AM Stuart Books in Order

A.M. Stuart, also known as Alison Stuart, is an Australian author who was born in Kenya and moved to Australia with her family when she was ten. That early uprooting seems to echo through her fiction, which often pays close attention to place, belonging, and the uneasy work of building a life in a new country.

History got to her early.

Stuart has said her father's love of history rubbed off on her, and she likes to trace her writing life back to a school playground, where she wrote an unpublished historical romance halfway up a tree. The instinct was already there, a fascination with the past, strong settings, and people under pressure. Later, instead of going straight into publishing, she built a long working life in law.

Before writing full time, she worked as a lawyer in a wide range of fields, including the military and the fire and emergency services. That experience gives her fiction a practical backbone. Her police procedures, official hierarchies, and closed institutions tend to feel grounded because she understands how rules work, and how people work around them.

A major turning point came in 2000, when she moved to Singapore and spent three years there. She explored the island's history and cultures in depth, and Singapore also seems to be the place where writing stopped being a private ambition and became a real identity. She joined a writers group there, did freelance writing, and later described that period as the time she finally felt able to call herself a writer.

The Harriet Gordon books began with a small historical find.

In the microfiche room of Singapore's National Library, Stuart came across a 1905 newspaper advertisement from an Englishwoman offering typing and shorthand with "absolute secrecy." That tiny detail opened a door. Out of it came Harriet Gordon, a widow, former suffragette, and shorthand typist whose search for independence in colonial Singapore turns into a life of solving murders.

Under the name A.M. Stuart, she launched the series with Singapore Sapphire in 2019, then followed it with Revenge in Rubies and Evil in Emerald. Readers who click with these books usually enjoy the mix of careful historical texture, clear plotting, and a central partnership that develops slowly rather than all at once. Harriet is smart, observant, and stubborn in useful ways. Inspector Robert Curran is competent, guarded, and carrying baggage of his own.

She also writes historical fiction as Alison Stuart, and books such as The Postmistress and The Goldminer's Sister show the same interest in people living through change, grief, and social pressure. Across both names, she returns to a few familiar concerns: women making room for themselves in restrictive worlds, communities shaped by class and duty, and the way history turns up in ordinary rooms, workplaces, and relationships.

Stuart lives in Melbourne, Australia, and continues to write across mystery, romance, and historical fiction. She has lived in Africa, Australia, and Singapore, and traveled widely, which may be one reason her fiction is so interested in outsiders, newcomers, and people who are never quite as settled as they first appear.