Legacy Books in Order

The Legacy books are sprawling family sagas with a crime writer’s instinct for tension and consequence. They begin in The Legacy with Hugh Llewellyn, a tough Welsh miner who has spent his life in the pits and is determined that his daughter Evelyne will escape that world.

Evelyne’s life takes a dramatic turn when she falls in love with Freedom, a charismatic prizefighter whose own past is marked by violence and close calls with the law. Their story pulls the reader from the coalfields of the Welsh Valleys to roaring boxing rings, Prohibition‑era America and the upheavals of wartime Britain. At every stage, questions of class, ambition and loyalty hang over the family.

Threaded through the narrative is the idea of a legacy that is more than just money. A talisman, passed down the generations, is said to bring fortune as long as it is used selflessly. In reality, it seems to act like a mirror, reflecting the best and worst in whoever holds it. Some characters treat it as superstition, others as a curse, but no one can quite ignore it.

The sequel, The Talisman, jumps forward to later generations, following descendants such as Evelyne and Juliana and the men around them. Old rivalries and betrayals echo into the present as new family members inherit both wealth and unresolved grudges. The supposed blessing of the talisman becomes a test: will it bind the family together, or tempt them into repeating the same destructive patterns?

Unlike the tightly focused police procedurals of La Plante’s other series, the Legacy books roam across decades and continents. They mix romance, hardship, sudden reversals of fortune and brushes with the criminal underworld, always with an eye on how one choice can ripple through an entire bloodline.

If you’re interested in seeing La Plante working on a broader canvas—using many of the same storytelling instincts but with more emphasis on inheritance, identity and fate—The Legacy and The Talisman make an absorbing two‑book sequence.