Laura Shepherd Robinson Books in Order

Laura Shepherd-Robinson was born in Bristol in 1976. She studied politics at the University of Bristol, then earned a master's degree in political theory at the London School of Economics. Those years gave her a close view of power, public life, and the way big decisions can affect ordinary people.

Before writing novels, she worked in politics for nearly 20 years. But the idea of writing fiction had been sitting with her since her late twenties, and it didn't go away.

Eventually, she stepped away from political work and took an MA in Creative Writing at City University. On that course, she wrote the first draft of the novel that became her debut, Blood & Sugar.

That book introduces the kind of world she returns to again and again: eighteenth-century Britain, full of wealth and want, social rules, private bargains, and danger just below the surface. Set in 1781, Blood & Sugar follows Captain Harry Corsham as he searches for his missing friend, the abolitionist Tad Archer, after a murder at Deptford Dock points toward the British slave trade.

The book brought her early recognition, including the HWA Debut Crown and the Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award. It also showed what readers can expect from her work, a historical setting that feels lived in, a strong mystery at its center, and characters whose personal problems are tied to much larger systems.

Her second novel, Daughters of Night, shifts attention to Caroline, or Caro, Corsham. When Caro finds a dying woman at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, she cannot accept the easy dismissal that follows once the victim is identified as a prostitute. With the help of thief-taker Peregrine Child, she follows the case through fashionable drawing rooms and the less respectable corners of Georgian London.

Then came The Square of Sevens, a broader standalone mystery centered on Red, a young fortune teller raised on the roads of Cornwall. After her father's death, she is brought into the polished world of Bath, but questions about her mother and her past draw her toward London, old documents, family secrets, and real danger. It is a good match for readers who enjoy a long, twisty mystery with a determined heroine at its heart.

Her fourth novel, The Art of a Lie, returns to London in 1749. Hannah Cole is a widowed confectioner trying to keep her Piccadilly shop alive when money left by her husband makes her the focus of a magistrate's suspicions. The novel brings together business pressures, gossip, grief, romance, and a search for the truth behind a man's double life.

Her books don't treat the past as a tidy costume drama. They make room for servants, shopkeepers, sex workers, soldiers, campaigners, and people trying to hold on to their place in a society built around rank and money.

She lives in London with her husband, Adrian. Her novels keep finding fresh ways into Georgian Britain, asking who gets believed, who gets protected, and what it costs to uncover a secret.