How to read Lisa Jewell books in order

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This post is about Lisa Jewell books in order of publication date! Lisa Jewell is an incredibly popular British author, and I immediately add her new books to my To Be Read list as soon as a new one is released.

Lisa Jewell is extremely well known for her popular and always-anticipated thriller books as of late that are packed full of relatable characters with behind closed doors family drama, but she has also written many contemporary fiction books and even a Marvel crime novel recently (Breaking the Dark).

Whether you’re looking to make sure you’ve read all of Lisa Jewell’s thriller novels or you’re interested in reading her entire catalogue – you’ll find a huge list of every book written by Lisa Jewell over the years below in order of publication date!

List of Lisa Jewell books in order

Below are all of Lisa Jewell’s books in chronological order of publication date:

1. Ralph’s Party (1999)

2. Thirtynothing (2000)

3. One-Hit Wonder (2000)

4. Roommates Wanted (2000)

5. A Friend of the Family (2003)

6. Vince & Joy (2005)

7. The Truth About Melody Browne (2009)

8. After the Party (2010)

9. The Making of Us (2011)

10. Before I Met You (2012)

11. The House We Grew Up In (2013)

12. The Third Wife (2014)

13. The Girls in the Garden (2015)

14. I Found You (2016)

15. Then She Was Gone (2018)

16. Watching You (2018)

17. The Family Upstairs (2019)

18. Invisible Girl (2020)

19. The Night She Disappeared (2021)

20. The Family Remains (2022)

21. None of This Is True (2023)

22. Breaking the Dark (2024)

23. Don’t Let Him In (2025)

24. It Could Have Been Her (2026)

Lisa Jewell book tips & news

• Lisa Jewell’s books can all be read as standalone novels and can be read in any order, with two semi-exceptions – Ralph’s Party should be read before After the Party; and The Family Upstairs and The Family Remains are connected and I do recommend reading them both in order of publication as you’ll get more out of them, but they can be read as standalone as well if you prefer
• Lisa Jewell has recently written a Marvel crime story – Breaking the Dark
• Book to screen adaptation news: Then She Was gone is being adapted into a film by Crystal City Entertainment and Moonshot Films; and None of This is True is being adapted into a film with Netflix

1 of 24: Ralph’s Party (1999)

Synopsis for Ralph’s Party:

Welcome to 31 Almanac Road where the walls don’t talk, but the people sure do.

First, we have Ralph and Smith. Roommates and life-long best friends. Nothing can come between them…That is, until Jemima moves in, and the two find themselves in a battle for her affections. Neither Ralph nor Smith can boast successful love lives, but maybe their luck is about to change.

The real question, though, is who does Jemima want?

Take the stairs up a flight, and you’ll find Karl and Siobhan. On the outside, they’re the perfect couple. Look a little closer, though, and you might just spot some cracks in their fifteen-year relationship. And those cracks are suspiciously shaped like their upstairs neighbor, the beautiful and smooth-talking Cheri.

In a building packed with this many secrets, everything is bound to unravel eventually. So, really, what better place for tears and laughter, break ups and make ups than at Ralph’s party?

2 of 24: Thirtynothing (2000)

Synopsis for Thirtynothing:

Ever wondered what happened to your first love? Imagine bumping into them twelve years later and realizing you still fancy them rotten. That’s exactly what happens to Dig Ryan when he sees Delilah again. Now imagine you’re Nadine. You and Dig have been best friends for fifteen years. And you’ve finally realized that you’re in love with him. So when Delilah – who always was your nemesis – returns, you’re mad with jealousy and can’t help behaving childishly. Like phoning your first love Phil – just to get your own back … Thirtynothing is a story of ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends and friends dabbling with yesterday when they really should be thinking about today.

3 of 24: One-Hit Wonder (2000)

Synopsis for One-Hit Wonder:

Bee Beahorn had it all: a successful music career, fabulous friends, and a glamorous celebrity lifestyle.

At least, that’s what her estranged half-sister, Ana, had always believed.

Their lives were worlds apart. Bee was beautiful, extravagant and full of life. Ana was awkward, shy, and destined to live in Bee’s shadow.

Years later, Bee is found dead, and Ana is dispatched to her apartment to help clear her things. After her #1 hit single, Bee had disappeared from the celebrity scene and remained cut off from her family. Ana quickly understands that this task is an opportunity to discover the truth of her sister’s life, and when she finds evidence of a secret country cottage, mysterious weekends away, and even a missing cat, she realizes that everything she—and the public—knew about her sister may have been a lie.

4 of 24: Roommates Wanted (2000)

Synopsis for Roommates Wanted:

1990. Please write and tell me why you should live here.

Toby Dobbs received a big Victorian house with too many bedrooms to count as a wedding present from his father, but his marriage is over within a month. Very alone, and very lonely, Toby posts an advertisement seeking the “Unexpectedly Alone” to become his roommates. Fifteen years later the wayward souls he takes in are still living with him, with no intention of leaving.

2004. Please tell me how I can convince you to move out.

Toby Dobbs has met Leah Pilgrim from across the road, and they’re falling in love. But before they can begin a new life together, Toby and Leah must help Toby’s house of sweet slackers and lovelorn misfits grow up, solve their problems, and set themselves free. But can their new relationship survive the test?

5 of 5: A Friend of the Family (2003)

Synopsis for A Friend of the Family:

Brothers Tony, Sean, and Ned had the perfect upbringing, but now that they are grown up, real life is starting to get in the way. Tony’s dealing with divorce and a weight problem.  Novelist Sean is up against a serious case of writer’s block and a shock announcement from his “perfect” new girlfriend. Their parents have a new lodger, Gervase—why is Bernie, their mother, so keen to give this unsavory waif a home?  And what is the real reason for kid brother Ned’s surprise return from his travels in Australia?

6 of 24: Vince & Joy (2005)

Synopsis for Vince & Joy:

Remember falling in love for the first time? Remember thinking, This is The One? Remember life getting in the way? From adolescent snogging to apartment shares, relationships, career crises, and children, Vince & Joy is the unforgettable story of two lives lived separately but forever entwined.

Back in the 1980s, teenagers Vince and Joy met, fell desperately in love, and never quite said good-bye. Now nearly twenty years later they’ve both begun to ask themselves if that long-ago romance was the enduring love that they’ve been searching for.

7 of 24: The Truth About Melody Browne (2009)

Synopsis for The Truth About Melody Browne:

When she was a child, Melody Browne’s house burned down, destroying all her family’s possessions and her memories. Ever since this tragic event, Melody has had no recollection of her life before she was rescued from the flames.

Now in her early thirties, Melody is a single mother, living in the middle of London with her teenaged son. She hasn’t seen her parents since she left home at fifteen, but she has no desire to reconnect until one night, while attending a hypnotist show with a date, she faints. When she comes around, she is suddenly overwhelmed with fragmented memories of her life before that fateful fire.

Slowly, she begins the arduous process of piecing together the real story of her childhood. Her journey takes her up and down the countryside, to seaside towns to the back streets of London, where she meets strangers who seem to love her like their own. But the more answers she uncovers, the more questions she is left with, and Melody can’t help but wonder if she’ll ever know the whole truth about her past.

8 of 24: After the Party (2010)

Synopsis for After the Party:

Eleven years ago, Jem Catterick and Ralph McLeary fell deeply in love. They thought it would be forever, that they’d found their happy ending. As everyone agreed, they were the perfect couple. Then two became four, and an apartment became a house. Romantic nights out became sleepless nights in. And they soon found that life wasn’t quite so simple anymore. But through it all, Jem and Ralph still loved each other. Of course they did.

Now Jem is back at work part-time as a talent agent. Ralph, a successful painter, is struggling to come up with new, hopefully groundbreaking, work for his upcoming show. But the unimaginable has happened. Two people who were so right together are starting to drift apart. And in the chaos of family life, Jem feels like she’s losing herself, while Ralph, stuck on the sidelines, feels like he’s lost his muse altogether. Something has to change. As they try to find a way back to each other, back to what they once had, they both become momentarily distracted—but maybe it’s not too late to recapture happily ever after…

9 of 24: The Making of Us (2011)

Synopsis for The Making of Us:

Lydia, Dean, and Robyn don’t know one another. Yet. Each is facing difficult challenges. Lydia is still wearing the scars from her traumatic childhood. Wealthy and successful, she leads a lonely and disjointed existence. Dean is a young, unemployed, single dad whose life is going nowhere. Robyn is eighteen. Gorgeous, popular, and intelligent, she entered her first year of college confident of her dream to become a pediatrician. Now she’s failing her classes. Now she’s falling in love for the first time.

Lydia, Dean, and Robyn live very different lives, but each of them, independently, has always felt that something was missing. What they don’t know is that a letter is about to arrive that will turn their lives upside down. It is a letter containing a secret—one that will bind them together and show them what love and family and friendship really mean.

10 of 24: Before I Met You (2012)

Synopsis for Before I Met You:

After her grandmother Arlette’s death, Betty is finally ready to begin her life. She had forfeited university, parties, boyfriends, summer jobs—all the usual preoccupations of a woman her age—in order to care for Arlette in their dilapidated, albeit charming home on the English island of Guernsey. Her will included a beneficiary unknown to Betty and her family, a woman named Clara Pickle who presumably could be found at a London address. Now, having landed on a rather shabby street corner in ’90s Soho, Betty is determined to find the mysterious Clara. She’s ready for whatever life has to throw her way. Or so she thinks…

In 1920s bohemian London, Arlette De La Mare is starting her new life in a time of postwar change. Beautiful and charismatic, she is soon drawn into the hedonistic world of the Bright Young People. But two years after her arrival in London, tragedy strikes and she flees back to her childhood home and remains there for the rest of her life.

As Betty navigates the ups and downs of city life and begins working as a nanny for a rock star tabloid magnet, her search for Clara leads her to a man—a stranger to Betty, but someone who meant the world to her grandmother. Will the secrets of Arlette’s past help Betty find her own way to happiness in the present?

A rich detective story and a captivating look at London then and now, Before I Met You is an unforgettable novel about two very different women, separated by seventy years, but united by big hearts and even bigger dreams.

11 of 24: The House We Grew Up In (2013)

Synopsis for The House We Grew Up In:

Meet the picture-perfect Bird family: pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and towheaded twins Rory and Rhys, one an adventurous troublemaker, the other his slighter, more sensitive counterpart. Their father is a sweet, gangly man, but it’s their beautiful, free-spirited mother Lorelei who spins at the center. In those early years, Lorelei tries to freeze time by filling their simple brick house with precious mementos. Easter egg foils are her favorite. Craft supplies, too. She hangs all of the children’s art, to her husband’s chagrin.

Then one Easter weekend, a tragedy so devastating occurs that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass and the children have become adults, while Lorelei has become the county’s worst hoarder. She has alienated her husband and children and has been living as a recluse. But then something happens that beckons the Bird family back to the house they grew up in—to finally understand the events of that long-ago Easter weekend and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.

12 of 24: The Third Wife (2014)

Synopsis for The Third Wife:

In the early hours of a summer morning, a young woman steps into the path of an oncoming bus. A tragic accident? Or suicide?

At the center of this puzzle is Adrian Wolfe, a successful architect and grief-stricken widower, who, a year after his third wife’s death, begins to investigate the cause. As Adrian looks back on their brief but seemingly happy marriage, disturbing secrets begin to surface. The divorces from his two previous wives had been amicable, or so it seemed; his children, all five of them, were resilient as ever, or so he thought. But something, or someone, must have pushed Maya over the edge.

13 of 24: The Girls in the Garden (2015)

Synopsis for The Girls in the Garden:

Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people’s houses. You’ve known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really?

On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her thirteen-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. What really happened to her? And who is responsible?

14 of 24: I Found You (2016)

Synopsis for I Found You:

In the windswept British seaside town of Ridinghouse Bay, single mom Alice Lake finds a man sitting on a beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside.

Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, newlywed Lily Monrose grows anxious when her husband fails to return home from work one night. Soon, she receives even worse news: according to the police, the man she married never even existed.

Twenty-three years earlier, Gray and Kirsty Ross are teenagers on a summer holiday with their parents. The annual trip to Ridinghouse Bay is uneventful, until an enigmatic young man starts paying extra attention to Kirsty. Something about him makes Gray uncomfortable—and it’s not just because he’s a protective older brother.

Who is the man on the beach? Where is Lily’s missing husband? And what ever happened to the man who made such a lasting and disturbing impression on Gray?

15 of 24: Then She Was Gone (2018)

Synopsis for Then She Was Gone:

Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was fifteen, beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers. She and her boyfriend made a teenaged golden couple. She was days away from an idyllic summer vacation, with her whole life ahead of her.

And then she was gone.

Now, her mother, Laurel Mack, is trying to put her life back together. It’s been ten years since her youngest child disappeared, seven years since her marriage ended, and only months since the last clue in Ellie’s case was unearthed. So when she meets an unexpectedly charming man in a café, no one is more surprised than Laurel at how quickly their flirtation develops into something deeper. Before she knows it, she’s meeting Floyd’s daughters—and his youngest, Poppy, takes Laurel’s breath away.

Because looking at Poppy is like looking at Ellie.

Laurel is haunted by her long unanswered questions. What happened to Ellie? Did she run away from home, as the police have long suspected? Who is Floyd, really? And why does his daughter remind Laurel so viscerally of her own missing girl?

16 of 24: Watching You (2018)

Synopsis for Watching You:

You’re back home after four years working abroad, new husband in tow. You’re keen to find a place of your own. But for now, you’re crashing in your big brother’s spare room.

That’s when you meet the man next door. He’s the head teacher at the local school. Twice your age. Extraordinarily attractive.

You find yourself watching him. All the time. But you never dreamed that your innocent crush might become a deadly obsession.

Or that someone is watching you.

17 of 24: The Family Upstairs (2019)

Synopsis for The Family Upstairs:

Be careful who you let in.

Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.

She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.

Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

18 of 24: Invisible Girl (2020)

Synopsis for Invisible Girl:

Young Saffyre Maddox spent three years under the care of renowned child psychologist Roan Fours. When Dr. Fours decides their sessions should end, Saffyre feels abandoned. She begins looking for ways to connect with him, from waiting outside his office to walking through his neighborhood late at night. She soon learns more than she ever wanted to about Roan and his deceptively perfect family life. On a chilly Valentine’s night, Saffyre will disappear, taking any secrets she has learned with her.

Owen Pick’s life is falling apart. In his thirties and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct—accusations he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel forums, where he meets a charismatic and mysterious figure.

Owen lives across the street from the Fours family. The Fours have a bad feeling about their neighbor; Owen is a bit creepy and suspect and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night. Could Owen be responsible? What happened to the beautiful missing Saffyre, and does her disappearance truly connect them all?

19 of 24: The Night She Disappeared (2021)

Synopsis for The Night She Disappeared:

On a beautiful summer night in a charming English suburb, a young woman and her boyfriend disappear after partying at the massive country estate of a new college friend.

One year later, a writer moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods that border the same estate. Known locally as the Dark Place, the dense forest is the writer’s favorite place for long walks and it’s on one such walk that she stumbles upon a mysterious note that simply reads, “DIG HERE.”

Could this be a clue towards what has happened to the missing young couple? And what exactly is buried in this haunted ground?

20 of 24: The Family Remains (2022)

Synopsis for The Family Remains:

Early one morning on the shore of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery. When Owusu sends the evidence for examination, he learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago.

Rachel Rimmer has also received a shock—her husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his house in France. All signs point to an intruder, and the French police need her to come urgently to answer questions about Michael and his past that she very much doesn’t want to answer.

After fleeing London thirty years ago in the wake of a horrific tragedy, Lucy Lamb is finally coming home. While she settles in with her children and is just about to purchase their first house, her brother takes off to find the boy from their shared past whose memory haunts their present.

As they all race to discover answers to these convoluted mysteries, they will come to find that they’re connected in ways they could have never imagined.

21 of 24: None of This Is True (2023)

Synopsis for None of This Is True:

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realize that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?

22 of 24: Breaking the Dark (2024)

Synopsis for Breaking the Dark:

Meet Jessica Jones: Retired super hero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.

The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something “perfect.”

Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins’ new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

A mother’s intuition is never wrong. And Jessica knows that nothing in life is perfect—not these kids, not her on-again, off-again relationship with Luke Cage, and certainly not Jessica herself. But even as she tries to buy into the idea that better days are ahead, Jessica Jones has seen all too clearly that behind every promise of perfection trails a dark, dangerous shadow.

23 of 24: Don’t Let Him In (2025)

Synopsis for Don’t Let Him In:

He’s the perfect man. It’s a perfect lie.

Nick Radcliffe is a man of substance and good taste. He’s exactly what newly widowed Nina Swann needs in her life. But to Nina’s adult daughter, Ash, Nick seems too slick, too polished, too good to be true. When Ash begins digging into his past, she finds a trail of unsettling coincidences.

Martha lives in a neighboring town with her infant daughter and devoted husband Alistair. But lately, Alistair has been traveling more and more frequently for work, disappearing for days at a time, and Martha can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right.

Nina, Martha, and Ash have no idea they are on a collision course with a shocking truth. And all three are about to wish they had heeded the same warning: Don’t let him in.

24 of 24: It Could Have Been Her (2026)

Synopsis for It Could Have Been Her:

Jane Trevally is walking her dogs on her country estate one May afternoon when a small white dog appears. The teenaged girl that had been staying nearby with the dog is nowhere to be found, and Jane decides to return it to his registered owner hours away in London, in the deepest backwaters of Hampstead. But when Jane arrives, she is immediately unsettled—because she has a dark history with this house.

The man who answers the door tells her the dog, Hugo, must have been stolen from the Heath, but Jane very much doubts that is true. Through the window, she catches a glimpse of a haunted-looking woman, not the missing girl she’d hoped to find.

Facing a crossroads similar to the one that first led her to this home twenty-five years ago, Jane knows that the house holds the key—to the missing teenager, to the lost dog, and to dark secrets they’d all rather leave buried.

Authors similar to Lisa Jewell

If you’re a fan of Lisa Jewell’s books, you’ll also love these other authors!

• Alice Feeney
• B.A. Paris
• Freida McFadden
• Gillian Flynn
• Katherine Faulkner
• Lucy Foley
• Megan Miranda
• Paula Hawkins
• Ruth Ware
• Shari Lapena