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Bella Ellis Books in Order

Find Bella Ellis books in order, along with Rowan Coleman titles, short summaries, reading order help, series notes, and easy where-to-start guidance.

Last updated: June 11, 2026

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30 books

Growing Up Twice

by Bella Ellis

2002

Jenny, Rosie, and Selin have been best friends since school, drifting through messy nights and bad decisions while waiting for adulthood to start. Then tragedy hits, and all three have to face how much growing up still lies ahead.

After Ever After

by Bella Ellis

2003

Kitty thought marriage and motherhood would be her fairy-tale ending, but real life in the countryside feels lonelier and harder than she imagined. As cracks spread through her perfect story, she has to decide what happily ever after really means.

River Deep

by Bella Ellis

2004

When Christian ends their long relationship, Maggie retreats to her parents' pub feeling humiliated and stuck. Determined to win him back, she starts a reckless plan that forces her to question whether her heartbreak is really about him at all.

Ruby Parker Hits the Small Time

by Bella Ellis

2005

At thirteen, Ruby looks like she has it all: a TV soap role, stage school, and endless attention. Behind the scenes, though, rumors about her future on the show and her parents' split leave her world suddenly shaky.

The Accidental Mother

by Bella Ellis

2005

Career-driven Sophie Mills expects control, not instant parenthood. When her late best friend's young daughters are left in her care, she stumbles into grief, chaos, and a kind of love she never planned for.

Mommy by Mistake

by Bella Ellis

2007

A group of exhausted new parents keep colliding through classes, coffee, and small disasters until they form an unofficial baby group. At the center is Natalie, whose surprise baby has blown up the life she thought she had planned.

Ruby Parker: Film Star

by Bella Ellis

2007

Ruby lands the chance to audition for a major movie and suddenly life after soap seems thrilling and terrifying at once. Between huge expectations and ordinary teenage nerves, she has to decide how badly she wants the spotlight.

Ruby Parker: Hollywood Star

by Bella Ellis

2007

Hollywood sounds like the dream, until Ruby discovers how lonely and pressured it can be. Far from home and surrounded by glamour, she has to figure out who she is when the cameras stop rolling.

Ruby Parker: Soap Star

by Bella Ellis

2007

Ruby has grown up on the hit soap Kensington Heights, but fame feels less fun when she fears being written out of the show. Add stage-school jealousy, a first screen kiss, and family upheaval, and everything starts wobbling.

The Baby Group

by Bella Ellis

2007

Six very different new parents keep colliding through baby classes, coffee, and daily disasters until they form a support system of their own. It is funny, frazzled, and sharply tuned to how lonely early parenthood can feel.

Another Mother's Life

by Bella Ellis

2008

Alison and Catherine have spent fifteen years living the aftermath of one life-changing betrayal. When Alison moves back home, both women are forced to confront old love, resentment, and the question of whether either chose the right life.

Ruby Parker: Musical Star

by Bella Ellis

2008

Ruby hopes ordinary school life will mean less drama, but show business has other ideas. A choir competition, a new musical, an old boyfriend, and fresh rivalries pull her right back under the spotlight.

The Accidental Wife

by Bella Ellis

2008

Fifteen years after running away with her best friend's boyfriend, Alison returns to the town she left behind. Her arrival forces two women to reckon with lost chances, old betrayals, and the lives they might have lived.

Ruby Parker: Shooting Star

by Bella Ellis

2009

Fresh from a stage success, Ruby heads back to Hollywood to audition for the film version of Spotlight! The Musical. Showbiz nerves are bad enough, but the real trouble waiting for her may be much closer to home.

The Accidental Family

by Bella Ellis

2009

Sophie Mills has traded London for Cornwall to be with Louis and the two girls she has come to love. But country life, commitment, and the idea of becoming a real family prove messier and scarier than she expected.

The Happy Home for Broken Hearts

by Bella Ellis

2010

After her husband's death leaves her broke and overwhelmed, Ellie Woods starts renting out rooms in her home. Her new lodgers bring noise, mess, and unexpected comfort, pushing her back toward life and love.

The Home for Broken Hearts

by Bella Ellis

2010

After her husband's death leaves her broke and overwhelmed, Ellie Woods starts renting out rooms in her home. Her new lodgers bring noise, mess, and unexpected comfort, pushing her back toward life and love.

Lessons in Laughing Out Loud

by Bella Ellis

2011

Willow has spent years living in the shadow of one terrible moment while her twin, Holly, seemed to keep moving forward. When old pain resurfaces, the sisters must face the secret that shaped them both.

Dearest Rose / The Runaway Wife

by Bella Ellis

2012

Rose Pritchard flees her abusive husband in the middle of the night, taking her daughter to a remote Lake District village. She is searching for safety, for family answers, and for the possibility that one act of long-ago kindness might still lead somewhere better.

The Day We Met

by Bella Ellis

2014

Claire is trying to hold onto her husband, daughters, and sense of self as early-onset Alzheimer's steals the details of her life. Her memory book becomes a lifeline for the family she loves, and a record of what she cannot bear to lose.

The Memory Book

by Bella Ellis

2014

Claire's memory is slipping away, and she knows the life she loves cannot stay as it is. Her answer is a scrapbook of moments for her family, even as early-onset Alzheimer's begins to blur names, faces, and the past.

We Are All Made of Stars

by Bella Ellis

2015

Night nurse Stella Carey writes final letters for her dying patients while her injured husband shuts himself away from the world. One urgent message gives her a chance to change someone else's ending, and maybe her own.

The Other Sister

by Bella Ellis

2016

Willow and Holly are identical twins bound by love and by a secret that pushed their lives in different directions. When the past catches up, Willow has to face the fear that has shaped her for years.

Mirror, Mirror

by Bella Ellis

2017

In a novel co-written with Cara Delevingne, four outsiders build a band that finally feels like home. When Naomi vanishes and is later found unconscious in a river, her friends are forced to untangle betrayal, identity, and the truth of what happened.

The Summer of Impossible Things

by Bella Ellis

2017

After her mother's death, Luna travels to Brooklyn to sort through old secrets and unfinished business. Then something impossible happens, and she finds herself face to face with her mother as a young woman in the summer of 1977.

The Girl at the Window

by Bella Ellis

2019

Widowed Trudy Heaton returns to crumbling Ponden Hall with her young son, who cannot accept his father's death. As grief, family strain, and the house's long memory close in, the past begins to press unsettlingly into the present.

The Vanished Bride

by Bella Ellis

2019

In 1845 Yorkshire, a young wife disappears from Chester Grange, leaving only blood behind. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë begin asking questions and find a case tangled in power, violence, and the limits placed on women.

The Diabolical Bones

by Bella Ellis

2020

When a child's bones are found hidden inside Top Withens Hall, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë are drawn into a darker case than before. Their search leads through brutal family secrets, vanished children, and the grim world of local orphanages.

The Red Monarch

by Bella Ellis

2021

When Anne Brontë hears from former pupil Lydia Robinson, the sisters are drawn into a desperate London rescue mission. A missing item, a pregnant fugitive, and a criminal leader called the Red Monarch turn the case into a race against time.

A Gift of Poison

by Bella Ellis

2023

With Anne and Emily on the brink of publication and Charlotte smarting from rejection, the Brontë household is already tense. Then a hated workhouse master, cleared of poisoning his wife, asks the sisters to investigate an attempt on his own life.

Where should I start?

If you want gothic historical mysteries: The Vanished BrideThe Diabolical BonesThe Red MonarchA Gift of Poison
If you want an emotional family story: The Day We MetThe Memory Book
If you want book-club drama with a touch of the uncanny: The Summer of Impossible ThingsThe Girl at the Window
If you want warm, funny contemporary fiction: The Accidental MotherThe Accidental Family

Author bio

Bella Ellis is the Brontë-inspired pen name of British novelist Rowan Coleman. She grew up in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, and has said she was a storyteller from childhood, the kind of reader who fell hard for imaginary worlds and never quite left them behind. The Bella Ellis name lets her bring two long-running threads together, a love of suspense and a lifelong fascination with the Brontë sisters.

Books were there early.

Coleman has also spoken very openly about growing up with dyslexia, and about how that made school feel harder than it should have. What changed things was encouragement. Teachers began to notice her writing, and once that door opened she kept pushing at it. By the time she reached university in Hull, she was learning how to work with the way her mind handled language rather than against it.

After university she worked in bookshops and in publishing, picking up the nuts and bolts of the trade while writing in every spare pocket of time. In the early 2000s she won Company magazine's Young Writer of the Year award, which helped her find an agent and move toward her first novel. That debut, Growing Up Twice, arrived in 2002 and kicked off a career that would stretch across contemporary fiction, children's books, historical mystery, and screenwriting.

That was the beginning.

As Rowan Coleman, she never stayed in one lane for long. Early books such as The Accidental Mother, The Accidental Family, The Baby Group, and After Ever After mix humor, romance, family chaos, and the very ordinary panic of adult life going off script. She also wrote the Ruby Parker books for younger readers, using a backstage showbiz setting to explore friendship, insecurity, first love, and growing up in public.

Her later fiction often digs deeper into memory, grief, and family bonds. The Memory Book, which became a Richard and Judy Book Club pick, follows a woman living with early-onset Alzheimer's. The Day We Met brought that story to many readers in the US. Then books like The Summer of Impossible Things and The Girl at the Window widened her range again, blending emotional family drama with time slip, old houses, and a real taste for the uncanny.

She doesn't write pain as something tidy.

That is part of what gives books like Dearest Rose their pull. Coleman researched domestic abuse while writing that novel, and the experience led her to support Refuge, a cause she has spoken about publicly. Even in her warmer or funnier books, there is usually a serious question underneath about what people do after loss, betrayal, fear, or the collapse of the life they thought they were building.

The Brontës never really left her alone.

As a reader, she has long loved Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and the world around Haworth. Under the Bella Ellis name, she turned that obsession into the Brontë Sisters Mystery series, beginning with The Vanished Bride and continuing with The Diabolical Bones, The Red Monarch, and A Gift of Poison. Those books imagine Charlotte, Emily, and Anne before literary fame, solving cases on the Yorkshire moors while inching toward the lives and work that would make them legendary.

Across both names, you can usually spot a Rowan Coleman novel by the human scale of it. Her stories return again and again to sisters, mothers, daughters, bruised marriages, chosen families, and houses filled with old feeling. Readers often like her for the same reason, she can write about difficult things without draining away warmth, humor, or hope.

Away from the desk, she has described a busy family life, a love of films, a fondness for baking, and an even stronger fondness for sitting still when she gets the chance. She has also worked as a screenwriter, which makes sense when you think about how visual many of her scenes feel. Whether she is writing as Rowan Coleman or Bella Ellis, the voice underneath is much the same, curious about people, alert to feeling, and always ready to ask what a second chance might look like.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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All 30 Bella Ellis Books in Order (Complete List 2026)