Margaret Mayhew Books in Order

Alice Chell arrives from London at the shadowed manor of Aysgarth, where its master’s troubled past and a hidden treasure complicate a hard-won gothic romance.

A standalone novel from Mayhew’s 1976 debut year, Three Black Cormorants comes from the early phase of a career that later moved between historical romance, wartime fiction, and mysteries.

After her father dies, Tamazine Tresham learns that her Romney Marsh home belongs to a distant cousin. To protect her family, she faces a marriage of convenience with a man entangled in dangerous wool-smuggling schemes.

One of Mayhew’s early standalone novels, The Owlers belongs to the historical-romance phase of her career, before the wartime sagas and village mysteries for which she is better known.

Born poor in Yorkshire, Kirby England builds a railway empire and becomes a powerful civic figure. His ambition, his role as guardian to Quaker heiress Hester Gurney, and the perils of financial speculation reshape both their lives.

An early standalone from Mayhew, The Flame and the Furnace sits among her historical romances, before the later wartime books that became a central part of her work.

Kate Spencer’s brother has gambled away Kielder Castle, leaving her and her young sibling at the mercy of its new owner, Richard Drew. Kate tries every trick she can devise to drive him away, only to become increasingly intrigued.

In 1939, Felicity Newman and a group of women join RAF Colston as early members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Dismissed by their commander, they fight for useful work, respect, friendship, and love under fire.

In 1939, Felicity Newman and a group of women join RAF Colston as early members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Dismissed by their commander, they fight for useful work, respect, friendship, and love under fire.

Seven inexperienced men from very different backgrounds form a Lancaster bomber crew during the war. As dangerous raids over Germany test their skill and nerve, the men and the women who love them wait to see who will return.

After early retirement and the death of his wife, a former army colonel moves to Frog End. A murder at the village fete draws him into local rivalries and begins his unexpected second career as a sleuth.

Five young people, English, Austrian, and German, spend childhood summers around a small boat on the Essex coast. War divides them, until the Rose of England carries them toward an unexpected reunion amid the Dunkirk evacuation.

In 1943, an American fighter group arrives near the English village of King’s Thorpe. Their confidence and numbers unsettle the locals, while romance, humor, and wartime danger slowly force two very different communities together.

In divided Berlin in 1948, RAF officer Michael Harrison helps bring supplies into a ruined city he once bombed. His growing love for Lili Leicht, a German woman in the Russian sector, tests loyalties hardened by war.

As France falls in 1940, painter Louis Duval escapes Brittany for England, determined to aid the Resistance. Dangerous missions back across the Channel bring him close to British officer Alan Powell and widowed landlady Barbara Hillyard.

After her mother’s death, Juliet Porter learns that the man who raised her was not her biological father. Armed with old letters and a photograph, she searches for the American bomber pilot who loved her mother during the war.

Flora and Tally meet as ten-year-old outsiders in postwar England and form an unlikely friendship. As the 1950s unfold, family pressures, romance, and different ambitions test whether their shared past can keep them close.

Disgraced reporter Frank Carter hears rumors of a World War II Spitfire buried near a Sussex village. Chasing the story could save his job, but his investigation opens old wartime wounds and draws him into present-day intrigue.

Lord Nicholas Strickland must marry or lose Maplethorpe, the family home promised by his formidable aunt. His intended bride, Charlotte Craven, has no wish to be part of his bargain, setting up a lively Regency battle of wills.

In 1943, Frances, Prudence, and Rosalind leave very different lives behind to work England’s canal boats. The hard, unglamorous job keeps goods moving during the war and brings all three women unexpected friendship and change.

The Colonel finds celebrated actress Lois Delaney dead in her bath, in what appears to be suicide. Knowing she had been preparing for a London comeback, he starts asking why someone with plans for the future would choose to die.

Spoiled young Susan Roper enjoys colonial life in Singapore until the Japanese invasion makes its dangers impossible to ignore. Forced into ambulance work and then captivity, she must discover courage, endurance, and a different kind of love.

A chance meeting off the Scottish coast in 1936 links Stroma Mackay and German teenager Reinhard Richter. War places her in the WRNS and him in the U-boat service, turning their correspondence into an impossible bond.

A plea from a friend of the Colonel's late wife takes him to King’s Mowbray, where bones are discovered beneath a barn floor. Identifying the long-dead victim exposes old village grudges and a daunting list of possible enemies.

The Colonel visits an old friend in Lincolnshire during an RAF reunion. When a former Lancaster crewman is found dead in a lake, he suspects the apparent accident is tied to secrets carried by the surviving men.

Frog End’s Christmas production of The Snow Queen ends in tragedy when an ex-model dies after eating a mince pie. Was it a terrible allergic reaction, or did someone turn a festive party into a carefully planned act of revenge?

A gardening project at Frog End Manor offers troubled villagers a chance to begin again. When its most difficult participant is found murdered in the greenhouse, the Colonel must sort through resentment, grief, and hidden histories.