Love and Hate Books in Order

Love and Hate is a period gangland series set around London's East End docks in the late 1960s and 1970s. It looks back to an earlier generation of criminals, families, and loyalties, with Danny Steele at the centre as the feared King of the Docks. Around him are younger people who think they can bend the rules and survive the consequences.

They are usually wrong.

In Love and Hate, the story begins in 1967. Jimmy Southpaw Steele and Bertram Watson, known as Brother Bertie, are rising inside Danny Steele's world. They need money and make a dangerous move behind Danny's back, risking not just punishment but a fracture in the underworld itself. At the same time, Sin Steele chases a life in fashion and steps into a forbidden affair that could wreck more than her own future.

Honour and Vengeance moves to 1969, with the docks closing and Danny's empire under strain. A bank heist pulls Jimmy and Bertie deeper into crime, while Bertie's secret love and Sin's fight for independence keep pushing family loyalties toward a breaking point. Mitchell uses the changing city as pressure. Old money is drying up, old rules are failing, and violence rushes in to fill the gaps.

By Secrets and Lies, the series has reached 1974. Strikes, blackouts, corruption, and vice give the story a darker 1970s mood. Jimmy and Bertie have spent years as enemies, but threats to Danny Steele's empire force them back into the same orbit. The women around them are not watching from the sidelines. They carry secrets, grudges, and power of their own.

The series is part crime thriller, part family saga. It is about brotherhood, forbidden love, fathers and children, and the cost of trying to protect a name that may already be poisoned. Read it in order: Love and Hate, Honour and Vengeance, then Secrets and Lies.