Mary Ann Shaffer (Annie Barrows) Books in Order

This series focuses on the joint work of Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece Annie Barrows, most notably The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It is a partnership grounded in family, shared reading habits, and a mutual love of odd historical corners.

Shaffer began the Guernsey novel after years of working with books as a librarian and editor, and after a chance visit to the island left her captivated by stories of its wartime occupation. Barrows came to the project later, once the manuscript had been sold and Shaffer’s health made further revisions difficult.

Rather than reshaping the book into something new, Barrows worked within her aunt’s design, helping to strengthen voices, clarify timelines, and fill small gaps while keeping the tone Shaffer had established. The result is a story that reads as if you are eavesdropping on a circle of friends, each writing from a slightly different angle.

At its center is Juliet Ashton, a young author in postwar London who stumbles into correspondence with the members of an improvised book club on Guernsey. Through their letters she learns how the group began as an alibi during a raid, how it grew into a lifeline under occupation, and how the island is still haunted by what happened.

The letters are funny, prickly, and occasionally heartbreaking. They circle back again and again to the comforts of reading, the risks people will take for one another, and the way a small community can hold onto decency when events far beyond its control close in.

Since publication the novel has become a favorite of book clubs, and a film adaptation has introduced Juliet and the society to viewers who might never have heard of Guernsey’s history. For many readers it serves as a bridge between light, conversational fiction and deeper questions about memory, war, and forgiveness.

Here you can see how Shaffer and Barrows’ collaboration fits into each writer’s larger body of work, place the book in order alongside their other titles, and decide whether to start with the novel itself or with the screen version and then circle back to the original letters on the page.