Jacqueline Winspear Books in Order
Explore Jacqueline Winspear books in order, with Maisie Dobbs reading order, short summaries, series background, and clear guidance on where to start.
Last updated: January 16, 2026
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Publication Order
23 books
The Comfort of Ghosts
by Jacqueline Winspear
2024
In 1945, as London tries to recover from war, Maisie is asked to inspect a Belgravia house and finds four traumatized teenagers and an ailing ex soldier squatting inside. Helping them draws her into a mystery that reaches back to her first husband and earlier cases.
The White Lady
by Jacqueline Winspear
2023
In 1947 rural Britain, former wartime operative Elinor White lives quietly in a grace and favor cottage, trying to escape her past. When a local family is threatened by a London crime syndicate tied to her history, she is forced back into dangerous covert work.
Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear
2022
This opening Maisie Dobbs novel introduces a former servant who becomes a Cambridge educated nurse and, later, a private investigator in 1929 London. Her first inquiry into a seemingly routine marital case draws her toward a secluded refuge for damaged veterans.
A Sunlit Weapon
by Jacqueline Winspear
2022
In 1942, ferry pilot Jo Hardy survives ground fire while delivering a fighter plane, then discovers an American airman bound and gagged in a barn. After tragedy strikes a fellow pilot, Jo asks Maisie to investigate, uncovering racism, sabotage, and a threat linked to Eleanor Roosevelt's visit.
The Consequences of Fear
by Jacqueline Winspear
2021
Twelve year old message runner Freddie Hackett sees a man stabbed in a bombed out London street, then later recognizes the killer at the door where he delivers his orders. When no one believes him, he turns to Maisie, drawing her into a perilous intelligence battle.
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
by Jacqueline Winspear
2020
Winspear's memoir looks back at a Kent childhood shaped by her family's wartime scars and hard manual work in the fields. She writes about hop picking, poverty, Romany neighbors, and the stories that later fueled the world of Maisie Dobbs.
What Would Maisie Do?
by Jacqueline Winspear
2019
This illustrated companion gathers memorable quotations and scenes from the Maisie Dobbs novels, pairing them with Winspear's reflections and space for readers' own notes. It invites fans to explore the series' themes and consider how Maisie's practical wisdom might apply to everyday life.
The American Agent
by Jacqueline Winspear
2019
During the London Blitz, American war correspondent Catherine Saxon is found dead in her flat and the news is quietly suppressed. Working with US agent Mark Scott, Maisie investigates Catherine's tangled loyalties while trying to protect the young evacuee she hopes to adopt.
To Die but Once
by Jacqueline Winspear
2018
In 1940, a worried couple asks Maisie to look into the disappearance of their teenage son Joe, an apprentice painter working on a hush hush government contract. Her search uncovers dangerous corruption, organized crime, and a link to the desperate evacuation at Dunkirk.
In This Grave Hour
by Jacqueline Winspear
2017
On the day Britain declares war on Germany in 1939, Maisie is asked to find who is killing former Belgian refugees once rescued as children. As London prepares for air raids, she juggles the investigation with caring for a silent evacuee billeted in her Kent home.
Journey to Munich
by Jacqueline Winspear
2016
In early 1938, Maisie is recruited by British intelligence to pose as the daughter of a political prisoner held in Dachau. Traveling into Nazi Germany, she must navigate secret police, old enemies, and her own unresolved grief to bring the man safely home.
A Dangerous Place
by Jacqueline Winspear
2015
Grief stricken and unwilling to return to her old life, Maisie breaks her journey home and lands alone in Gibraltar in 1937. There she discovers the murdered body of a photographer and is pulled into a web of espionage, refugees, and Spanish Civil War politics.
The Care and Management of Lies
by Jacqueline Winspear
2014
On the eve of World War I, vicar's daughter Kezia marries farmer Tom Brissenden and learns to run his Kent farm as he heads to the front. Through letters describing lavish imaginary meals, they try to shield each other from the brutal reality of the trenches.
Leaving Everything Most Loved
by Jacqueline Winspear
2013
When the body of Usha Pramal, an Indian woman living in a London hostel, is pulled from a canal, her grieving brother hires Maisie to investigate. The case draws Maisie into immigrant communities, questions of race and belonging, and a turning point in her own personal life.
Elegy for Eddie
by Jacqueline Winspear
2012
A group of London costermongers ask Maisie to look into the sudden death of Eddie Pettit, a gentle man with an uncanny way with horses. Her search through Lambeth's streets leads her to powerful newspaper interests and uneasy signs of another war gathering in Europe.
A Lesson in Secrets
by Jacqueline Winspear
2011
Working undercover for Special Branch, Maisie poses as a lecturer at a small pacifist college in Cambridge. When the school's founder is murdered, she must balance her covert brief with a very public inquiry that reaches into Britain's buried wartime history and budding fascist groups.
The Mapping of Love and Death
by Jacqueline Winspear
2010
The remains of Michael Clifton, a young American cartographer killed in the Great War, are uncovered in France years later. Hired by his parents, Maisie searches for the English nurse who loved him and discovers evidence that Michael was murdered, not lost in battle.
Among the Mad
by Jacqueline Winspear
2009
On Christmas Eve 1931, Maisie witnesses a desperate man kill himself on a London street. When a threatening letter to the government mentions her by name, she joins Special Branch in a frantic search for a damaged veteran planning mass murder.
An Incomplete Revenge
by Jacqueline Winspear
2008
Sent to a Kent village to look into a proposed land purchase, Maisie finds a community haunted by Zeppelin raids, arson, and petty crime. Among hop pickers and Roma camps, she uncovers long buried resentments and a secret that has poisoned the town for decades.
Messenger of Truth
by Jacqueline Winspear
2006
On the eve of a major exhibition, controversial artist Nick Bassington Hope falls to his death in a London gallery. Hired by his twin sister, Maisie delves into his war service, family secrets, and the darker corners of the interwar art world.
Pardonable Lies
by Jacqueline Winspear
2005
A dying woman begs her husband to learn the truth about their aviator son, officially listed as killed in action. Maisie travels from London to war scarred France, investigating spiritualists and old comrades while revisiting her own battlefield losses.
Birds of a Feather
by Jacqueline Winspear
2004
Maisie is hired by a self made magnate to find his runaway daughter, a sheltered heiress who has vanished from her gilded life. As Maisie searches, she links the missing woman to a string of suspicious deaths tied to wartime guilt.
Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear
2003
In 1929 London, former housemaid and wartime nurse Maisie Dobbs opens her own practice as a psychologist and investigator. Her first case, a suspected infidelity, uncovers a secret refuge for broken veterans and forces her to confront memories from the Great War.
Where should I start?
If you want to start with the main mysteries: Maisie Dobbs → Birds of a Feather → Pardonable Lies.
If you prefer to jump into the World War II years: In This Grave Hour → To Die but Once → The American Agent → The Consequences of Fear.
If you enjoy standalone historical novels: The Care and Management of Lies → The White Lady.
If you like memoir and reflection alongside the fiction: This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing → What Would Maisie Do?.
Author bio
Jacqueline Winspear grew up in the Kent countryside in southeast England and later became known around the world for the Maisie Dobbs historical mysteries, which follow a working woman navigating the long shadow of two world wars.(en.wikipedia.org)
Born in 1955 and raised near Cranbrook, she listened as parents and grandparents shared stories marked by the First and Second World Wars. Her grandfather came home from the Battle of the Somme badly wounded and shell shocked, a family history that sparked her deep interest in that period.(jacquelinewinspear.com)
After studying at the University of London's Institute of Education, Winspear worked in academic publishing, higher education, and marketing communications. Those years in offices and universities sharpened her eye for how people present themselves in public and who they are underneath.(jacquelinewinspear.com)
In 1990 she emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in California. She built a portfolio career in business and as a personal and professional coach, while also writing articles and essays on international education, travel, and everyday life, some of which she recorded for public radio.(jacquelinewinspear.com)
The character who changed everything arrived while she was stuck in traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area. Winspear has described suddenly seeing a young woman step out of a London Underground station in 1929, as vivid as a scene in a film, and hurrying home to write down that first chapter.(jacquelinewinspear.com)
Not long afterward she suffered a serious fall that left her with a broken arm and a crushed shoulder. The slow work of recovery kept her at the keyboard, and she finished much of the novel that became Maisie Dobbs typing with one hand.(en.wikipedia.org)
In Maisie Dobbs and the seventeen novels that follow, Winspear traces her heroine from a thirteen year old housemaid in a Belgravia mansion through wartime nursing at the Western Front to life as a psychologist and investigator in London between 1929 and 1945. Each case brings her face to face with the emotional wreckage left by conflict, class divisions, and rapid social change.(en.wikipedia.org)
Over time the series has earned mystery awards and a devoted readership, with titles regularly appearing on bestseller lists. Readers are drawn to Maisie as much for her practical compassion and ethical stubbornness as for the puzzles she solves on behalf of soldiers, servants, aristocrats, and refugees.(mcnallyrobinson.com)
Winspear has also stepped beyond the series. Her World War I novel The Care and Management of Lies looks at friendship, marriage, and the home front through the letters between a young farmer and his wife. The White Lady follows a former wartime operative trying to live quietly in postwar Britain, only to be pulled back toward danger. In What Would Maisie Do? she gathers favorite passages from the novels alongside reflections and space for readers' own notes, while This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing is a candid memoir of her Kentish childhood and her family's resilience in the face of poverty and war.(jacquelinewinspear.com)
Today Winspear lives in California and returns often to Britain and Europe to walk the ground she writes about. Across fiction, nonfiction, and essays, she keeps circling the same questions of memory, duty, and hope, always interested in how ordinary people find the courage to carry on when history turns violent.(barnesandnoble.com)
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