Claire McMullen Books in Order

The Claire McMullen books follow one woman over two turbulent stages of her life, from damaged teenager to wealthy hotel owner and mother, and ask what it really costs to outrun the past.

In Our Little Secret, Claire grows up in a house where safety is an illusion. Her mother’s boyfriend turns violent and then abusive, and Claire stays silent because she’s terrified of being separated from her younger sister Tracey. When social services finally intervene, the girls are placed with loving foster parents, but the damage has been done. As an adult Claire drifts into the sex trade and only slowly claws her way toward something better, reinventing herself as the young, efficient owner of a Blackpool seafront hotel. On the surface she’s respectable at last; underneath she is still braced for abandonment.

The sequel, Crying Shame, finds Claire years later, married and using the name Nightingale, with an adopted daughter, Nikki. Both women are shaped by abuse. Claire is haunted by what she endured as a child and by the compromises she made to survive, while Nikki carries scars from her own past before Claire took her in. A move to Solihull and an attempt to reconnect with estranged family members bring buried secrets roaring back into the open.

Together the two novels form a gritty but compassionate duology about the long reach of childhood harm. Goodwin doesn’t soften the subject matter, but she keeps the focus on Claire’s interior life: the way trust comes hard, how shame lingers even when you were never at fault, and how love can feel more frightening than violence when you’ve grown used to disappointment.

The series also explores the social-worker and foster-care systems from the inside, informed by Goodwin’s own background in that world. Caring adults do appear – foster parents who genuinely want the best for the girls, professionals who try to listen – but the books are honest about how easily vulnerable children can slip through the cracks.

Readers can expect modern settings, strong Midlands voices, and an emotional arc that moves from pure survival toward something like hope. The two books are tightly linked and best read in order, but each has its own contained story and resolution, so you’re not left hanging between them.