The Workshop Girls Books in Order

The Workshop Girls series centres on Lizzie Larch, a talented young hat maker working in London's East End, and later on her daughters. It takes readers from the tense years before the Second World War into the hopeful but complicated 1950s.

Lizzie's Secret opens in 1938, with Lizzie running a small millinery workshop and hiding the trauma of a violent attack years earlier that cost her a baby. She remembers almost nothing of that night, and has built a busy, friendly life around work and close friends. When she begins courting her boss's nephew, long buried truths come to light and show how quickly happiness can be shaken.

In Lizzie's War, London is under the Blitz and normal life has to continue in the shadow of air raids. With her partner Sebastian back at the front, Lizzie fights to keep her business going and care for her child. Sabotage, shortages and a shadowy enemy threaten everything she has achieved, forcing her to decide what matters most.

The final book, Lizzie's Daughters, moves forward to 1958 and focuses on the next generation. Lizzie's girls, Betty and Francie, share creativity but have very different temperaments, one fiercely independent and the other more easily influenced. When family tensions send Betty running away and Lizzie risks her health with another pregnancy, Sebastian is drawn into a dangerous hunt through Paris that puts all of them at risk.

Across the trilogy, Rosie Clarke uses Lizzie's life to explore class, trauma and the long reach of war on ordinary families. The tone is warm and accessible, with vivid details of East End streets, workshops and cramped homes, but the stakes are serious: lost children, broken trust and the cost of keeping secrets too long.

Although each novel tells a complete story, the series works best read in order, following Lizzie from wounded teenager to protective mother and finally to a woman learning to let her grown daughters make their own mistakes.