Anna Stuart Books in Order
Explore Anna Stuart books in order, including her WW2 novels and Joanna Courtney historicals, with summaries, reading order, series guides, and help choosing where to start.
Last updated: June 8, 2026
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Publication Order
26 books
The Chosen Queen
by Anna Stuart
2015
Edyth, granddaughter of Lady Godiva, wants love but is swept into the brutal politics behind 1066. Exile to Wales, a dangerous romance, and divided loyalties force her to choose between her heart and England's future.
The Christmas Court
by Anna Stuart
2015
At King Edward's Christmas court in 1051, newcomer Freya is drawn into feasting, gossip, and Norman intrigue. A festive romance soon collides with the first uneasy signs of the struggle that will reshape England.
The Constant Queen
by Anna Stuart
2016
Princess Elizaveta of Kiev hungers for adventure and finds it with Viking warrior Harald Hardrada. Their fierce love carries them across Europe and toward 1066, where ambition, marriage, and the English crown collide.
The Conqueror's Queen
by Anna Stuart
2017
Mathilda of Flanders expects little from her arranged match with William of Normandy, until she discovers a man as ambitious as she is. Together they are pulled toward England, power, and the price of conquest.
Blood Queen
by Anna Stuart
2018
This reimagining of the real woman behind Lady Macbeth follows Cora MacDuff through a brutal struggle for Scotland's throne. Love, ambition, and family survival are all at stake as rival claims turn violent.
Bonnie and Stan
by Anna Stuart
2019
Stan adores Bonnie, but illness leaves him terrified of the life she might face without him. As he and granddaughter Greya hatch a secret plan for Bonnie's future, their story loops back to the bright rush of 1960s Liverpool.
Fire Queen
by Anna Stuart
2019
Inspired by Ophelia, this novel turns Ofelia into a fierce political player rather than a passive victim. Exiled beside Prince Hamlet, she fights for Denmark, her own freedom, and the bond she refuses to name too easily.
Just the Two of Us
by Anna Stuart
2020
Julie is finally ready to end her marriage, until lockdown traps her at home with Michael. Forced to face the silence between them, they discover that even an old love story may still have another chapter.
A Letter From Pearl Harbor
by Anna Stuart
2021
After her grandmother Ginny dies, Robyn follows a trail of letters across Hawaii. Each clue reveals Ginny's life as one of the first female pilots at Pearl Harbor and the wartime secret that shaped both their lives.
Four Minutes to Save a Life
by Anna Stuart
2021
Supermarket driver Charlie is told to keep moving, but the lonely people on Hope Row keep drawing him back. Small acts of kindness begin to change the street, and Charlie's own life, in ways he never expected.
Iron Queen
by Anna Stuart
2021
In Iron Age Britain, Cordelia seems secure until her older sisters turn on family and tribe alike. Forced to flee, she must gather allies, win back trust, and fight for the world her father built.
The Berlin Zookeeper
by Anna Stuart
2021
In 1943 Berlin, orphaned Adelaide and her baby sister are taken in by zookeeper Katharina Heinroth as bombs fall around the zoo. Decades later, a chance meeting uncovers a hidden wartime secret and a family mystery.
The Secret Diary
by Anna Stuart
2021
In 2019, grieving Lorna discovers a hidden room and a diary in a Norfolk cottage. The pages lead back to 1945, where former gunner girl Nancy Jones is hiding a secret that could destroy her new marriage.
The Bletchley Girls
by Anna Stuart
2022
Recruited to Bletchley Park for her gift with languages, Stefania Carmichael enters a world of codebreaking, secrecy, and suspicion. As war turns her Italian fiancé into the enemy, friendship and loyalty become matters of life and death.
The Midwife of Auschwitz
by Anna Stuart
2022
When Polish midwife Ana Kaminski and her young Jewish friend Ester are sent to Auschwitz, Ana claims them both for the maternity hut. Surrounded by terror, they fight to protect mothers, newborns, and the faint hope of reunion.
Cleopatra & Julius
by Anna Stuart
2023
Cleopatra is determined to keep Egypt free and learns that ruling means constant struggle. When Julius Caesar enters her life, political alliance turns into a meeting of equals, and love begins to compete with duty.
Code Name Elodie
by Anna Stuart
2023
At Bletchley Park, Valerie Rousseau and Fran Morgan work in secret as the Allies prepare for D-Day. When Valerie volunteers for a dangerous mission in occupied France, the work on their desks suddenly becomes painfully personal.
The Midwife of Berlin
by Anna Stuart
2023
Surviving Auschwitz was only the beginning for Ester Pasternak. In the chaos of postwar Berlin, she searches for the blonde daughter taken from her in the camp, clinging to the smallest chance they might be reunited.
Salome
by Anna Stuart
2024
Princess Salome grows up in the shadow of her mother Herodias and the terrible aftermath of John the Baptist's death. As the world shifts around her, she must decide whether to stay obedient or claim a life of her own.
The Resistance Sisters
by Anna Stuart
2024
In occupied Warsaw, bakery worker Hana risks everything carrying a hidden message that could help spark resistance. With her sisters in danger and her fiancé never far from her thoughts, one delivery may change everything.
The War Orphan
by Anna Stuart
2024
When Auschwitz is liberated, sixteen-year-old Tasha walks out holding two younger children and searching for her missing mother. A chance to rebuild in England offers hope, but leaving Poland may mean leaving her past behind.
I Am Mrs Churchill
by Anna Stuart
2025
As London endures the Blitz, Clementine Churchill refuses to remain a background figure at 10 Downing Street. While Winston carries the war in public, she finds her own way to serve, support him, and steady a marriage under strain.
Mary of Magdala
by Anna Stuart
2025
Mary of Magdala follows Jesus at great personal cost and finds purpose among women whose voices are usually pushed aside. As the early church takes shape, she grows into a leader as well as a believer.
The President's Wife
by Anna Stuart
2025
After Pearl Harbor, Eleanor Roosevelt faces war, public scrutiny, and fresh strain inside the White House. This novel follows her fight to help lead America through crisis while holding together a marriage already marked by pain.
The Children on the Train
by Anna Stuart
2026
Inspired by true events, this novel follows women in Germany and the Netherlands who risk everything to get Jewish children onto trains and out of Nazi reach. It is a story of rescue, fear, and impossible choices.
The Last Baby in Auschwitz
by Anna Stuart
2026
After years in Auschwitz, Naomi Demetriou gives birth to a baby boy she must hide to keep him alive. When the camp is emptied and she is forced onto the road without him, other women become his last hope.
Where should I start?
If you want her most popular World War II saga: The Midwife of Auschwitz → The Midwife of Berlin → The War Orphan → The Last Baby in Auschwitz
If you like codebreaking and wartime friendship: The Bletchley Girls → Code Name Elodie
If you want famous women at the heart of WWII politics: I Am Mrs Churchill → The President's Wife
If you want sweeping medieval queens and 1066 drama: The Chosen Queen → The Constant Queen → The Conqueror's Queen
If you want something warmer and more contemporary: Bonnie and Stan → Four Minutes to Save a Life → Just the Two of Us
Author bio
Anna Stuart was born in St Andrews, Scotland, and spent her later school years in the East Midlands. She studied English literature at Cambridge, with a particular interest in medieval literature, but the writing part started much earlier. As a child she was already inventing boarding-school stories and filling notebooks, which feels very fitting for someone who would later write whole shelves of queens, spies, and wartime survivors.
After university she did what lots of future novelists do and took a proper job. In her case that meant factory planning, a world that brought her good friends, real experience, and the man who became her husband, but not much room for imagination. When she stopped work to have children, she used the snatched hours of family life to write short stories and serials for women's magazines.
It took time.
The move into longer fiction did not happen overnight. She signed with an agent after years of trying, and her first represented novel was contemporary rather than historical. But it was when she shifted into the past that things clicked. Writing as Joanna Courtney, she published The Chosen Queen, then The Constant Queen and The Conqueror's Queen, followed by the Shakespeare-inspired trilogy that begins with Blood Queen. Those books show what she likes to do best, take women who are usually pushed to the edge of the story and move them right to the middle.
History keeps pulling her back.
As Anna Stuart, she turned that same instinct toward the twentieth century. Her World War II novels, including The Berlin Zookeeper, The Bletchley Girls, and The Midwife of Auschwitz, focus on women doing hard, dangerous work under impossible pressure. Some are closely tied to real lives and real events, others braid fact with invention, but they all share the same interest in courage that looks ordinary at first glance. The Midwife of Auschwitz and the books that followed it found a particularly large readership and helped make her one of the best-known names in emotional wartime fiction.
She has also written contemporary fiction with a warmer, more domestic lens. Bonnie and Stan looks at long marriage, memory, and second chances through a love story that stretches from 1960s Liverpool to the present. Four Minutes to Save a Life and Just the Two of Us show the same fondness for everyday people who are frayed, funny, decent, and more resilient than they realise.
Across all her names, certain patterns keep showing up. She is drawn to women whose work is overlooked, to marriages and families put under strain, and to the collision between private feeling and public duty. Her books move from medieval courts to Bletchley Park, from Auschwitz to wartime Washington, but the heart of them is usually the same, people trying to protect the ones they love while history closes in.
Today she lives in Derbyshire with her husband, children, and dog, and she has spoken about how much she enjoys the way writing lets her try on different lives. She has also taught creative writing, and she writes from a home that feeds her sense of the past. That groundedness suits her books. However big the backdrop gets, they stay close to human choices, human cost, and the people history nearly forgot.
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