Cindy Anstey Books in Order

Cindy Anstey is a Canadian author whose books mix historical romance, mystery, and a touch of danger. She now lives in Nova Scotia with her husband and an energetic chocolate Labrador named Chester, but her adult life has taken her much farther afield. She has lived in Singapore, Memphis, and Belgium, and those years of moving seem to have given her both a traveler's eye and a collector's sense of detail.

She has joked that one home came with a monkey in the backyard, another with a scorpion under the sink.

That mix of curiosity and observation runs straight into her fiction. Anstey has said that ideas can begin with a line of research, a painting, or a scrap of conversation. She plans her novels carefully, building timelines, chapter outlines, and character notes, then keeps going until the characters start nudging the story in new directions.

Her path to publication was not quick. Before Love, Lies and Spies became her 2016 debut, it existed under the title A Modest Predicament and sat among several completed manuscripts. Anstey has said she had been grinding through the traditional query process, nearly ready to give up, when she found the Swoon Reads platform and uploaded the book there. She later noted that Love, Lies and Spies was her third completed manuscript, while Duels & Deception was her ninth, which tells you a lot about the work she put in before readers ever saw her name on a cover.

She likes the past, but not in a dreamy way.

In interviews, Anstey has said she loves the Regency period for its manners, tensions, and possibilities, especially for young women trying to carve out room for themselves. She has also said she would not actually want to live there. No central heating, rough roads, bad hygiene, and terrible dental care were enough to settle that question. What she does enjoy is the research, the clothes, the houses, the social rules, and all the little practical details that help a setting feel real.

Readers often start with Love, Lies and Spies, where Juliana Telford would rather study ladybugs than chase a husband, only to collide with a War Office spy. Duels & Deception follows with estate business, kidnapping, and a heroine who starts questioning the future mapped out for her. In Suitors and Sabotage and Carols and Chaos, Anstey leans into country house intrigue, quiet romance, and the trouble that blooms when people are forced to stay proper while everything around them goes sideways.

Her later books push further into mystery. The Hummingbird Dagger opens with a carriage crash and a young woman who wakes without her memory, and Deadly Curious gives the spotlight to Sophia Thompson, who wants to investigate crimes in a world that has no interest in female detectives. Across the whole list, Anstey returns to clever young women, family pressure, hidden motives, and the gap between what society expects and what her characters actually want.

She seems to enjoy that gap.

Anstey has described her writing life as a full-time job, and she has spoken warmly about the parts of publishing she loves most, especially seeing a cover design and holding the finished book for the first time. She still spends time with flowers, thread, acrylics, and words, which feels about right for an author whose books are orderly on the surface and pleasantly chaotic underneath. These days she is back in Nova Scotia, still writing, still researching, and still making room for history, humor, and a little trouble.