Melanie Hudson Books in Order

Melanie Hudson grew up in South Yorkshire in a large family, with the coalfields, pit closures, and strikes of the 1980s forming part of the backdrop to her school years. She has said that the odd mix of hardship, humour, and community from that time still feeds into her fiction. Even when her stories travel far from Yorkshire, they tend to stay close to ordinary people trying to hold on to love, hope, and a sense of self.

Before she became a novelist, Hudson spent years in uniform. She joined the Royal Air Force in 1994 as an air traffic control officer, served at several stations around the UK, and later saw active service in the Balkans during the Kosovo crisis and in Iraq as an air liaison officer with the British Army. In 2004 she transferred to the Royal Navy specialisation, including a stint on HMS Invincible.

Writing came later, and almost by accident.

After leaving military life in 2010, she moved temporarily to Dubai. There, with some distance from her old routine and a little more time to think, she began writing seriously and drafted most of The Wedding Cake Tree in a Japanese tea shop overlooking the Burj Khalifa. That first novel, a road trip story built around a daughter's inheritance, family secrets, and letters from beyond the grave, went on to win the Romantic Novelists' Association's 2016 Contemporary Romantic Novel Award.

The Wedding Cake Tree set the pattern for a lot of what readers now expect from Hudson. She likes journeys, hidden histories, strong settings, and characters carrying grief or old damage who still manage to be funny. Her contemporary novel Dear Rosie Hughes uses letters, emails, and messages to bring two estranged friends back together, and readers often warm to its mix of wit, pain, and second chances.

She later moved more firmly into historical fiction with The Last Letter from Juliet, The Night Train to Berlin, and The Paris Affair. These books reach into the Second World War and its long shadows, but they stay personal rather than grand. Hudson is interested in what war does to love, friendship, memory, and the promises people make when the world feels unstable. The Night Train to Berlin was shortlisted for a Romantic Novelists' Association award in 2022.

Place matters in her books.

Cornwall turns up again and again, along with Devon, Scotland, trains, coastlines, cottages, and the kind of landscapes that can change a person's mood before a word is spoken. Her heroines are often practical women at a crossroads. Her men are not perfect rescuers, just decent people with scars of their own. Even in the lighter books, there is usually a pull between the past and the life a character still hopes to build.

Hudson also writes comedy crime as Jo Silva. In the Edge of the World Detective Agency books, she swaps sweeping romance for Cornish murders, sharp banter, and the wonderfully named Donna Nightshade, a former florist turned private investigator. The tone is lighter, but the trademarks are still there, vivid settings, close attention to relationships, and a real affection for the places she writes about.

These days she lives in the Scottish Highlands, where she writes, walks her dog, and plays percussion in a community orchestra. It sounds peaceful enough, though her novels suggest she still has a soft spot for adventure, messy feelings, and lives that do not stay tidy for long.