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Elly Griffiths Books in Order
Below is the complete list of Elly Griffiths books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.
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Ali Dawson Series
- The Frozen People (2025)
Buy on Amazon - The Killing Time (2026)
Buy on Amazon - The Case of the Christmas Card (2026)
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Brighton Mysteries Series
- The Little Book of Shakespeare and Food (2001)
(As: Domenica de Rosa)
Buy on Amazon - The Zig Zag Girl (2014)
Buy on Amazon - Smoke and Mirrors (2015)
Buy on Amazon - The Blood Card (2016)
Buy on Amazon - The Vanishing Box (2017)
Buy on Amazon - Now You See Them (2019)
Buy on Amazon - The Midnight Hour (2021)
Buy on Amazon - The Great Deceiver (2023)
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Ruth Galloway Series
- The Crossing Places (2009)
Buy on Amazon - The Janus Stone (2010)
Buy on Amazon - The House at Sea’s End (2011)
Buy on Amazon - A Room Full of Bones (2011)
Buy on Amazon - Ruth’s First Christmas Tree (2012)
Buy on Amazon - A Dying Fall / Tomb of the Raven King (2012)
Buy on Amazon - The Outcast Dead (2014)
Buy on Amazon - The Ghost Fields (2015)
Buy on Amazon - The Woman in Blue (2016)
Buy on Amazon - The Chalk Pit (2017)
Buy on Amazon - The Dark Angel (2018)
Buy on Amazon - The Stone Circle (2019)
Buy on Amazon - The Lantern Men (2020)
Buy on Amazon - The Man in Black (2020)
Buy on Amazon - The Night Hawks (2021)
Buy on Amazon - The Locked Room (2022)
Buy on Amazon - The Last Remains (2023)
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Justice Jones Series
- A Girl Called Justice (2019)
Buy on Amazon - The Smugglers’ Secret (2020)
Buy on Amazon - A Ghost in the Garden (2021)
Buy on Amazon - The Spy at the Window (2022)
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Harbinder Kaur Series
- The Stranger Diaries (2018)
Buy on Amazon - The Postscript Murders (2020)
Buy on Amazon - Bleeding Heart Yard (2022)
Buy on Amazon - The Last Word (2024)
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Short Story Collections Series
- The Man in Black: And Other Stories (2024)
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About Elly Griffiths
Elly Griffiths is the crime-writing name of Domenica de Rosa, and one of the most useful ways to understand her bibliography is to see how neatly it divides into distinct but related phases. On her official site, she explains that she was born in London in 1963, moved to Brighton as a child, studied English, worked in publishing, and first wrote under her own name before adopting Elly Griffiths for crime fiction. That background matters because her fiction is deeply shaped by place, atmosphere, and a long affection for mystery. Brighton, the sea, old stories, and hidden histories all feel native to her work rather than borrowed scenery.
The clear center of her reputation is the Ruth Galloway series. Griffiths’ official site presents her first and still best-known identity as the author of the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries, and that makes sense. Ruth is one of the more distinctive recurring detectives in modern British crime fiction, not because she is a police officer, but because she is a forensic archaeologist. That profession gave Griffiths a strong original angle from the start. The books are not just about catching killers. They are about bones, landscapes, burial grounds, old beliefs, and the way the deep past keeps colliding with the present. Griffiths has said that Ruth was partly inspired by her archaeologist husband and by an aunt on the Norfolk coast who filled her head with local myths and legends, which helps explain why those books feel so rooted in both scholarship and atmosphere.
Her bibliography, though, is broader than Ruth alone. Griffiths’ official site currently identifies three main adult crime strands under the Elly Griffiths name: the Ruth Galloway books, the Brighton Mysteries, and the Ali Dawson Mysteries. The Brighton books, beginning with The Zig Zag Girl, move into 1950s crime and performance culture through DI Edgar Stephens and magician Max Mephisto, while the newer Ali Dawson line opens with The Frozen People and adds time-travel elements to cold-case investigation. Seen together, those series show that Griffiths is not a one-formula writer. She has a recognizable interest in hidden histories, performance, secrets, and the persistence of the past, but she is willing to shift era, structure, and tone to explore those interests in different ways.
Another major branch of her work is the Harbinder Kaur line. Official and reference sources place The Stranger Diaries, The Postscript Murders, Bleeding Heart Yard, and The Last Word together as the Harbinder books, and those novels show a slightly different kind of Griffiths strength. They are less tied to one atmospheric regional setting and more interested in metafiction, literary culture, and ensemble mystery. Harbinder herself is a particularly memorable creation: sharp, observant, dryly funny, and quietly resistant to cliché. These books helped confirm that Griffiths could move beyond one beloved detective and still retain her audience and authority.
There is also a children’s side to her bibliography. Her official and interview material notes the A Girl Called Justice series, and more recent coverage has mentioned the Justice Jones books as well. That matters because it shows how naturally her sense of mystery extends beyond adult crime fiction. Even outside the murder shelves, she remains drawn to hidden wrongs, determined young investigators, and the pleasures of uncovering what adults would rather keep concealed.
Her work has also been recognized at a high level within the genre. Reference sources note that The Stranger Diaries won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2020, and her official pages consistently present her as an established, award-winning crime writer rather than simply a bestselling series author. That matters because Griffiths’ books are popular, but they are also admired for craft: strong atmosphere, intelligent plotting, and recurring characters who feel lived-in rather than formulaic.
The best way to understand Elly Griffiths’ bibliography, then, is as the work of a writer who keeps returning to the same deep fascination from different angles: the past breaking into the present, performance masking truth, and ordinary people discovering that history is never as finished as it appears. Whether she is writing Norfolk salt marshes, postwar Brighton, literary murder, or time-bending detection, she writes with the same instinct for mystery as atmosphere and atmosphere as story. That consistency is what holds her shelf together and why her bibliography feels richer than a simple list of detective series.
Series: Elly Griffiths