Anne Cleeland Books in Order
Explore Anne Cleeland books in order, from Doyle and Acton mysteries to Regency adventures, with quick summaries, series guides, and where to start.
Last updated: June 9, 2026
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Publication Order
35 books
Daughter of the God-King
by Anne Cleeland
2013
Hattie Blackhouse goes to Egypt to find her missing Egyptologist parents and lands in the middle of imperial intrigue. British, French, and Egyptian players all believe she holds the key to a dangerous political secret.
Murder in Thrall
by Anne Cleeland
2013
Rookie detective Kathleen Doyle is paired with brilliant, unsettling Chief Inspector Michael Acton to solve a racetrack murder. As bodies pile up across London, the case grows darker and their risky attraction becomes impossible to ignore.
Tainted Angel
by Anne Cleeland
2013
During the Napoleonic wars, spy Vidia Swanson charms secrets from powerful men for the Crown. When she is suspected of being a double agent, missing gold and divided loyalties turn her latest assignment into a fight for survival.
Murder in Retribution
by Anne Cleeland
2014
Now secretly married, Doyle and Acton investigate a wave of underworld killings linked to rival criminal factions. The closer Doyle gets to the truth, the more she fears Acton may have his own stake in the violence.
Murder in Hindsight
by Anne Cleeland
2015
A vigilante is killing criminals who once slipped through the system, and Doyle must connect the murders to long-buried cases. At the same time, a mysterious protector in the shadows may be part of a trap aimed at Acton.
Murder in Containment
by Anne Cleeland
2016
Pregnant and supposed to be taking it easy, Doyle is pulled into a case that keeps bleeding into older scandals. A vigilante's unfinished business and threats inside Scotland Yard put Acton and the CID in real danger.
The Bengal Bridegift
by Anne Cleeland
2016
After her father's death in Calcutta, shy Juno Payne becomes the target of men hunting a rumored cache of diamonds. Her only hope may be an unlikely ally, a Barbary pirate who might be protector, thief, or both.
Murder in All Honour
by Anne Cleeland
2017
At Christmas, Scotland Yard is hunting a killer who murders pregnant women to steal their babies. Acton tries to keep Doyle away from the case, which only convinces her that the truth is even worse than it looks.
Murder in Shadow
by Anne Cleeland
2017
A fresh homicide opens into one of Doyle and Acton's more layered investigations, with danger pressing on both home and work. Doyle's growing family and Acton's talent for secrets make every step of the case more fraught.
The Barbary Mark
by Anne Cleeland
2017
After a shipwreck leaves her stranded in Algiers, Nonie Rafferty must hide the real reason she came and the truth behind her pearls. A mysterious court necromancer offers help, but nothing in this game of survival comes free.
Murder in Misdirection
by Anne Cleeland
2018
While on maternity leave, Doyle cannot stay away from a body found in a burned-out church and the trouble surrounding it. Arson, corruption, blood money, and one of Acton's private schemes collide in dangerous ways.
Murder in Spite
by Anne Cleeland
2018
What should have been a quieter trip to Ireland turns into another knot of violence, old grudges, and unfinished business. Doyle and Acton find that home ground can be just as dangerous as any London murder scene.
The True Pretender
by Anne Cleeland
2018
Epione, a French émigré hiding in London as a milliner's assistant, is drawn into plots over the future of France. When a watchful stranger appears, hidden identity and political intrigue quickly become matters of life and death.
A Death in Sheffield
by Anne Cleeland
2019
Army-raised Artemis Merryfield is sent to Sheffield after her father's sudden death and discovers she may inherit silver mines along with dangerous secrets. Relatives, spies, and possible treason make civilian life far more perilous than war.
Hats and Windows
by Anne Cleeland
2019
Anne Cleeland's one nonfiction title sits apart from her Scotland Yard mysteries and Regency adventures. It offers a change of pace for readers curious about the range of her work outside her usual fictional worlds.
Murder in Just Cause
by Anne Cleeland
2019
Back from maternity leave and working under Munoz, Doyle expects a dull return. Instead, an apparent suicide at a housing estate opens into a messier homicide that soon reaches far beyond the first dead body.
Murder in the Blood
by Anne Cleeland
2019
What begins as a seemingly simple killing turns into one of Doyle and Acton's most tangled investigations. Hidden ties and overlapping motives keep shifting the case every time they think they understand it.
Murder in Deep Regret
by Anne Cleeland
2020
A shocking death at St. Michael's Church sends Doyle into a case with no clear motive and too many secrets. As the investigation widens toward a larger criminal enterprise, Acton's hidden plans become impossible to ignore.
Murder in Revelation
by Anne Cleeland
2020
Doyle starts with assaults on doctors at a London free clinic and gets a witness whose story sounds impossible. Strange attacks, buried secrets, and a funeral at Trestles pull the case in several unsettling directions.
The Spanish Mask
by Anne Cleeland
2020
A young Spanish postulant living quietly in a convent is suddenly hunted by factions who think she knows where royal treasure is hidden. To survive, she must outwit political players and a British commander she cannot quite trust.
Murder in Material Gain
by Anne Cleeland
2021
Lingering at Trestles after the holidays, Doyle stumbles into trouble through a prison ministry and the estate's long history of greed. A quiet country stay turns into another twisty case about ambition, secrets, and Acton's hidden maneuvers.
Murder in Unsound Mind
by Anne Cleeland
2021
A string of killings committed by apparently unhinged murderers has Scotland Yard fearing something worse is at work. Doyle faces a bleak winter case while worrying that Acton's own state of mind may be shifting.
The Gypsy Queen
by Anne Cleeland
2021
Captain Geordie Venables stays in Spain after the war to clear his commander's name and follows a lead to a traveling Romani troop. Lies, shifting loyalties, and one stubbornly disappearing horse carry him into a strange adventure.
Murder in All Fury
by Anne Cleeland
2022
As the fentanyl murder trial begins, Doyle suspects the police may have missed the real killer. Arson fires, a dead MP, a missing nanny, and family chaos leave her trying to solve the truth between feedings and sleepless nights.
Murder in Immunity
by Anne Cleeland
2022
A supposed murder-suicide looks wrong from the start, especially when one victim ties back to a major public accounts investigation. Pregnant and sidelined, Doyle still sees a wider cover-up and someone who seems untouchable.
The Blighted Bride
by Anne Cleeland
2022
Kanika of Kerala is a wealthy widow whose next marriage could reshape trade and power from Bengal to Canton. When the East India Company steps in, she must decide whether the British commander blocking her is enemy or ally.
Murder in Admonishment
by Anne Cleeland
2023
Doyle investigates what looks like a warning killing in a turf war, except nobody can say who the message is meant for. Even the cause of death is hard to pin down, which makes the case stranger by the hour.
Murder in Protocol
by Anne Cleeland
2023
In Dublin for a school ceremony, Doyle expects a brief family visit and finds a corpse in the orchard instead. The apparent revenge killing quickly becomes tangled with Irish history, family secrets, and one of Acton's plans.
The Stray Relation
by Anne Cleeland
2023
After Empress Josephine's death, Lisabetta loses the protection that kept old enemies at bay. Now hunted by spymasters who think she knows the secret of the St. Alban's treasure, she turns to deception and love for survival.
Murder in Preemption
by Anne Cleeland
2024
Recovering from a collapsed marina balcony, Doyle wakes to find gaps in the story and an oddly docile Acton on leave. A vanished nurse and hospital trouble suggest something serious happened while she was unconscious.
Murder in Reproach
by Anne Cleeland
2024
A wealthy theatre patron appears to have taken her own life, but a peacock feather at the scene says otherwise. Doyle and Acton soon find that stage superstition is only the first clue in a far more deliberate crime.
Murder in All Patience
by Anne Cleeland
2025
A charity gala at Trestles gives Doyle every reason to suspect Acton is hiding something again. As an old case involving the Song fortune turns colder, strange echoes of The Hound of the Baskervilles begin to surface.
Murder in Mercy
by Anne Cleeland
2025
Mrs. Song's sudden death looks impossible to solve, with no clear suspect and a locked-room feel to the crime. Doyle and Acton have to work through money, family damage, and very old grudges to reach the truth.
The Penitent
by Anne Cleeland
2025
Set in Soviet Moscow, hitman Jegor Sepp is shaken by accidentally wounding an innocent girl. Trying to help her pulls him into danger, guilt, and a brutal underworld where redemption may cost everything.
Murder in Mistake
by Anne Cleeland
2026
After a school Career Day, Doyle cannot forget a little boy's troubling questions about his missing father. When the disappearance proves to have a connection to her own household, what looks like an error may be something far worse.
Where should I start?
If you want the Scotland Yard mysteries: Murder in Thrall → Murder in Retribution → Murder in Hindsight
If you want the core Doyle and Acton story: Murder in Thrall → Murder in All Honour → Murder in Just Cause
If you want Regency-era intrigue: Tainted Angel → Daughter of the God-King → The Bengal Bridegift
If you want later historical standalones: A Death in Sheffield → The Spanish Mask → The Gypsy Queen
Author bio
Anne Cleeland was born in Pasadena, California, and has spent her life in Southern California. She studied English at UCLA, later earned a law degree from Pepperdine University, and became a member of the California State Bar.
Before readers knew her as a novelist, she worked in the legal world. Biographical notes for her books describe her as a research attorney for both federal and state court judges, and she has also guest lectured at UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton.
Mystery was there early.
In public author notes, Cleeland has said she grew up reading mystery and romantic suspense, starting with Nancy Drew and moving on to Agatha Christie and other classic British crime writers. That mix of legal training and long reading habits shows up all over her fiction. She likes motives, secrets, and people who are never telling quite the whole truth.
Cleeland began publishing novels in 2013, and she did not ease into it slowly. Tainted Angel introduced her Regency side, full of spies, hidden loyalties, and Napoleonic-era danger. That same year she launched the Doyle and Acton books with Murder in Thrall, then followed with Daughter of the God-King, another historical adventure that moved the action to Egypt. From the start, she was writing in two modes at once, contemporary murder and historical intrigue.
A lot of readers first meet her through Kathleen Doyle and Michael Acton. In books like Murder in Thrall, Murder in Retribution, and Murder in Hindsight, Doyle is an Irish detective with a gift for hearing when people lie, and Acton is the brilliant, aristocratic chief inspector who chooses her as his partner. Their marriage, their arguments about right and wrong, and the way work keeps crashing into home life became the engine of a long-running series.
She also clearly enjoys sending her historical characters a very long way from home.
Her Regency and standalone historical novels roam more freely. The Bengal Bridegift brings in diamonds, pirates, and imperial politics. The Barbary Mark heads to Algiers. A Death in Sheffield turns inheritance and wartime secrets into trouble for a young heroine who barely knows how civilian life works. The Spanish Mask and The Gypsy Queen move through the wreckage left by the Napoleonic wars in Spain. Across all of them, Cleeland tends to write women who are underestimated at first and men who are useful, dangerous, or both.
What links the two sides of her work is the tension between law and justice. Her contemporary books use police procedure, official rank, interviews, and institutional politics, but they also keep asking what happens when the system fails, or when a brilliant person decides the rules are too slow. Her historical novels do something similar in another key. There are spies, stolen fortunes, missing heirs, false identities, and people forced to act before they have the full story. The settings change, but the pressure stays the same.
Cleeland lives in California and has four children. She has been active in writer groups such as Mystery Writers of America, the Historical Novel Society, and International Thriller Writers, and she has taught workshops for aspiring writers as well. The legal background never really left, but fiction gave her a bigger stage for the questions she seems to like best: who can be trusted, what do people hide, and how far will they go when the truth starts closing in.
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