Great Britain, social life and customs book series in reading order

by Candace Robb

Amanda Scott is a historical romance novelist whose catalogue lists 61 books from The Fugitive Heiress (1981) to The Kissing Stone (2018). More than twenty-five Scott novels take place in the English Regency period of 1810 to 1820, and others are set in fifteenth-century England or sixteenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland, with three contemporary romances as well. Scott began writing on a dare from a spouse and has sold every manuscript written. Awards include the RITA/Golden Medallion and Romantic Times honours for Best Regency Author and Best Sensual Regency. Series include Highland, Secret Clan, Border Trilogy, Galloway Trilogy and Lairds of the Loch. Scott lives in northern California.

Katie Flynn and Judith Saxton are both pen names of Judy Turner, whose books sold more than eight million copies before her death in January 2019 at the age of 82. The catalogue holds 98 titles from 1972 onward, the earliest carrying the Saxton name: Cousin to the Queen (1972), My Master Mariner (1974) and Princess In Waiting (1976). Family sagas set in wartime England and Liverpool dominate, through series such as Liverpool Sisters, the Neyler Quartet and the Rose Queen Trilogy. New titles keep appearing, with The Secret Child scheduled for 2027.

Alys Clare is the pen name Elizabeth Harris uses for English historical whodunnits, most of them set in medieval times. The Hawkenlye Mysteries pair the Abbess Helewise with Josse d'Acquin and begin with Fortune Like the Moon in 1999. Three further runs follow: the Aelf Fen Mysteries, the Gabriel Taverner Mystery novels and the World's End Bureau Victorian Mystery books. Harris grew up in the countryside near the Hawkenlye setting, went to school in Tonbridge and read English at the University of Keele. The catalogue stands at 39 titles, the newest being The Thief and the Labyrinth in 2026.

Candace Robb is an American novelist of historical mysteries set in medieval England. The catalogue holds 24 books published between 1993 and 2026 across the Owen Archer, Margaret Kerr and Kate Clifford series, plus standalones. Owen Archer opens the run with The Apothecary Rose (1993), and the investigations continue through The Lady Chapel (1994), The King's Bishop (1996) and A Gift of Sanctuary (1998). Robb has also written as Emma Campion.

E.F. Benson

106 books• 4 series

Mapp & Lucia Novels is one of the series listed for E.F. Benson, and Lucia and Miss Mapp both appear in the subjects alongside humour, England and female friendship. Born Edward Frederic Benson on 24 July 1867, Benson wrote novels, biography, memoir, history and short stories, and died on 29 February 1940. Dodo (1893) opens a listing of 106 books that includes The Babe, B.A. (1897), The Luck of the Vails (1901), The Valkyries (1903), The Blotting Book (1908) and Account Rendered (1911). Dodo Trilogy and David Blaize are further series, and English ghost stories also appear among the subjects.

Doris Lessing

66 books• 6 series

Doris Lessing, born Doris May Tayler on 22 October 1919 and died on 17 November 2013, was a British novelist and the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Iran to British parents, Lessing lived there until 1925, grew up in Southern Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - and moved to London in 1949, which is why the early career is sometimes labelled Rhodesian. The catalogue holds 66 titles from The Grass Is Singing (1950) to An Old Woman and Her Cat (2013). Children of Violence and Canopus in Argos are the two five-novel sequences; the Diaries of Jane Somers, The Fifth Child, Mara and Dann and the Collected African Stories follow. Africa, women and British social life recur as subjects.