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Sulari Gentill Books in Order

Browse Sulari Gentill's books in order on one page, with short summaries, an author bio, and simple reading-order tips to help you decide where to start.

Last updated: December 25, 2025

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19 books

Five Found Dead

by Sulari Gentill

2025

Recovering from cancer, crime novelist Joe Penvale boards the Orient Express with his twin sister Meredith, hoping for a celebratory trip and a fresh start. When a neighbouring cabin turns into a blood-soaked crime scene and the train is quarantined, the siblings join an improvised detective team racing to stop a killer before five passengers end up dead.

The Mystery Writer

by Sulari Gentill

2024

Australian student Theo Benton moves to Kansas to write and unexpectedly befriends her crime-fiction idol, bestselling author Dan Murdoch. When Dan is murdered and his final manuscript vanishes, Theo is hired to investigate, drawing her into online extremism, secret identities, and a conspiracy that blurs truth and story.

The Woman in the Library

by Sulari Gentill

2022

In the hushed reading room of the Boston Public Library, a scream shatters the silence and four strangers share a charged moment of fear and curiosity. As a crime novelist folds their story into her own and emails from an unsettling fan arrive, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur.

Shanghai Secrets

by Sulari Gentill

2021

Shanghai, 1935: in a treaty-port city of taipans and taxi girls, Rowland Sinclair wakes to find a young woman he once danced with murdered in his hotel suite. To save himself and honour the victim, he follows clues through dance halls, alleys, and boardrooms where every alliance is dangerous.

Where There's a Will

by Sulari Gentill

2020

Sent to Boston to execute the contested will of his old friend Daniel Cartwright, Rowland Sinclair walks into a storm of family resentment. With a mysterious heir missing and threats escalating, Rowly and his entourage must untangle murder, money, and old secrets from Beacon Hill to New York.

A Testament of Character

by Sulari Gentill

2020

American millionaire Daniel Cartwright dies in Boston after quietly naming Rowland Sinclair as his executor. Facing a furious family, a missing heir, and a suspicious death, Rowly and his friends are pulled into a world of tycoons, movie stars, and gangsters determined to protect their own.

All the Tears in China / Shanghai Secrets

by Sulari Gentill

2019

In 1935 Shanghai, Rowland Sinclair arrives to attend delicate wool negotiations under strict orders to sign nothing. When a Russian taxi dancer connected to him is found murdered, suspicion falls his way, and he must navigate glamour, gangsters, and colonial politics to clear his name.

After She Wrote Him / Crossing the Lines

by Sulari Gentill

2017

Crime writer Madeleine d'Leon invents serious novelist Ned McGinnity as the hero of her new book, only to feel he is writing her in return. When a critic dies and suspicion falls on Ned, author and character take turns shaping each other's fate in a layered, metafictional murder mystery.

A Dangerous Language

by Sulari Gentill

2017

Rowland Sinclair volunteers his plane to fly controversial journalist Egon Kisch across Australia, unaware the government will stop at nothing to bar the "raging reporter". After a communist agent is murdered, Rowly is drawn into a tangle of right-wing militias, protests, and an old flame with her own agenda.

The Prodigal Son

by Sulari Gentill

2016

Set just before the main series, this novella follows a young Rowland Sinclair newly returned to Sydney and adrift between duty and art. Enrolling in an art school, he meets Edna, Clyde, and Milton, opens his family mansion to bohemians, and confronts a crime that tests his instinct to trust.

Tag, You're Dead

by Sulari Gentill

2016

Six teenagers are pulled into an exclusive underground game of tag where the stakes are life and death. Wealthy "Its" hunt chosen "Runners" across a city wired with tracking tech, and the only way to survive is to turn the game against its makers.

Give the Devil His Due

by Sulari Gentill

2015

When Rowland Sinclair accepts an invitation to race his yellow Mercedes on the notorious Maroubra Speedway, he expects thrills, not bodies. A dead journalist, a murdered fascist aristocrat, shady bookmakers, and whispers of black magic soon turn a charity event into a lethal investigation.

A Murder Unmentioned

by Sulari Gentill

2014

A drained dam yields the gun that killed Rowland Sinclair's formidable father years ago, dragging a buried family tragedy into the open. As gossip hints Rowly pulled the trigger as a teenager, he and his friends revisit the Southern Tablelands to face secrets the Sinclairs never discuss.

Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

by Sulari Gentill

2013

Fresh from a harrowing mission in Germany, Rowland Sinclair reaches London hoping for rest, only to stumble over the bizarrely staged murder of a titled aristocrat. Determined to save the young woman accused, he tangles with British Blackshirts, spies, and an upper class blind to the coming storm.

Paving the New Road

by Sulari Gentill

2012

In 1933, the Australian establishment sends Rowland Sinclair undercover to Nazi Germany to shadow local fascist leader Eric Campbell. Posing among brownshirts and sympathetic aristocrats, Rowly and his friends must survive espionage and street violence while trying to blunt a dangerous alliance.

Miles Off Course

by Sulari Gentill

2012

As the Depression bites in 1933, Rowland Sinclair is enjoying the comforts of a grand mountain hotel when trusted stockman Harry Simpson vanishes. Rowly abandons croquet for the High Country, chasing kidnappers, rustlers, and a conspiracy that reaches far beyond one missing man.

Chasing Odysseus

by Sulari Gentill

2011

After the fall of Troy, Hero and her three adopted brothers, herdsmen from Mount Ida, are wrongly blamed for betraying the city. To clear their people’s name, they pursue Odysseus across a perilous sea route filled with sirens, sorcerers, monsters, and quarrelling gods.

A Decline in Prophets

by Sulari Gentill

2011

Homeward bound on the luxury liner Aquitania in 1932, Rowland Sinclair dines with bishops, suffragettes, and self-proclaimed prophets. When a fellow passenger is found stabbed with Rowly's walking stick, he and his friends must sift through faith, fraud, and politics to clear his name.

A Few Right Thinking Men / A House Divided

by Sulari Gentill

2010

In 1931 Sydney, gentleman artist Rowland Sinclair is shaken when his beloved uncle is murdered and the police fix on the wrong suspect. With his bohemian friends at his side, Rowly plunges into the clash between radicals and right-thinking elites to uncover a treasonous plot.

Where should I start?

If you want 1930s historical mysteries: A Few Right Thinking Men / A House DividedA Decline in ProphetsMiles Off Course.
If you love twisty, bookish thrillers: After She Wrote Him / Crossing the LinesThe Woman in the LibraryThe Mystery WriterFive Found Dead.
If you prefer myth-based YA adventure: Chasing Odysseus → continue through the rest of the Hero Trilogy in publication order.

Author bio

Sulari Gentill was born in Sri Lanka, learned English in Zambia, and grew up in Brisbane, where school, libraries, and a restless imagination all pulled in different directions.

She went to university intending to be an astrophysicist, drawn to the night sky and the stories hidden in the constellations. The reality of advanced maths and laboratory work slowly convinced her that she liked the romance of space more than its equations.

So she switched to law, graduated, and built a career as a corporate lawyer, serving on public boards and drafting contracts instead of star charts. It was demanding, secure work, but that low-level sense that she should be doing something else never quite went away.

In her spare hours she began to write, at first just to see if she could carry a story from one end to the other. Manuscripts turned into contest shortlists and finally into a publishing offer, and she realised that the part of her job she loved most was the storytelling hidden inside legal argument.

Leaving the law for fiction felt risky, but also like telling the truth about what she wanted to do.

Today she lives on a small farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales with her husband, Michael, their sons Edmund and Atticus, and a collection of animals. They grow French black truffles, raise miniature cattle, and she now cheerfully calls sitting at her desk "work" so no one suggests she get a different job.

Gentill is best known for her Rowland Sinclair mysteries, which follow a wealthy but wayward gentleman artist through the political and social upheavals of the 1930s. Beginning with A Few Right Thinking Men and moving through novels like A Decline in Prophets, All the Tears in China, and A Testament of Character, the series threads murder investigations through real events, from the rise of Australian fascist movements to the glamour and grit of prewar Shanghai and Boston.

Readers come for the puzzles, but many stay for Rowly himself and the bohemian circle who share his Woollahra mansion, trading jokes, art, and loyalty as the world darkens around them. The books are full of small historical details, cameos from real figures, and a quiet conversation about privilege, courage, and what it means to push back against authoritarianism.

Writing as S. D. Gentill, she has also created the Hero Trilogy, starting with Chasing Odysseus, which recasts Greek myth as a fast-moving young adult adventure about four foster siblings trying to clear their people’s name after the fall of Troy. The trilogy borrows freely from Homer and Virgil while keeping the focus on friendship, identity, and the cost of defying the gods and fate.

Her stand-alone novels, including After She Wrote Him / Crossing the Lines, The Woman in the Library, The Mystery Writer, and Five Found Dead, play with the crime genre itself, blending metafiction, locked-room setups, and stories about readers, writers, and the stories they tell themselves. Gentill tends not to work from tight outlines, preferring to discover the story as she writes, which helps give her books their slightly offbeat, surprising turns.

However strange or intricate the plot becomes, there is usually a small, human moment at the heart of it, told in plain, welcoming prose.

Edited by

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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All 19 Sulari Gentill Books in Order (Complete List 2026)