Viola Carr Books in Order

Viola Carr was born in Australia and later made her way to London, a move that helped shape the foggy, gothic atmosphere of her fiction. Her author biography describes a life spent surrounded by history books, classical music, and a snoozing cat, which feels like a fitting backdrop for stories filled with old streets, strange machines, and dangerous secrets.

The past is never just decoration in her work.

Carr writes fantasy with a strong taste for nineteenth-century ideas, especially the messy overlap between scientific ambition, superstition, crime, and social rules. She has said that she began writing stories at school, though she did not begin writing with publication in mind until much later. That long path shows in the way her books mix several interests rather than staying neatly inside one genre.

She likes mad scientists, murder investigations, and gadgets that may be more trouble than they are worth.

Those interests came together in the Electric Empire trilogy, beginning with The Diabolical Miss Hyde in 2015. The book introduces Dr. Eliza Jekyll, a crime scene physician in an alternate London, and Lizzie Hyde, the reckless second self who shares Eliza's body. It takes the familiar Jekyll and Hyde idea and gives it a new center: a woman trying to build a respectable career while hiding a secret that could destroy her.

The next book, The Devious Dr. Jekyll, sends Eliza into another disturbing investigation involving stolen faces, alchemy, and a growing threat from within. The Dastardly Miss Lizzie brings the trilogy to its final case, with murders, inventions, political danger, and the increasingly difficult question of whether Eliza and Lizzie can keep living on the same terms.

One body. Two very different ideas about how to use it.

Carr's stories are a fit for readers who enjoy mysteries with fantasy at the edges, or fantasy with a detective story at its heart. The books combine crime scenes, forbidden experiments, magic, early technology, and a prickly romance, all against a version of London where official science and the supernatural are locked in a tense struggle. Eliza wants answers and professional independence. Lizzie wants freedom, excitement, and very few rules.

That push and pull gives the series its energy. Carr lets the two women disagree, compete, and occasionally need each other, while each new investigation opens another door into the city's darker corners. The Electric Empire trilogy was shortlisted for the 2018 Sara Douglass Book Series Award.

Carr has also written urban fantasy adventure and dark paranormal romance under another name. Away from the desk, she has said she enjoys reading, making music, spending time with pets, and a little console gaming. Her public author persona remains closely tied to history, fantasy, and the pleasures of a properly eerie tale.