Regency Reivers Books in Order

The Regency Reivers books grew out of Karen Charlton's own family history, turning a real eighteenth and nineteenth century Northumberland clan into the heart of a historical crime saga. The stories centre on Jamie Charlton, a hot tempered farm labourer, his younger brother William and the people around them in the years before and after a notorious robbery at Kirkley Hall in 1809.

In the main novel, Catching the Eagle, rent money disappears from the estate office at Kirkley Hall in what is described as the biggest theft the county has ever seen. Suspicion quickly focuses on Jamie and on the unpopular steward, Michael Aynsley. As a Bow Street officer named Stephen Lavender is brought north to investigate, the book follows the slow grind of local gossip, official inquiries and the looming threat of the gallows.

Jamie is portrayed as a loving but impulsive husband and father whose debts and pride make him an easy target. William, steadier by nature, is torn between supporting his brother and wanting a different life for himself. His growing feelings for Jamie's wife, Cilla, add another twist to the family drama and highlight the tight web of loyalty, shame and desire in a small rural community.

The short story February 1809 acts as a prequel, showing a single winter's day in Jamie's life before the robbery. Work is scarce after a brutal season, creditors are circling and he refuses to accept help from William. The piece offers a close look at daily survival for a labouring family on the edge of poverty and sets up many of the pressures that later explode in the novel.

Seeking Our Eagle stands alongside the fiction as a non fiction companion, following Karen and Chris Charlton as they research seven generations of the family line. Moving from border reivers on the Anglo Scottish frontier through Victorian railway workers to relatives affected by the First World War, it explains how archival discoveries and family stories gradually led them to Jamie's case and provided the raw material for Catching the Eagle.

Taken together, the Regency Reivers books offer a textured portrait of justice and injustice at the turn of the nineteenth century, told from the viewpoint of ordinary people caught up in legal machinery. They work both as gripping narratives and as an exploration of how real lives can be reshaped into historical fiction.