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Stephanie Barron Books in Order

See Stephanie Barron books in order, with Jane Austen Mysteries, Francine Mathews titles, short summaries, series background, and tips on where to start.

Last updated: July 4, 2026

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19 books

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

by Stephanie Barron

1996

Jane visits her friend Isobel at Scargrave Manor just as the Earl dies in agony and scandal begins to spread. When Isobel and the Earl's nephew fall under suspicion, Jane digs through gossip, letters, and poison to clear her friend's name.

Jane and the Man of the Cloth

by Stephanie Barron

1997

On a holiday in Lyme Regis, Jane meets the brooding Geoffrey Sidmouth just as a hanging points toward the town's secret smuggling ring. Her search for the shadowy Reverend pulls her into danger, and into a very inconvenient attraction.

Jane and the Wandering Eye

by Stephanie Barron

1998

In Christmas season Bath, Jane agrees to watch over a young aristocrat at a masquerade, only to find a theater manager stabbed and a friend accused. Amid actors, flirtations, and false identities, she must separate performance from murder.

Jane and the Genius of the Place

by Stephanie Barron

1999

At the Canterbury Races, Jane watches a flamboyant Frenchwoman seize everyone's attention, then turn up strangled hours later. As invasion rumors spread through Kent, the case begins to look less like scandal and more like espionage.

Jane and the Stillroom Maid

by Stephanie Barron

2000

Visiting Derbyshire, Jane finds the mutilated body of a supposed young man, only to learn the victim was a maid from Penfolds Hall in disguise. Old grudges, family secrets, and whispers of ritual murder lead her into rough country.

Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

by Stephanie Barron

2001

In Southampton, Jane joins her brother Frank in defending naval captain Tom Seagrave, accused of murder after a sea battle. When another killing follows, she must untangle wartime lies, loyalty, and political intrigue before the noose tightens.

Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

by Stephanie Barron

2003

At ruined Netley Abbey, Jane is drawn into Lord Harold Trowbridge's hunt for a traitor with French ties. Fires, sabotage, and murder follow as she tries to learn whether a captivating widow is spy, victim, or something in between.

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy

by Stephanie Barron

2005

Newly settled at Chawton, Jane inherits Lord Harold Trowbridge's private papers and the burden of protecting his reputation. Then a corpse appears in her cellar, and village scandal opens onto buried secrets with national reach.

Jane and the Barque of Frailty

by Stephanie Barron

2006

In London society, a Russian princess's scandalous letters become public gossip before she is found dead on a minister's doorstep. When suspicion swings toward Jane and Eliza, Jane has only days to save them from the gallows.

A Flaw in the Blood

by Stephanie Barron

2008

Summoned to Windsor in 1861, Irish barrister Patrick Fitzgerald is pulled into Queen Victoria's troubled court as Prince Albert lies dying. After attacks on his household and a dead girl, he uncovers a secret dangerous enough to shake the monarchy.

The White Garden

by Stephanie Barron

2009

Landscape designer Jo Bellamy comes to Sissinghurst to study Vita Sackville-West's White Garden and recover from family grief. Then she finds what seems to be Virginia Woolf's last diary, and the discovery pulls her into a literary mystery with real danger.

Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

by Stephanie Barron

2010

In fashionable Brighton, Jane finds a young woman dead in Lord Byron's bedchamber and must decide whether the notorious poet is cad, scapegoat, or killer. The case tests her judgment as much as her nerves.

Jane and the Canterbury Tale

by Stephanie Barron

2011

A corpse in pilgrim's clothes turns up on the Pilgrim's Way near Edward Austen's estate just as a notorious widow prepares to remarry. Jane follows old debts, disguises, and a vanished gambler toward another death.

Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

by Stephanie Barron

2014

Snowbound at The Vyne for a Regency Christmas, Jane watches holiday cheer sour after a guest dies in what looks like an accident. Charades, old grudges, and closed room tension make every reveler a suspect.

On Hosting Your Regency-Era Christmas Party

by Stephanie Barron

2014

A short companion to Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas, this guide explains how a Regency holiday worked. It covers decorations, food, games, and festive customs for readers who want more of Jane's Christmas world.

Jane and the Waterloo Map

by Stephanie Barron

2016

While visiting her ailing brother Henry in 1815 London, Jane stumbles over a dying officer in the Prince Regent's library. His final clue sends her into a hunt for hidden treasure and a killer with much to protect.

That Churchill Woman

by Stephanie Barron

2019

This historical novel follows Jennie Jerome, the American-born woman who became Lady Randolph Churchill and Winston's mother. Barron traces her marriage, ambitions, affairs, and political instincts in a life lived between Gilded Age glamour and strict Victorian rules.

Jane and the Year Without a Summer

by Stephanie Barron

2022

Ill and worn down in 1816, Jane travels with Cassandra to Cheltenham Spa hoping rest and the waters will help. Instead she finds a house full of uneasy strangers, and a crime that may be stopped only if she acts quickly.

Jane and the Final Mystery

by Stephanie Barron

2023

In March 1817, Jane's failing health does not stop her from investigating a schoolboy's death at Winchester College. With a friend's son implicated and the school's harsh rituals under scrutiny, she faces one last demanding case.

Where should I start?

If you want the series from the beginning: Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave ManorJane and the Man of the ClothJane and the Wandering Eye
If you want a holiday entry point: Jane and the Twelve Days of ChristmasOn Hosting Your Regency-Era Christmas Party
If you want standalone historical suspense: A Flaw in the BloodThe White Garden
If you want big biographical fiction: That Churchill Woman
If you want the late-series finish: Jane and the Waterloo MapJane and the Year Without a SummerJane and the Final Mystery

Author bio

Stephanie Barron is the pen name of Francine Stephanie Barron Mathews, a mystery and historical novelist born in Binghamton, New York, in 1963 and raised in Washington, D.C. She was the youngest of six girls, and family summers on Cape Cod left a lasting mark, especially in the New England settings that would later show up in her fiction.

She went to Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, then studied European history at Princeton. At Princeton she fenced, wrote for The Daily Princetonian, and took John McPhee's course on nonfiction, a class she has remembered as a lasting influence. Journalism followed, with reporting jobs at The Miami Herald and the San Jose Mercury News.

History and reporting taught her to notice the telling detail.

She then spent three years at Stanford studying history, leaving with a master's degree rather than the doctorate she had first planned. After that came a very different education, four years at the CIA as an intelligence analyst. She has described the work as demanding and absorbing, and it later fed the realism in her spy fiction.

Fiction, in other words, came out of a life that had already been busy.

Her first novel appeared in 1993, the same year she left the Agency and moved with her husband to Colorado. Under her own name, Francine Mathews, she built two distinct strands of suspense fiction: the Merry Folger mysteries set on Nantucket, and the Caroline Carmichael thrillers shaped by the world of intelligence work. Under the name Stephanie Barron, drawn from her middle and maiden names, she turned toward historical mysteries.

That choice led to the books many readers know best, the Jane Austen Mysteries, which imagine Austen as a sharp-eyed amateur sleuth moving through real places and real moments from Regency life. The series is framed as Jane's lost journals, an idea that lets Barron blend murder plots with family letters, travel, politics, and gossip. Barron's research into Austen's correspondence gives the books their footing, but the real pleasure is in the voice, observant, dryly funny, and always alert to what people are hiding.

If you want to see that approach from the beginning, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor introduces her version of Jane with poison, scandal, and a country house puzzle. Jane and the Man of the Cloth adds smugglers and seaside unease, while Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas leans into snowbound holiday suspense. Outside the Austen books, The White Garden moves into literary suspense around Virginia Woolf and Sissinghurst, A Flaw in the Blood digs into danger at Queen Victoria's court, and That Churchill Woman follows Jennie Jerome through the glitter and strain of late Victorian life.

Across her work, she returns to hidden loyalties, families under stress, women who read a room faster than the men around them, and settings that matter as much as character, Nantucket fog, Regency drawing rooms, royal corridors, old gardens. She lives in Colorado, and when she is not writing she has said she likes to ski, garden, cook, needlepoint, and travel.

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Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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