Laura Purcell Books in Order

If you want the signature haunted-house story: The Silent Companions → House of Splinters
If you like Victorian suspense and mystery: The Corset / The Poison Thread → The Shape of Darkness → The Whispering Muse
If you want a windswept gothic standalone: Bone China / The House of Whispers
If you want royal historical fiction: Queen of Bedlam → Mistress of the Court
If you want a younger gothic fantasy: Moonstone

Laura Purcell was born in Basildon and grew up in Billericay, in Essex. She has said she was born, raised, and schooled in that part of England, and she still lives in the county, now in Colchester. That sense of place feels important to her work. Even when her stories move through royal palaces, Bath streets, or lonely houses on the coast, they feel rooted in the weight of real settings.

She has also been clear about when writing started to matter. In interviews, Purcell has said she decided she wanted to be an author in her early teens after reading Jane Austen. Like a lot of young writers, she began by writing in the shadow of the books she loved, trying out Regency style stories and teaching herself how character, tension, and period detail fit together.

Before fiction became her public career, she worked as a bookseller. That job seems to suit her. Her novels are full of the pleasures of old things, family papers, forgotten rooms, rigid etiquette, and the way one object on a mantelpiece can change the mood of an entire scene.

History came first.

Her first published novels were God Save the King, later reissued as Queen of Bedlam, and Mistress of the Court. Both look at life around the Hanoverian court, but from the perspective of women living inside its rules. Instead of treating history as a parade of kings and battles, Purcell narrows the frame to marriages, family strain, ambition, illness, and the cost of being watched all the time.

Then the ghosts arrived.

The Silent Companions was the book that brought her to a much wider readership. A newly widowed heroine, a crumbling estate called The Bridge, and a set of painted wooden figures turned out to be a very memorable combination. The novel won the WHSmith Thumping Good Read award in 2018, and it showed just how comfortable Purcell is when she lets historical fiction tip into horror.

She kept building from there. The Corset / The Poison Thread gives readers a Victorian murder case wrapped in questions about class, power, and whether a young seamstress can be believed. Bone China / The House of Whispers shifts to the Cornish coast, where illness, superstition, and an old medical experiment hang over a household. The Shape of Darkness takes murder and spiritualism to Bath, while The Whispering Muse heads backstage at a Victorian theatre.

Across all of these books, certain patterns keep returning. Purcell writes women hemmed in by money, marriage, class, illness, or reputation. She likes enclosed worlds, palaces, prisons, theatres, and country estates, where rules matter and small acts can have large consequences. She is also drawn to the uneasy edge between superstition and the supernatural, which is one reason her stories can feel unsettling even before anything openly strange happens.

The awards have kept pace with the books. The Shape of Darkness won the Fingerprint Historical Crime Book of the Year award in 2022, The Whispering Muse won the Dracula Society's Children of the Night Award in 2023, and Purcell has also been shortlisted for an Edgar Award. Those details matter mostly because they show how comfortably she moves between historical fiction, crime, and horror.

Her work beyond the novels fits that interest too. Her short fiction has appeared in bestselling anthologies, and she worked as lead writer on the horror podcast Roanoke Falls. More recently she has also moved into young adult gothic fantasy with Moonstone. She still writes from Colchester, and her newer books, including House of Splinters, show that she is still very interested in what happens when the past refuses to stay put.