Clare Marchant Books in Order

If you want to start at the beginning: The Secrets of Saffron Hall → The Queen’s Spy → The Mapmaker's Daughter
If you love Tudor intrigue: The Queen’s Spy → The Mapmaker's Daughter → The Secrets of Saffron Hall
If you want darker seventeenth-century stories: The House of the Witch → The Shadow on the Bridge → Daughter of the Tarot
If you want her newest books first: Daughter of the Tarot → The Alchemist's Secret

Clare Marchant grew up in Surrey, England, and she has said that she always wanted to be a writer. Before fiction became her full-time job, though, she studied history and women’s studies, two subjects that helped shape the stories she would later tell. Her novels return again and again to overlooked women, old houses, and the objects that seem to carry the past forward.

That mix of historian, researcher and storyteller suits her perfectly.

Marchant did not move straight into publishing. She spent years working in IT and project management in London, then moved to Norfolk for a quieter life and trained as a professional jeweller. She has described herself as someone who came to writing later, after work, family life and a move to the countryside finally gave her the push to take it seriously.

Even then, it was not one dramatic leap. She had always written in her spare time, but joining the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme in 2016 gave her the structure and confidence she needed. It took her a couple of years to write The Secrets of Saffron Hall, and by the end of 2019 she had both an agent and a publishing deal.

Norfolk matters a lot in her work. She has spoken warmly about the county’s wide skies, ruins and long sense of history, and many of her books grow from exactly that feeling, the sense that the past is still close by if you know where to look. Old manor houses, hidden papers, strange objects and half-buried stories turn up again and again.

She likes the past to feel lived in, not polished.

That comes through clearly in The Queen’s Spy and The Mapmaker's Daughter, where Tudor politics, danger and travel sit alongside modern characters trying to make sense of loss, identity and family secrets. In The House of the Witch, The Shadow on the Bridge and Daughter of the Tarot, she moves into darker seventeenth-century territory, with midwives, hidden chambers, haunted landscapes and tarot cards all playing a part. Across the books, the pattern is easy to spot. Two timelines. One mystery. Strong women at the center.

Marchant has said she is especially interested in women’s place in history, not just queens and famous names, but ordinary women who ran homes, businesses and families while bigger political dramas played out around them. That interest gives her fiction its backbone. The past and present are usually linked by something tangible, a book, a map, a painting, a set of cards, and then by an emotional thread that pulls both stories together.

She now writes full-time and lives in Norfolk with her husband. She has said she loves exploring local castles, monastic ruins and the Norfolk coast, and that sense of place runs straight through the novels. Her books have been translated into seven languages, and she has also reached the USA Today bestseller list, but the appeal is simpler than that: old secrets, vivid history and the feeling that the past is never quite finished.