Nicola Martin Books in Order

Nicola Martin was brought up in Bristol, a city she later returned to as an adult, and it still seems to shape her outlook. She studied literature at the University of East Anglia and at the University of California, Berkeley, then built a working life that moved between words, ideas, and the practical business of reaching readers.

That mix matters. Martin did not arrive as a novelist overnight. Alongside writing, she spent years working in marketing and communications, and she still works in marketing as well as writing. Before her novels found a wider readership, she published more than 40 short stories in magazines including The People's Friend, Best, and the Sunday Express. You can feel that short-story training in the way her fiction gets to the point quickly and keeps the tension moving.

She seems drawn to stories where ordinary life suddenly tilts off balance.

Dead Ringer, her debut novel, starts with a simple but very current premise: an app that helps users find their double. From there it turns into a dark psychological thriller about two women, Ella and Jem, who want to escape their own lives and start wondering if they can step into each other's instead. Readers who like high-concept setups, class tension, and questions of identity tend to find a lot to dig into here. The book also has a strong sense of place, especially around Walney Island and Cumbria, and it went on to win the Fiction Prize at the 2021 Lakeland Book of the Year Awards.

Martin has written about drawing on the lost feeling of early adulthood, including the rough patch after university when she struggled to find the work she wanted. That helps explain why Dead Ringer feels interested not just in plot, but in pressure: money trouble, loneliness, envy, and the stories people tell themselves about a better life waiting somewhere else.

Her later thrillers keep that interest in reinvention and danger, but shift the setting. The Getaway moves to a private Caribbean island, where a new resort manager hopes for a clean break and instead lands in a murder mystery. The Spotlight heads into the music world, following a drummer pulled back into orbit around a superstar with old secrets attached. Across these books, Martin likes glossy surfaces, closed-in worlds, and characters who are trying to outrun the past.

She can write practical nonfiction, too.

That side of her work shows up in Defeat Dyslexia!, a guide for parents and carers that explains what dyslexia can look like and how families can support a child with confidence. It sits very differently from the thrillers, but it points to some of the same strengths: clear language, useful detail, and an interest in how people cope when life gets difficult. Today Martin lives in Bristol, where she works in marketing and as a writer. Off the page, her interests sound refreshingly grounded: art galleries, weird theatre, and board games with friends. That combination, sharp suspense on one hand, everyday curiosity on the other, goes a long way toward explaining the feel of her books.