Tess Stimson Books in Order
Browse Tess Stimson books in order, with short summaries, publication order, and simple where-to-start advice for her relationship fiction and thrillers.
Last updated: July 1, 2026
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Publication Order
18 books
Hard News
by Tess Stimson
1993
Reporter Christie Bradley lives for the next big story until her path collides with star correspondent David Cameron. In the ruthless world of television news, ambition and attraction quickly become impossible to keep apart.
Soft Focus
by Tess Stimson
1995
In the hard-edged world of international fashion, Ellie Ferreira, Alex Cerreni, and Matt Logan are pulled together by loss, love, and betrayal. Old wounds resurface as each of them is forced to face the past and a buried secret.
Pole Position
by Tess Stimson
1996
Stevie, funny, impulsive, and always slightly in over her head, lands a job caring for the children of a Formula One racing driver. It looks like a fresh start, until glamour, class tension, and bad choices send her life off course.
The Adultery Club
by Tess Stimson
2007
Nicholas Lyon seems happily settled with his wife, Malinche, until young lawyer Sara Kaplan storms into their lives. Desire, jealousy, and self-deception turn one affair into a much larger reckoning for all three of them.
The Infidelity Chain
by Tess Stimson
2008
Paediatric doctor Ella Stuart thinks she has balanced career, marriage, and a secret lover, until sudden tragedy blows her careful life apart. The fallout ripples through two families, especially a teenage daughter caught in the middle.
Beat the Bitch
by Tess Stimson
2009
In this blunt, funny relationship guide, Stimson mixes advice, anecdotes, quizzes, and hard truths about infidelity. It is aimed at women who want to spot trouble early, protect their relationship, or decide what to do when trust breaks.
The Cradle Snatcher
by Tess Stimson
2009
Clare Elias expects motherhood to fit neatly into her polished, high-achieving life, but twins and exhaustion shatter the plan. When efficient young Jenna joins the household, help soon starts to feel like a threat.
What's Yours Is Mine
by Tess Stimson
2010
Grace Hamilton has the marriage, career, and home she wants, except for the baby she cannot have. When her estranged sister offers to be a surrogate, old resentments and one reckless decision make everything painfully complicated.
Who Loves You Best
by Tess Stimson
2010
Businesswoman Clare Elias thinks hiring a nanny will steady life after the birth of twins. Instead, Jenna’s arrival exposes cracks in her marriage, her confidence, and the fragile balance holding the whole family together.
The Wife Who Ran Away
by Tess Stimson
2011
Feeling invisible at home and trapped by middle age, Kate Forrest does the thing most people only fantasize about, she leaves. Italy offers freedom and a younger lover, but escape does not erase the life waiting behind her.
The Lying Game
by Tess Stimson
2013
Harriet Lockwood learns the daughter she raised is not biologically hers, and the truth leads straight to single mother Zoey Sands. Two families collide over love, loyalty, and whether blood should matter more than the life already built.
The Nanny
by Tess Stimson
2013
Clare Elias has a thriving flower business, a younger husband, and newborn twins, but motherhood is harder than she expected. When capable Jenna arrives to help, the new nanny quickly becomes the most unsettling person in the house.
An Open Marriage
by Tess Stimson
2014
Mia and Kit seem restless in different ways, and dinner with another unhappy couple pushes all four toward a risky arrangement. What begins as excitement soon turns into jealousy, blurred loyalties, and consequences nobody can control.
A Mother’s Secret
by Tess Stimson
2020
New mother Maddie should be settling into family life, but blackouts, missing memories, and growing fear make her doubt both her husband and herself. After a shocking tragedy, she has to uncover the truth before someone else gets hurt.
One in Three
by Tess Stimson
2020
Louise still cannot accept that her ex-husband Andrew built a new life with the woman he left her for. As her rivalry with Caz turns vicious, a family celebration ends in murder, and both wives have reason to be blamed.
Stolen
by Tess Stimson
2021
When three-year-old Lottie vanishes during a Florida beach wedding, her mother Alex knows it is no simple wandering off. As the search turns global and suspicion lands on her, Alex starts digging for answers on her own.
The New House
by Tess Stimson
2022
A collapsed house sale traps three couples in a tense chain where everyone wants the same dream home for different reasons. As pressure builds, ambition, desperation, and buried secrets push the move toward something deadly.
The Perfect Accident
by Tess Stimson
2026
At a high school prom on a luxury cruiser, a terrible accident leaves teenagers trapped beneath a lake and one sister facing an impossible choice. A year later, a coma survivor is ready to talk, and someone is desperate to silence her.
Where should I start?
If you want the darker psychological thrillers first: A Mother’s Secret → One in Three → Stolen → The New House
If you like messy marriages and relationship drama: The Adultery Club → The Infidelity Chain → What's Yours Is Mine → An Open Marriage
If family secrets are your thing: The Lying Game → The Nanny → Stolen
If you want to start at the beginning: Hard News → Soft Focus → Pole Position
Author bio
Tess Stimson was born in Surrey, in the south of England, and studied English at Oxford. Part of her childhood was spent abroad, including time in Greece, which may help explain why movement, change, and uneasy outsiders show up so often in her fiction. Before novels took over her life, she trained for a very different kind of writing, the fast, exact kind you need when the clock is ticking.
Newsrooms came first.
After university she joined ITN as a news producer and reporter. The work sent her across the world, including to war zones and political hotspots, and taught her how people behave when pressure strips away the polite version of themselves. In 1991 she stepped away from television long enough to help write Yours Till the End, a book about Beirut hostage Jackie Mann and his wife, Sunnie. Not long after that, she made the jump into fiction.
Her first novel, Hard News, arrived in 1993 and drew on the high-stress world she already knew well. Two more early novels, Soft Focus and Pole Position, followed while she was living in Rome. Even in those early books, you can see the things she keeps returning to: ambition, attraction, class tension, and the mess people make when desire crashes into ordinary life.
Then came more reporting. In the late 1990s Stimson lived in Beirut and covered the Middle East for major broadcasters including CNN, the BBC, and NTV, while also writing for British newspapers and magazines. That journalism background matters. Her books move quickly, scenes tend to be visual, and she has a reporter’s eye for the detail that makes a person or a room feel real.
She knows how pressure sounds.
In 2002 she moved to the United States after being appointed professor of creative writing at the University of South Florida. Later, she returned to full-time writing and continued working as a journalist. She has also taught reporting, media, and storytelling in the northeastern US. That mix of teaching, reporting, and novel writing gives her work a grounded feel, even when the plots turn sharply dark.
Many readers first meet her through the relationship dramas, especially The Adultery Club, The Infidelity Chain, and What's Yours Is Mine. These books are interested in marriage, betrayal, family loyalties, and the stories people tell themselves to keep going. Stimson does not write saints. Her characters are often smart, flawed, needy, proud, and very capable of making things worse, which is a big part of the appeal.
In more recent years she has leaned harder into psychological suspense. Books like One in Three, Stolen, and The New House keep the domestic focus of her earlier work but turn the tension tighter, with murder, disappearance, and big moral traps at the center. Readers who like twisty family stories usually respond to the way she balances pace with emotion, and how often she lets competing points of view complicate the truth.
She now lives in Vermont with her husband and, by her own account, is regularly visited by her three grown-up children whenever they need their laundry done. It is a good detail because it sounds like something from one of her books: dry, funny, and affectionate. After years in television, foreign correspondence, and fiction, she still writes with the sense that private lives are never really calm for long.
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