Kate Morton Books in Order
Explore Kate Morton's books in order, with short summaries, standalone reading guidance, and clear tips on where to start with her layered historical mysteries.
Last updated: July 1, 2026
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Publication Order
7 books
The House at Riverton
by Kate Morton
2006
In 1999, 98-year-old Grace Bradley is drawn back to a 1924 tragedy at an English country house when a filmmaker asks about a poet's suicide. Her memories lead to a buried secret the Hartford sisters never escaped.
The Forgotten Garden
by Kate Morton
2008
After Nell O’Connor dies, her granddaughter Cassandra inherits a Cornish cottage and a mystery that reaches back to a child abandoned on a ship in 1913. Fairy tales, family secrets, and a lost identity drive the search.
The Distant Hours
by Kate Morton
2010
A long-lost letter sends Edie Burchill to Milderhurst Castle, where her mother once lived during the war. Inside the crumbling house, she uncovers the Blythe sisters' history and the secret that shaped her own family.
The Secret Keeper
by Kate Morton
2012
As a teenager, Laurel witnesses a shocking crime on her family's Suffolk farm and never forgets it. Decades later, she starts tracing her mother's hidden life in wartime London, where chance and loyalty turned dangerous.
The Lake House
by Kate Morton
2015
At a glittering 1933 Midsummer party, the Edevane family loses a baby boy and abandons their Cornwall estate. Seventy years later, detective Sadie Sparrow starts asking questions, drawing the past back into view.
The Clockmaker's Daughter
by Kate Morton
2018
In 1862, a summer at Birchwood Manor ends in violence, disappearance, and a stolen jewel. More than a century later, archivist Elodie Winslow finds clues that pull her toward Birdie Bell, the forgotten woman at the center of it all.
Homecoming
by Kate Morton
2023
When journalist Jess returns to Sydney after her grandmother's fall, she finds a link to a notorious 1959 crime in South Australia. Following the Turner family tragedy, she begins untangling a mystery that reaches straight into her own past.
Where should I start?
If you want to read from the beginning: The House at Riverton → The Forgotten Garden → The Distant Hours
If you want her clearest mix of family mystery and emotion: The Secret Keeper → The Lake House
If you love crumbling houses and Gothic atmosphere: The Distant Hours → The Clockmaker's Daughter
If you want the newest place to begin: Homecoming → The Lake House
Author bio
Kate Morton was born in Berri, South Australia, in 1976, and grew up on Tamborine Mountain in the rainforests of southeast Queensland. She was the oldest of three sisters, went to a small country school, and spent a lot of her childhood reading, roaming outdoors, and making up stories with her sisters.
Books came first.
Morton has said she fell for reading early, the kind of deep, absorbed reading where the rest of the world drops away. Old houses and old things mattered too. Her mother dealt in antiques, and those childhood hours around secondhand shops, worn books, boxes, and odd little objects left a mark. You can feel that influence all through Morton's fiction, where a house, a photograph, or a forgotten letter often carries a whole buried life inside it.
Writing was not the first plan. After high school she started a law degree, but theatre pulled harder. She earned a Licentiate in Speech and Drama from Trinity College London, took a summer Shakespeare course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and kept acting in community productions while studying English literature at the University of Queensland. She completed honours and a master's degree there, and during those student years she wrote full-length manuscripts that helped her find her way toward fiction.
That turn from stage to page set the course.
Her first published novel, The House at Riverton, introduced many of the things readers now associate with Kate Morton: an imposing house, a death from long ago, and a narrator trying to understand what really happened. The book became a major success and was followed by The Forgotten Garden, which begins with an abandoned child and opens into a family mystery that stretches between Australia and Cornwall.
She built on that with The Distant Hours, a story of a decaying castle and wartime secrets, and The Secret Keeper, which starts with a teenage girl witnessing a shocking crime and follows the consequences across decades. Later novels like The Lake House, The Clockmaker's Daughter, and Homecoming show the same love of layered timelines, hidden connections, and the slow thrill of finding the missing piece.
Houses matter in Kate Morton books.
So do mothers and daughters, missing children, family myths, and the way the past keeps reaching into the present. Her stories often move between England and Australia, and readers tend to come for the atmosphere as much as the mystery: old rooms, closed doors, damaged loyalties, and clues scattered across time. Even when the plots are large, the emotional stakes stay close to home.
Morton has published seven novels, and they have reached readers around the world in 38 languages across 45 territories. She lives between Australia and London with her family, and she has spoken warmly about reading to her three sons. That mix of family life, memory, theatre, books, and old objects still feels close to the heart of what she writes.
Edited by
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