Angela Hart Books in Order

If you want to begin with the first foster memoirs: Terrified → The Girl Who Just Wanted to Be Loved → The Girl and the Ghosts
If you prefer to follow the later cases in order: The Girl With Two Lives → The Girl Who Wanted to Belong → The Girl in the Dark → The Girl with the Suitcase → The Girl with the Saddest Secret
If you want a quick standalone taster: The Girl With No Bedroom Door
If you are interested in Angela Hart's wider personal journey: The Brokenness and Restoration of a Lost Soul

Angela Hart writes under a pseudonym and has spent decades as a specialist foster carer for children with complex needs in the UK. Along with her husband, Jonathan, she has opened her home to more than fifty children and teenagers. Her memoirs share the everyday reality of life inside the care system from a foster family's point of view.

As a child she watched a friend's family welcome foster children for holidays, and the sight stayed with her. She longed for her own mother to do the same and imagined what it might be like to offer a safe, busy home to children who had very little. Those early impressions quietly shaped what she would choose later in life.

Before fostering, Hart worked with flowers, arranging and tending to them every day. When she later saw a small advert in her local paper asking for foster carers, it felt like an invitation she had been waiting for. She pictured caring for children a bit like nurturing plants, giving them warmth, food and attention so they could grow.

The reality turned out to be far more demanding. Each child arrived with their own history of loss, neglect or abuse, and no two situations looked the same. Hart and Jonathan had to learn new rules, attend training, share their private space with social workers and professionals, and adapt their routines around the needs of deeply unsettled young people.

Over time, the work stopped feeling like a change of career and became simply the way they lived.

More than twenty-five years on, Hart is a specialist carer for children with complex emotional and behavioural needs, often teenagers who have already experienced multiple broken placements. Many of the young people who lived with her still stay in touch as adults. She and Jonathan help them move into their first flats, invite them back for meals and family gatherings, and stay on the end of the phone when life gets tough.

Hart began writing because she wanted to balance the grim headlines about the care system with stories that showed hope as well as hardship. Her first book, Terrified, follows Vicky, a little girl whose fear of returning home points to years of emotional abuse, and shows how steady, patient care helps her begin to trust again. In The Girl Who Just Wanted To Be Loved, eight-year-old Keeley swings from charm to rage, forcing Hart and Jonathan to confront how deep trauma can shape a child's behaviour. The Girl and the Ghosts turns to Maria, a seven-year-old who hides bruises and secrets until the past finally comes to light.

Later memoirs such as The Girl With Two Lives, The Girl Who Wanted to Belong and The Girl in the Dark continue this thread, describing Danielle, Lucy and Melissa as they wrestle with loyalty, anger and fear. In The Girl with the Suitcase and The Girl with the Saddest Secret, Hart writes about Grace and Jasmine, girls shuttled between foster homes and relatives who struggle to cope. The shorter story The Girl With No Bedroom Door focuses on Louise, a teenager who has been sleeping rough before arriving at Hart's house in a state of exhaustion and shame. Across the books, names and details are changed, but the emotional truths come from real placements.

Alongside the fostering memoirs, Hart has also written more personal work that steps back from individual cases and looks at her own experiences of hardship, faith and resilience. Whatever the setting, she writes in straightforward language about fear, attachment, loyalty to birth families and the small, steady acts that help children feel safe. Readers often say that her stories have helped them understand looked-after children differently or even apply to foster themselves.

Today Hart continues to foster and to write, fitting her pages around school runs, meetings and family life. Her books do not pretend that fostering is easy, but they show why she and Jonathan have never quite been able to step away from it. For her, and for many of the children who have passed through their front door, that decision has changed the course of a life.