Antonia Hodgson Books in Order

For Georgian crime in order: The Devil in the Marshalsea → The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins → A Death at Fountains Abbey → The Silver Collar
If you want a later Tom Hawkins sample: A Death at Fountains Abbey → The Silver Collar
For fantasy, court intrigue, and worldbuilding: The Raven Scholar → The Fox in Winter

Antonia Hodgson was born in Derby in 1971 and grew up there, with books close by from the start. In later interviews she has remembered a small local library near her home and the habit of making up stories on long car journeys, which sounds a lot like a writer warming up before the job had a name.

She studied English at Leeds University and graduated in 1994. After that she moved into publishing, starting at Harcourt Brace and building a long career in London that eventually took her to editor-in-chief at Little, Brown.

That editorial life gave her a wide view of books and how they work. She has talked about publishing everything from historical fiction to memoir, and that range shows in her own writing, which is carefully built but never fussy.

She came to fiction the long way round.

Before her debut, Hodgson spent years writing a gothic vampire novel that never made it into print. That might sound like a false start, but it turned out to be useful training. One part of that abandoned book was set in 1720s London, and the research for it led her toward the world that became The Devil in the Marshalsea.

That novel introduced Tom Hawkins, a charming, unreliable rake who lands in the horrors of a debtors’ prison and has to investigate a murder if he wants to survive. Readers warmed to the mix of muck, wit, historical detail, and real suspense, and the book won the CWA Historical Dagger. It launched the Tom Hawkins novels, which continued with The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins, A Death at Fountains Abbey, and The Silver Collar.

Those books are crime stories, yes, but they are also about class, power, hunger, loyalty, and what happens when a pleasure-seeking man is forced to grow up.

Hodgson is especially good with people who are clever, cornered, and a little out of step with the world around them. Her settings do a lot of work too, whether it’s the stink and crush of Georgian London, a country estate full of old grudges, or a social order that looks polished until you get close. Even when the stakes are grim, she usually leaves room for dry humor and messy human feeling.

In 2025 she took the turn she had wanted to make for years and published The Raven Scholar, the opening book in her Eternal Path fantasy sequence. It keeps her taste for court politics and layered mysteries, but moves them into the empire of Orrun, with sacred animal guardians, deadly competition, and the scholar Neema Kraa at the center. The book became a bestseller and showed that her love of twisty plotting works just as well in fantasy as it does in historical crime.

These days Hodgson lives in Kent, near the coast, and works as a freelance editor as well as a novelist. She has said epic fantasy was always a dream project, and she has been busy writing the next Eternal Path book. So even after switching lanes, she still seems drawn to the same things: pressure, secrets, danger, and people trying to think their way through a bad situation.