Josephine Tey Books in Order

Kif follows a restless stable boy from harsh farm work to the trenches of the First World War and a bruising return to civilian life. His choices drag him toward poverty and crime in a stark, compassionate portrait of a generation damaged by war.

A packed theatre queue turns into a crime scene when a young man is stabbed in the back, seemingly unnoticed by anyone. Inspector Alan Grant must untangle false leads, stage gossip and shaky eyewitness accounts to identify a killer hidden in plain sight.

In 1920s London, rich, bored Ursula Deane becomes infatuated with a penniless violinist whose sensible sister catches the eye of Ursula’s aristocratic brother. Their tangled flirtations turn into a witty fable about class, desire and the true cost of trying to be good.

When beloved film star Christine Clay is found dead on an English beach, it first looks like suicide. Inspector Alan Grant soon discovers jealous colleagues, a mysterious houseguest and a vindictive astrologer in a case where fame attracts both devotion and danger.

Written as Gordon Daviot, Claverhouse is a narrative biography of John Graham of Claverhouse, the 17th‑century soldier later known as Bonnie Dundee. Tey traces his campaigns, loyalties and reputation, arguing for a more sympathetic view of a man long branded a villain.

This is the text of Josephine Tey’s breakthrough play, a modern‑spoken portrait of King Richard II and his queen, Anne of Bohemia. It focuses on a sensitive, peace‑minded king struggling to hold his country together, balancing politics, marriage and the weight of the crown.

Psychologist and popular author Lucy Pym visits a women’s physical training college to give a talk and stays on for the end‑of‑term exams. After she quietly stops a student from cheating, a brutal accident forces her to decide how far the truth should go.

A shy country solicitor is drawn out of his comfortable routine when two women, Marion Sharpe and her mother, are accused of kidnapping a teenage girl. As gossip and newspapers turn vicious, he fights to uncover whether the alleged victim is lying.

Drifter Brat Farrar is persuaded to impersonate a long‑lost heir and claim an English horse‑breeding estate as his own. Once inside the Ashby family, he falls in love with their life and begins to suspect the truth about the twin whose place he has taken.

At a lively London party, Inspector Alan Grant meets a magnetic young American photographer who is invited to stay in a fashionable village. When the man vanishes near a river path, Grant’s search exposes jealousies, tangled love affairs and a puzzle of identity.

Confined to a hospital bed with a broken leg, Inspector Alan Grant distracts himself by re‑examining the centuries‑old case against King Richard III. Treating history like a murder file, he questions whether the monster who killed the Princes in the Tower ever existed.

This sweeping historical novel follows Henry Morgan from bondage in Barbados to his rise as a famed privateer raiding Spanish strongholds in the Caribbean. Battles, intrigues and a stubborn love match trace the making of a controversial hero of sea‑warfare.

Exhausted and suffering from claustrophobia, Inspector Alan Grant travels to the Scottish Highlands on sick leave and stumbles on a fellow passenger’s death in a train compartment. A scrap of verse about the singing sand lures him into a quiet, haunting investigation.

First staged under the Gordon Daviot name, Dickon is a stage play about Richard III that offers a revisionist, sympathetic view of the king. Covering the turbulent years 1483–1485, it explores how ambition, loyalty and rumour shape both a reign and a reputation.

In 1934, Josephine Tey travels to London to celebrate the final week of her smash‑hit play Richard of Bordeaux. A young fan she befriends on the train is murdered soon after, drawing Josephine and Inspector Archie Penrose into a backstage world of grudges and revenge.

Hoping for rest after earlier traumas, Josephine Tey accepts Archie Penrose’s invitation to his Cornish childhood home. A supposed riding accident, a missing young man and a fatal fall at the cliff‑top Minack Theatre reveal that the past in this village is anything but peaceful.

Researching a novel about real‑life baby‑farmers Amelia Sach and Annie Walters, Josephine Tey spends time with dressmakers and actresses preparing a charity gala. When a young seamstress is found murdered, secrets from Edwardian executions bleed into a modern‑day hunt for a sadistic killer.

Josephine Tey, Archie Penrose and Alfred Hitchcock converge on Portmeirion in 1936 for a birthday celebration and film discussions. What should be a glamorous weekend turns nightmarish as staged scares give way to very real murders that will echo decades later.

Josephine Tey inherits a dilapidated cottage in Suffolk from an actress godmother, along with a strange condition that a woman named Lucy Kyte may claim whatever she needs from the house. Sorting through diaries tied to the notorious Red Barn murder, Josephine uncovers new danger close to home.

On the eve of George VI’s coronation, Josephine Tey visits BBC headquarters to watch a radio adaptation of one of her plays. When Britain’s star newsreader is shot live on air and a second body soon follows, Archie Penrose must find the killer in a building full of microphones and secrets.

A church organist is found buried alive in a Hampstead grave, a photograph and cryptic note beside him. The trail leads Archie Penrose to Cambridge, where a series of assaults on women and echoes of M. R. James’s ghost stories pull Josephine Tey into a chilling case.

A newspaper article forces Josephine Tey to revisit the summer of 1915, when a girl died at a Sussex horticultural college where she briefly taught. Accusations of a cover‑up and forbidden love drag old fears into the open as Josephine and Archie probe a tragedy decades in the making.

In December 1938, Josephine Tey and Archie Penrose spend Christmas at a castle on St Michael’s Mount, where a gala is raising funds for Jewish refugees. Cut off by storm seas and snow, the guests face two brutal deaths and a murderer who could be one of their own.

On 1 September 1939, London children arrive in the Suffolk village where Josephine Tey has a cottage, part of the mass wartime evacuation. When a little girl vanishes, the community’s welcome curdles into suspicion, and Archie Penrose races to find both child and culprit.