Louise Bagshawe Books in Order
This page lists all Louise Bagshawe books in order, with quick summaries, background on her glamorous contemporary novels, and simple guidance on the best places to start reading her work.
Last updated: June 7, 2026
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases (at no extra cost to you).
Publication Order
17 books
Career Girls
by Louise Bagshawe
1995
At Oxford, privileged Rowena Gordon and Brooklyn-born Topaz Rossi become inseparable, until Rowena steals Topaz's boyfriend. Years later they are rival power players in music and magazines, using every trick in the book as old betrayal fuels their glittering careers.
The Movie
by Louise Bagshawe
1996
Hollywood studio president Eleanor Marshall, sharp-tongued supermodel Roxana Felix and broke writer Megan Silver join forces on a make-or-break film. As egos, money and desire collide on set, each woman must decide how far she will go to get what she wants.
Tall Poppies
by Louise Bagshawe
1997
Elizabeth Savage has a trust fund, a castle and a title, but longs to prove herself in the real world. Nina Roth has clawed her way up from a rough New York childhood. When their ambitions collide, success brings envy, scandal and high-class warfare.
Venus Envy
by Louise Bagshawe
1998
Alex Wilde is twenty seven, stuck in a dead end job and convinced she is the frumpy one next to her gorgeous flatmates. Tired of hiding under the duvet, she decides to reinvent her body, career and love life, with chaotic, often hilarious results.
For All the Wrong Reasons / A Kept Woman
by Louise Bagshawe
2000
British beauty Diana Foxton lives for charity galas and designer shopping as the pampered wife of a New York publishing titan. When she catches him cheating and loses everything, Diana must learn to work for a living and risk love again with a rival publisher.
When She Was Bad
by Louise Bagshawe
2001
From the Bronx projects, stunning and ruthless Lita Morales is determined to rise. English heiress Rebecca Lancaster inherits a crumbling estate and family firm. Linked by the same charming man, the two women move from bitter enemies to uneasy allies in a carefully planned revenge.
The Devil You Know
by Louise Bagshawe
2003
Rose Fiorello, Poppy Allen and Daisy Markham grow up worlds apart, from New York delis to Los Angeles mansions and English boarding schools. Each builds her own glamorous career, then discovers they share a stolen inheritance and a common enemy who badly underestimated them.
The Go-To Girl / Monday's Child
by Louise Bagshawe
2004
Anna Brown is a smart but self conscious script reader surrounded by gorgeous people, from her supermodel flatmates to her temperamental film director boss. When a chance to step into the spotlight appears, Anna has to decide whether she believes she deserves her own happy ending.
Tuesday's Child
by Louise Bagshawe
2005
Lucy Evans prefers band T shirts, heavy metal and nights in with her best friend Ollie to makeup and heels. When Ollie gets engaged and her new boss demands a makeover, Lucy's attempt to become a 'proper' girl forces her to ask who she really wants to be.
Sparkles
by Louise Bagshawe
2006
For years Sophie Massot has played the dutiful wife in her husband's Parisian jewellery dynasty, waiting for him to return after a mysterious disappearance. When she finally declares him dead and takes over the Massot house, Sophie uncovers dangerous secrets that stretch from Russia's diamond mines to the Paris catwalk.
Glamour
by Louise Bagshawe
2007
Sally Lassiter, Jane Morgan and Helen Yanna meet as outsiders at a Beverly Hills girls' school and swear nothing will part them. Years and tragedies later, they reunite to create a luxury store called Glamour, only to discover success, love and money can strain even the strongest promises.
Glitz
by Louise Bagshawe
2008
Cousins Juno, Athena, Venus and Diana have lived like jet set princesses on the allowance from their reclusive uncle Clem. When he announces he is marrying a much younger woman and cutting them off, the four must grow up fast, find real jobs and decide what they truly value.
Passion
by Louise Bagshawe
2009
Years after Melissa Elmett walked away from her student marriage to Will Hyde, her father's breakthrough energy invention puts her in the crosshairs of a deadly conspiracy. Forced back together on the run, Melissa and Will must stay alive long enough to confront both the assassins and their unresolved past.
Desire
by Louise Bagshawe
2010
Newlywed Lisa Costello wakes in a Thai resort to find her movie producer husband stabbed beside her and the knife in her hand. On the run across Europe with ex FBI trainee Sam Murray, she races to unmask the real killer before police or a hired assassin catch up.
Destiny
by Louise Bagshawe
2011
Orphaned Kate Fox grows up believing her only safety lies in marrying a rich man. Wedding billionaire media mogul Marcus Broder gives her everything except freedom, and when she dares to leave, Kate must build a career from scratch while her vengeful ex tries to ruin her new life and love.
Beauty
by Louise Bagshawe
2014
Dina Kane grows up unwanted and broke, but refuses to stay that way. From waiting tables to flipping property and creating a hit cosmetics line, she turns beauty into power, until a ruthless enemy from her past moves to destroy her empire and force a final reckoning.
Career Game
by Louise Bagshawe
2015
Years after their university feud, music legend Rowena Krebs and magazine queen Topaz Rossi are best friends, wives and industry heavyweights. As shifting media trends, personal cracks and unseen rivals threaten everything they have built, the original career girls have to fight smarter than ever to stay on top.
Where should I start?
If you want to meet her classic career girls: Career Girls → Career Game
If you love glossy family and business sagas: Sparkles → Glamour → Glitz
If you prefer high-stakes romantic suspense: Passion → Desire → Destiny
If you want standalone glam-fiction about reinvention: Tall Poppies → When She Was Bad → The Devil You Know
If you like contemporary rom-com with messy heroines: Venus Envy → The Go-To Girl / Monday's Child → Tuesday's Child
Author bio
Louise Bagshawe is a British novelist who built a career writing sharp, glamorous stories about ambitious women juggling friendship, love and work. Under her maiden name, and later as Louise Mensch, she became one of the most recognisable voices in 1990s and 2000s commercial women's fiction.
She was born Louise Daphne Bagshawe on 28 June 1971 in Westminster, London, and grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Surrey. Her parents, Nicholas and Daphne, sent her to girls' Catholic schools at Beechwood Sacred Heart in Tunbridge Wells and Woldingham in Surrey, where she read everything she could find and started writing poems and stories while still a teenager.
As a sixth former she won a Young Poet of the Year award, an early sign that writing was going to matter. At fourteen she was already contributing pieces to the Catholic weekly The Tablet. In 1989 she went up to Christ Church, Oxford to study English Language and Literature, throwing herself into student life as Secretary of the Oxford Union and president of the university rock society.
After university Bagshawe headed into the music business. She took a six month internship at MTV Europe, then worked as a press officer at EMI and in marketing at Sony Music. The job gave her a close look at record labels, egos and celebrity, material that would later fuel the boardrooms and backstage worlds in her novels. All the while she was writing in her spare time, trying to turn the stories in her head into a publishable book.
On her twenty second birthday she landed a major publishing deal, and her debut novel Career Girls appeared in 1995. The book, about two Oxford friends turned deadly professional rivals, set the tone for much of her later work. She followed it with titles such as The Movie, Tall Poppies and Venus Envy, each centred on young women finding their way through offices, studios and glossy social circles where ambition is both a weapon and a survival skill.
Across her backlist Bagshawe became known for taking the ingredients of big, escapist fiction and putting outspoken, self-directed heroines at the centre. Family sagas like Sparkles and Glamour spin stories of dynasties, department stores and old secrets, while novels such as The Devil You Know and When She Was Bad turn on betrayal, revenge and women discovering unexpected solidarity. Even at their most extravagant, the books tend to come back to questions of loyalty, work, money and who gets to call the shots.
As her career went on she leaned harder into suspense. Romantic thrillers like Passion, Desire and Destiny mix assassins, corporate scandals and high speed chases with second chance love stories. Writing later under her married name, Louise Mensch, she launched Beauty, about a self made cosmetics magnate, and Career Game, which revisits the feuding heroines of Career Girls once they are older, more powerful and facing a different set of threats in business and at home.
Politics had been in the background since childhood, and in the mid 2000s it moved to the front of her life. Bagshawe joined the Conservative Party as a teenager, spent a short spell in the Labour Party in the 1990s, then returned to the Conservatives and campaigned for them over several elections. In 2010 she was elected as Member of Parliament for Corby, serving on the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee during the phone hacking hearings. Two years later she resigned her seat and relocated to New York City to live with her second husband, music manager Peter Mensch, and their blended family.
Since leaving Parliament she has stayed in public life through newspaper columns, television appearances and online writing, including work on political and culture sites and her own blog. She has spoken openly about living with ADHD and about giving up alcohol after realising she was using it to manage stress. For all the changes in her career, she continues to be associated with high energy, female led fiction in which heroines make their own luck, and with a belief that commercial page turners can still ask serious questions about power, loyalty and the price of success.
Edited by
Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.
Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.



































Comments
Did we miss something? Have feedback?
Help us improve this page by sharing your thoughts