Kate Furnivall Books in Order
Explore all Kate Furnivall books in order with summaries, series background and guidance on where to start her sweeping historical fiction.
Last updated: December 23, 2025
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Publication Order
15 books
The Crash
by Kate Furnivall
2024
On a frozen night in 1933, a train collision outside Paris lets petty criminal Gilles Malroux seize another man's identity. His sister Camille follows a mysterious, bandaged patient who carries Gilles's papers, while Gilles wakes in a stranger's house where nothing is what it seems.
Child of the Ruins
by Kate Furnivall
2023
Berlin, 1948. As the Soviet blockade tightens and Allied planes keep the city alive, Anna and Ingrid each search the shattered streets for a missing child. Their hunt for answers pulls them into a world of informers, old betrayals and blurred lines between justice and revenge.
The Guardian of Lies
by Kate Furnivall
2019
Eloise Caussade leaves her family's bull farm for a new life in 1950s Paris, working alongside her adored brother, an intelligence officer. When he is nearly killed, her guilt drives her back home to track his attacker amid Cold War tensions and nuclear protests.
The Survivors
by Kate Furnivall
2018
In 1945 Germany, Klara Janowska and her young daughter reach a crowded displaced persons camp, grateful simply to be alive. There Klara recognizes a man who knows her darkest wartime act, and a tense game begins where silence may be the only way to stay safe.
The Betrayal
by Kate Furnivall
2017
Paris, 1938. Twin sisters, one a daring pilot and one a glamorous socialite, are bound by a violent secret as war looms. When their loyalties diverge, both must decide how much they will sacrifice, and who, to protect the lives they have built.
The Liberation
by Kate Furnivall
2016
Post-war Naples lies in ruins when Caterina Lombardi is accused of helping her dead father betray Italy. Navigating bombed streets, black market deals and Allied offices, she hunts proof of his innocence and confronts dangerous men who would rather history stay buried.
The Italian Wife
by Kate Furnivall
2014
In 1932 Bellina, architect Isabella Berotti watches in horror as a stranger hands her a child then jumps from the town clock tower she designed. Drawn to protect the girl with photographer Roberto Falco, she uncovers buried fascist secrets tied to her own past.
The Far Side of the Sun
by Kate Furnivall
2013
Seeking a fresh start in 1943 Nassau, Dodie Wyatt stumbles on a dying man and a plot that reaches into the island's elite. As her path crosses that of diplomat's wife Ella Stanford, both women are pulled into murder, corruption and risky passion.
Shadows on the Nile
by Kate Furnivall
2012
Haunted by her brother's childhood disappearance, Jessie Kenton is shattered when another brother vanishes in 1930s London. Following cryptic clues through séances and museum corridors, she chases the trail to Egypt, where desert heat, buried secrets and a risky new love await.
Diamonds in the Dust
by Kate Furnivall
2012
During a 1942 air raid on Darwin, towering Hatti Hoot chases off looters from a jewelry shop, leaving scattered diamonds glittering in the street. When she and a young Malayan girl are accused of theft, a reckless choice spirals into danger neither expected.
The White Pearl
by Kate Furnivall
2011
In 1941 Malaya, restless plantation wife Connie Thornton accidentally kills a local woman just as Japanese forces sweep in. Fleeing by yacht with family and strangers, she faces pirates, betrayal and an unexpected love that forces her to question everything she thought she wanted.
The Jewel of St. Petersburg
by Kate Furnivall
2010
On the eve of revolution in imperial St Petersburg, privileged pianist Valentina Ivanova defies her family by training as a nurse and falling for Danish engineer Jens Friis. As bombs and unrest spread, their love tests loyalties to class, country and kin.
The Concubine's Secret
by Kate Furnivall
2009
Seventeen-year-old Lydia Ivanova leaves China for Soviet Russia, determined to rescue the father she thought dead. Traveling with her half brother and a loyal protector, she infiltrates a harsh prison world where one ruthless officer holds the key to truth and survival.
Under a Blood Red Sky
by Kate Furnivall
2008
In a brutal Siberian labor camp in 1933, prisoner Sofia Morozova clings to hope through her friend Anna's tales of a lost lover. When Anna falls ill, Sofia escapes across Stalinist Russia to find him, uncovering dangerous secrets and an unexpected new love.
The Russian Concubine
by Kate Furnivall
2007
Driven from revolutionary Russia, teenage Lydia Ivanova and her mother scrape by in 1920s Junchow, China, where Lydia steals to survive. When she is saved by Communist fighter Chang An Lo, their forbidden love tangles them in gang wars and political violence.
Where should I start?
If you want her Russia and China saga: The Russian Concubine → The Concubine's Secret → The Jewel of St. Petersburg.
If you prefer tense World War II Italy: The Italian Wife → The Liberation.
If you enjoy exotic wartime adventures: The White Pearl → Shadows on the Nile → The Far Side of the Sun.
If you like darker post-war suspense: The Survivors → The Guardian of Lies → Child of the Ruins → The Crash.
Author bio
Kate Furnivall is a British historical novelist known for sweeping stories of love and survival set in the turmoil of the early twentieth century. She was born in Wales to an English father and a White Russian mother and grew up in the seaside town of Penarth. With an older brother and sister and a twin sister, she learned early that every family holds more stories than it lets on.
At home she listened to her mother's memories of Russia, China and India, even if she did not yet grasp how much they would shape her own life.
At London University she studied English, happy to spend long days reading instead of thinking about what came next. After graduating she worked in book publishing, writing and editing practical guidebooks, then moved into advertising, where words had to earn their keep in a single line. There she met Norman, who wrote crime fiction under a pen name and quietly showed her that an ordinary working life could sit alongside writing novels. For a long time, though, she still did not imagine she would become a novelist herself.
The turning point came much later. In her forties she learned more fully that she was part Russian and began to look again at the old photographs and half-remembered anecdotes from her mother's past. After her mother died in 2000, she sat down to record the family history for her siblings and children. That private project, based on a childhood that ran from St Petersburg to refugee years in China and India, grew into her first novel, The Russian Concubine.
Published in 2007, the book follows a young Russian girl and a Chinese freedom fighter in 1920s China and is loosely inspired by her mother's experiences as a White Russian refugee. It found readers around the world and gave Furnivall the confidence to keep going. What began as a way of honoring one woman's journey became a full-time writing career.
Since then she has written a string of stand-alone novels and linked stories set in Russia, China, Malaya, Egypt, the Bahamas, Italy, France and Germany. Under a Blood Red Sky delves into Stalinist Russia and the brutal world of labor camps. The White Pearl and The Far Side of the Sun explore war and betrayal in the Far East and the Caribbean. Later books such as The Italian Wife, The Liberation, The Survivors, The Guardian of Lies, Child of the Ruins and The Crash follow ordinary people in occupied cities, refugee camps and Cold War flashpoints as they try to protect the people they love.
Across all of them she returns to the same obsessions, how war tests loyalty, what it costs to keep a secret and how far a mother or daughter will go to survive.
Furnivall researches deeply and likes to visit the places she writes about, walking streets and landscapes so that the details on the page feel lived in rather than borrowed. She has said that travel, old photographs and archive snippets often spark her plots, but it is the emotional core of a story that keeps her at the desk. Today she lives with her husband in a seaside town in Devon, not far from the kind of shoreline she knew as a child. Their two sons are grown, and she writes from a house close to the sea, still chasing the big, human dramas that first emerged from her own family history.
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