A Lady Fan Mystery Books in Order
Part ofElizabeth Bailey Books in OrderFollow the A Lady Fan Mystery series by Elizabeth Bailey in order, with book lists, case summaries, late Georgian background and tips on where to start these historical murder mysteries.
Last updated: January 17, 2026
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Publication Order
11 books
The Killing Cave
by Elizabeth Bailey
2024
This later entry in the Lady Fan series sees Ottilia Fanshawe drawn into another perilous murder investigation hinted at by the book’s ominous title. As threats close in, she must again balance her hunger for justice with the safety of her family.
The Hanging Cheat
by Elizabeth Bailey
2023
Heavily pregnant, Lady Ottilia Fanshawe travels with her husband to comfort her widowed brother in law. When her young nephews discover a man hanging in the woods, Lady Fan is drawn into a murder where the victim, a spiteful local magistrate, has given almost everyone a motive.
The Vengeance Trail
by Elizabeth Bailey
2022
After someone tries to drown her in a river, Lady Ottilia Fanshawe is convinced the attack is linked to an old case. When the body of a woman she once encountered is found nearby, Lady Fan must uncover who is targeting her family before vengeance claims more lives.
The Unwanted Corpse
by Elizabeth Bailey
2022
Recovering from the birth of her first child, Lady Ottilia Fanshawe is forced back into detection when an unknown man’s body is dumped outside her door. With a note naming her, she must discover who he was and why someone wants her involved.
The Dagger Dance
by Elizabeth Bailey
2021
Lady Ottilia Fanshawe brings an orphaned girl home from holiday, only to face a custody battle when the child’s grandfather appears. At the same time, her loyal footman begs her help clearing a woman from his past of a murder charge in Bristol.
The Fateful Marriage
by Elizabeth Bailey
2020
While visiting Tunbridge Wells, Ottilia and Francis witness a woman fall to her death from the High Rocks. The victim’s link to a domineering viscountess and an old elopement draws Lady Fan into a tangle of family secrets, resentments and possible murder.
The Mortal Blow
by Elizabeth Bailey
2019
On a lonely road, Ottilia and Francis encounter a woman drenched in blood who refuses to speak, and a man’s corpse hidden nearby. Taking the stranger into their home, Lady Fan slowly uncovers a web of violence and lies behind the silent figure.
The Candlelit Coffin
by Elizabeth Bailey
2019
Grief stricken after a personal loss, Ottilia is coaxed back to sleuthing when an actress is found laid out in an open coffin, ringed with candles, in Weymouth. Among a travelling theatrical troupe, she must separate stage tricks from cold blooded murder.
The Opium Purge
by Elizabeth Bailey
2018
Pregnant with her first child, Lady Fan investigates the sudden death of a neighbour recently returned from the West Indies. His troubled young ward confesses to murder, but Ottilia suspects the truth lies buried in plantation secrets, addiction and long kept guilt.
The Deathly Portent
by Elizabeth Bailey
2012
Stranded in the village of Witherley when their coach breaks down, Ottilia and Francis learn that a blacksmith has been killed exactly as a young woman foretold. Branded a witch by frightened neighbours, the seer becomes Lady Fan’s most urgent mystery.
The Gilded Shroud
by Elizabeth Bailey
1992
When the Marchioness of Polbrook is found strangled in her London bedchamber, suspicion falls on everyone in the Hanover Square household. Newly hired as companion to the dowager, Ottilia Draycott allies with Lord Francis Fanshawe to expose a killer within the family.
Series background & context
The Lady Fan mysteries follow Ottilia Draycott, later Lady Ottilia Fanshawe, as she turns an unconventional talent for observation into a quiet career as an amateur sleuth. The series opens in 1789 with The Gilded Shroud, when Ottilia is hired as companion to the dowager Marchioness of Polbrook and walks into a household shaken by murder. From the start she is less interested in embroidery than in questions of motive, opportunity and justice.
Ottilia’s partnership with younger son Francis Fanshawe gives the books their heart. He brings rank, mobility and a protective streak, while she brings curiosity, intuition and a willingness to push against the limits set on women of her station. Over the course of the series they move from wary allies to a married couple with their own growing family, but they never stop treating each other as equals in the work of detection.
Each novel stands on its own around a new case. A strangled marchioness in a Hanover Square mansion, a blacksmith whose death seems to fulfil a village girl’s grim prediction, a West Indian plantation owner who dies on his doorstep, an actress laid out in a stolen coffin by the sea, a blood soaked stranger on a country road, a body dumped outside Ottilia’s own front door, the crimes are varied and often theatrical. Settings shift between London drawing rooms, rural villages, spa towns and riverside estates, always with a keen eye for late eighteenth century life.
Running underneath the puzzles are threads the books return to again and again. Bailey explores the frustrations of clever women confined by law and custom, the long shadow of slavery and colonial wealth, the brittle pride of the gentry and the way servants see everything while being treated as if they are invisible. She also lets Ottilia face private losses and doubts, from the trauma of a stillbirth to the demands of new motherhood, without reducing her to them.
Tone wise, the series sits between cosy and hard edged. The murders are serious and sometimes brutal, but the stories are driven more by character, conversation and deduction than by gore. There is gentle humour in family interactions and in Ottilia’s dry asides, yet danger feels real when she walks alone into a suspect’s path or realises that she herself has become a target.
Readers can pick up any Lady Fan book and follow the mystery, but starting with The Gilded Shroud lets you watch Ottilia and Francis grow into their partnership. Later titles reward that investment by showing how their marriage, household and circle of friends evolve as the body count, and the stakes, slowly rise.
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