Donna Collins Books in Order

If you want the full Hunted story: The Sacrifice → Resurrection → The Undoing
If you like dark thrillers with supernatural edges: The Sacrifice → Resurrection
If you prefer crime investigation and a more grounded setup: Dead in the Water

Donna Collins was born at home in Romford, Essex, England, and she has joked that she became a bookworm about five minutes later. Her parents fed that habit early. One book that stayed with her was Enid Blyton's The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, a gift she still remembers and still counts among the most worn books on her shelf.

As a young reader and viewer, she leaned toward mystery, danger, and fast-moving stories. She has pointed to 1970s and 1980s shows like Charlie's Angels, Hart to Hart, Hunter, and Dempsey and Makepeace as early sparks, along with writers such as Paula Gosling, Jonathan Kellerman, Patricia Cornwell, and A.J. Quinnell. That mix helps explain her fiction, which moves quickly but still makes room for bruised people, buried secrets, and a steady feeling that trouble is never far away.

Crime was never just a reading taste for her.

Before turning fully to fiction, Collins founded her school magazine, which already hinted at where her interests were headed. She later wrote professionally for magazines, including work for OK! Magazine. Her career also took her into roles connected to Essex Police, Ormiston Prison Services, and Essex Offender Services. She had freelance and commissioned magazine work published before fiction took over. That background shows up in the way she writes pressure, procedure, and the mess people make of their own lives.

Her debut novel, The Sacrifice, grew out of a pilot script she wrote with a friend. After meetings in LA, she was asked to turn the idea into a novel. What began as a screen idea became the book that launched her fiction career. Set in Cornwall, it introduces nurse Eliza Hamilton and the mysterious Roman Holbrook, then quickly slides from a violent chance encounter into a dark chase story with a supernatural edge.

Collins followed The Sacrifice with Resurrection and The Undoing, which deepen the bond between Eliza and Roman and widen the danger around them. Readers who connect with these books tend to like the speed, the eerie undertow, and the emotional push and pull between two people who never get much room to breathe.

Dead in the Water shifts lanes a little. It trades Cornwall for a more urban crime setup and follows an East End boxer turned police crime scene investigator after a body is pulled from the Thames. It still feels like Donna Collins, fast, tense, and full of personal baggage that will not stay buried.

She likes writing people under strain. Nurses, investigators, damaged survivors, and men with dangerous pasts show up again and again in her work. So do battles with memory, guilt, hidden histories, and the question of whether anyone can really outrun what is chasing them. Her stories often ask what happens when fear is not only outside the door, but already inside the room.

She likes things that get the adrenaline going.

Away from the page, Collins has said she enjoys scary experiences, storm chasing, fright nights, zombie-themed attractions, and even séance panic rooms. She also finished the London Marathon in 2010. These days she still writes fiction and keeps a lively crime and thriller presence online, which feels fitting for an author who seems happiest when a story has real danger in it.