossover characters.

There are exactly three non-Goodreads references to a "Shipping Series" that I could find after a fairly extensive Google search:
1. My Little Secrets - A book blog that only posts blurbs and first chapters of a small assortment of romance novels. The series is listed backwards. I consider this a dubious source.
2. FictFact - Another book cataloging site. Has these two same books listed as a series, but doesn't have Temptation listed as part of the Cameron series. I notice that the version of Temptation listed is from the "Large Print Book Company" rather than HarperCollins.
3. Nebraska Library Commission - Normally I'd think a library would be a reliable resource, but this is just a listing and actually searching for Maxwell in their database (hosted on a totally separate site) returns no results. Further strange is the presence of Temptation in two different series on that list.

The final place I looked was the GR Librarian log for both of these books. There seems to have been originally something noted as a "SHIPPING DUO" for both that was combined into other editions, followed by changes back and forth adding and removing the series name from the title. The final edit was to remove the "Shipping" notation from Temptation, possibly at the creation of the "Cameron" series. The author's website was cited as the reason why, but the notation wasn't removed from this book.

SO. I feel comfortable taking action to remove the relic "Shipping" label (Punny!), and will reference this novel of a post as my reason why. Hopefully this will end the confusion!

ETA - I decided to come back and add that I think this all came about because the Temptation book really is about a shipping company. I imagine that with their similar titles (along with the Scottish Heiress title that was published around the same time) and similar covers, it was assumed they were linked.