Sharon (SJ) Bolton Books in Order
Explore Sharon Bolton books in order, from Lacey Flint to the dark standalones, with quick summaries, series guides, and help on where to start.
Last updated: July 1, 2026
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Publication Order
19 books
Awakening
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2007
Scarred wildlife vet Clara Benning is drawn into a murder inquiry after a man dies from an impossible snakebite. Her search leads to an abandoned house, buried family pain, and a crime with roots half a century old.
Sacrifice
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2008
After moving to Shetland, surgeon Tora Hamilton uncovers a preserved body buried on her land, its heart removed. As ancient legend and modern secrets collide, her questions put her marriage and her life at risk.
Blood Harvest
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2010
In a Pennine village shadowed by churches and old graves, a missing girl, a strange child, and a new vicar stir up fear. Tom Fletcher, Harry Laycock, and psychiatrist Evi Oliver uncover secrets dressed up as superstition.
Now You See Me
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2011
Young detective Lacey Flint finds a dying stabbing victim slumped against her car and is thrown into her first major murder case. Soon the killings echo Jack the Ripper, and the copycat seems disturbingly focused on her.
Dead Scared
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2012
Lacey goes undercover as a troubled student when Cambridge is rocked by bizarre suicides. As she and psychiatrist Evi Oliver dig into the campus culture, the case turns deeply unsettling and Lacey starts to fear she may be next.
Like This, For Ever / Lost
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2013
Twelve-year-old Barney Roberts becomes obsessed with a series of murdered boys found near the Thames. As he starts to suspect the killer could be frighteningly close to home, a battered Lacey Flint is pulled back into the case.
A Dark and Twisted Tide
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2014
Believing the river police and life on a houseboat will keep her safe, Lacey Flint starts over on the Thames. Then she pulls a body from the water and finds signs that someone knows her darkest secret.
If Snow Hadn't Fallen
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2014
In the uneasy weeks between Now You See Me and Dead Scared, Lacey witnesses the murder of a young Muslim man in a snow-covered London park. Everyone sees hate crime, but Lacey suspects something stranger and more dangerous.
Little Black Lies
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2015
On the Falkland Islands, a tragic accident has already wrecked one friendship and one family. When local children start disappearing, grief, guilt, and vengeance pull three damaged people toward the same impossible confession.
Daisy in Chains
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2016
Convicted killer Hamish Wolfe has admirers, but Maggie Rose is not supposed to be one of them. A lawyer and true-crime writer, she takes his case thinking she's in control, until obsession and uncertainty start closing in.
Here Be Dragons
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2016
Undercover officer Mark Joesbury is trying to stop a terrorist attack near Westminster Bridge. Then he learns the plot also threatens Lacey Flint, turning a counterterror mission into a desperate personal fight.
Dead Woman Walking
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2017
A hot-air balloon witnesses a murder in the hills near the Scottish border, then crashes, leaving one survivor. She has seen the killer's face, and her desperate flight only exposes deeper dangers and old divisions.
Alive
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2018
On a cold dark-moon night in Sabden, fear settles over every house except one. This short story returns to the world of The Craftsman and the shadow of the killer known as the Craftsman.
The Craftsman
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2018
Thirty years after Florence Lovelady jailed a coffin-maker for burying children alive, the past begins to repeat itself. Larry is dead, old doubts are back, and the reopened case becomes terrifyingly personal.
The Poisoner
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2020
Four child skeletons found near a children's home drag Florence Lovelady back to Sabden, where Larry Glassbrook's last message hints at recent murders and a cover-up. Returning means reopening the case that built her career and nearly destroyed her.
The Split
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2020
Scientist Felicity Lloyd hides on the remote island of South Georgia, hoping her violent estranged husband cannot reach her. When he arrives anyway, the chase across ice and the return to Cambridge reveal a far darker history.
The Pact
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2021
Years after a reckless teenage game kills a mother and two children, the six friends responsible are bound by a secret deal. When the promised favors come due, their polished adult lives begin to crack apart.
The Buried
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2022
Florence Lovelady has spent thirty years trying not to think about Sabden. When dying killer Larry Glassbrook sends word that recently murdered children are being hidden there, she must choose between staying away and walking back into the darkness.
The Dark
by Sharon (SJ) Bolton
2022
When a baby is thrown into the Thames, off duty officer Lacey Flint steps in. The rescue opens a race against an online network of violent misogynists who have marked women, and Lacey in particular, as targets.
Where should I start?
If you want the full Lacey Flint run: Now You See Me → Dead Scared → Like This, For Ever / Lost → A Dark and Twisted Tide → The Dark
If you want Sharon Bolton at her most gothic: Sacrifice → Awakening → Blood Harvest
If you want eerie village crime: The Craftsman → The Buried
If you want twisty standalones: Little Black Lies → Daisy in Chains → Dead Woman Walking → The Split → The Pact
Author bio
Sharon Bolton was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, and grew up in nearby Darwen, in the middle of the kind of landscape that would later feed so many of her books. The moors, mill towns, old churches and local legends of northwest England turn up again and again in her fiction. Long before she published a thriller, she was storing away that atmosphere.
As a girl, she imagined a life in performance rather than crime writing. She wanted to act and dance, studied drama at Loughborough University, and only later found her way toward fiction. Before that she worked in marketing and public relations, returned to study business administration at Warwick, met her husband Andrew there, and then moved to London. She eventually stepped away from City work to freelance, start a family, and make room for writing.
Writing came a little later, but it stuck.
Her early novels arrived fast and made her territory clear. Sacrifice put a doctor on Shetland and mixed modern crime with old legend, Awakening turned village life and snake mythology into something deeply unsettling, and Blood Harvest returned to the north for another story of missing children and buried community secrets. From the start, she showed a liking for isolated settings, women under pressure, and communities that would rather protect themselves than face the truth. Awakening won the 2010 Mary Higgins Clark Award, and Blood Harvest was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger.
Many readers first met her as S. J. Bolton.
The books that probably made her widest name are the Lacey Flint novels, starting with Now You See Me. Through Dead Scared, Like This, For Ever, A Dark and Twisted Tide, and later The Dark, Bolton built a series that mixes police work with psychological strain, London atmosphere, and a heroine who never gets to solve a case without paying for it personally. Lacey is smart, secretive and more damaged than she first appears, and Bolton uses her to tell big, unsettling stories about copycat killers, suspicious suicides, murdered children and online hatred aimed at women. Readers tend to come for the pace and the twists, then stay for Lacey, Mark Joesbury, and the uneasy feeling that the city is always watching.
She has never stayed in one lane for long. Standalones such as Little Black Lies, Daisy in Chains, Dead Woman Walking, The Split, and The Pact all feel different on the surface, but they share the same interests underneath, guilt, loyalty, obsession, class, and the damage people do when they think they can control the story. Even when the plots are modern, there is often an older fear under the floorboards, folklore, ghost story logic, or the way a small community can turn on one of its own. The Craftsman and The Buried take her back to Lancashire and lean harder into folklore, sexism, and the long afterlife of violence.
Place matters to her.
Over the years, the recognition has built steadily. Now You See Me won the Plume de Bronze in France, Lost, the US title of Like This, For Ever, was named RT Magazine's Best Contemporary Thriller in 2014, and Bolton received the CWA Dagger in the Library that same year. She has also been shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and the Steel Dagger. She now lives in the Chiltern Hills, not far from Oxford, with her family, and if her author notes are anything to go by, she still starts with place, with the feeling that a landscape can hold a story before a single character walks onto the page.
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