Caroline Ferriday / Lilac Girls Books in Order

The Caroline Ferriday, or Lilac Girls, series is a set of historical novels linked by the Woolsey-Ferriday family. Each book stands on its own with a different cast and era, but together they trace women in the family line through defining American and European conflicts. The books were published as Lilac Girls, Lost Roses, and Sunflower Sisters, though their historical timeline runs in the opposite direction.

Chronologically, Sunflower Sisters comes first. Set during the Civil War, it follows Georgeanna “Georgey” Woolsey, Caroline Ferriday’s ancestor, as she leaves the expected world of wealthy New York society to train as a nurse. Her path crosses with Jemma, a young enslaved woman on a Maryland plantation who is desperate to escape without leaving her family behind. A third viewpoint comes from Anne-May, the plantation mistress whose choices deepen the danger around Jemma. The book moves among hospitals, battlefronts, New York, and plantation life, with the war exposing every character’s limits and responsibilities.

Lost Roses shifts to 1914 and follows Caroline’s mother, Eliza Ferriday. Eliza travels to St. Petersburg with her close friend Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs, just as war and revolution begin to unravel their world. Sofya’s family retreats to its country estate, where Varinka, the daughter of a local fortune-teller, enters their household. The story moves between Russia, Paris, Long Island, and the lives of people displaced by revolution. At its center is the strain on a friendship separated by distance, class, fear, and events neither woman can control.

Then comes Lilac Girls, the book that introduced the series. In 1939, Caroline Ferriday works at the French consulate in New York while Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, becomes involved with the resistance. Their stories unfold alongside that of Herta Oberheuser, a German doctor whose career leads her into the Nazi system. Kasia’s imprisonment at Ravensbrück brings the novel’s hardest history into view, while Caroline’s later efforts to help survivors give the book its lasting emotional thread. It is the most direct connection to the real Caroline Ferriday.

The settings change, but the series stays focused on women whose private lives are overtaken by public events.

These are big, character-led historical novels rather than a tightly continuous family saga. Readers can begin with Lilac Girls for the original and most direct Caroline story, then move back to the earlier generations. Those who prefer to follow history in sequence can start with Sunflower Sisters, continue with Lost Roses, and finish with Lilac Girls. Either route works because each novel introduces its own main characters and central conflict.

Expect friendship, family bonds, moral choices, and careful attention to the lives of women caught in war. The books also deal directly with slavery, violence, persecution, and concentration-camp abuse, so the subject matter can be difficult. Kelly keeps the focus on individual people trying to survive, protect others, and make sense of what history has placed in front of them.