Louise Doughty
British novelist and broadcaster best known for the bestselling thriller Apple Tree Yard, which was adapted for television. Her works include Whatever You Love, Fires in the Dark, Stone Cradle, and Platform Seven, and she has contributed to newspapers and radio.
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
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1. A Bird In Winter
A woman quietly abandons her London office and vanishes, using old tradecraft to stay ahead of shadowy pursuers tied to her past in a clandestine government unit. As she flees north through remote landscapes, the narrative interweaves her present-day survival with the story of how she was recruited, trained, and compromised, revealing the personal costs of secrecy and manipulation. It’s a tense, character-driven thriller about autonomy, loyalty, and the price of a life lived in the shadows.
The 17010th Greatest Book of All Time -
2. Platform Seven
Bound to a railway station as a ghost, a young woman witnesses a stranger’s suicide that jolts her into reconstructing the circumstances of her own death. Through observing the rhythms of the platforms and the people who work there, she pieces together memories of a romance with a charismatic doctor that devolved into coercive control and gaslighting. As the truth crystallizes, the narrative becomes a haunting investigation of hidden abuse, the erosion of self, and the fragile possibility of release.
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3. A Novel In A Year
A Novelist's Guide to Writing a Novel in 52 Weeks
A week-by-week guide that walks aspiring writers through drafting a novel over the course of a year, blending practical exercises, prompts, and craft advice with candid insights on discipline, confidence, and creative stamina. It covers essentials such as character, plot, voice, dialogue, and structure, offers strategies for overcoming blocks and maintaining momentum, and concludes with guidance on revision and navigating the path to publication.
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4. Fires In The Dark
A historical narrative tracing a Romany family in Central Europe from their vibrant prewar traveling life through the Nazi occupation, depicting the Porajmos—the persecution, internment, and loss they endure—and their desperate efforts to survive, reunite, and safeguard their traditions; it is both an intimate survival story and an homage to a culture’s resilience in the face of annihilation.
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5. Whatever You Love
After a nine-year-old girl is killed in a hit-and-run, her mother is consumed by grief that hardens into obsession and a hunger for revenge. Fixated on the suspected driver and haunted by the passionate affair and painful breakup with the child’s father, she revisits the past even as she edges toward dangerous choices in the present. The story interweaves memory and aftermath to explore how loss distorts love, judgment, and morality, culminating in a tense reckoning with the consequences of retaliation.
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6. Stone Cradle
Spanning more than a century in the English Fens, this novel follows a Romany family from a fierce, itinerant matriarch and her troubled daughter to a modern descendant determined to uncover her hidden heritage. As long-buried secrets of love, loss, and betrayal surface, the story explores the pull between travelling tradition and settled life, the sting of prejudice, and the bonds of motherhood. It is a portrait of resilience and identity in which the past presses insistently upon the present.
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7. Black Water
Hiding in a rural Balinese hut during the 1998 unrest, a morally compromised operative grapples with the secrets of his past in 1960s Indonesia, where he worked for a shadowy Western-backed security outfit during the anti-communist purges. As he anticipates the possibility of being hunted down, he revisits a complicated childhood and a recent love affair in California that offered a glimpse of redemption, confronting guilt, identity, and the cost of complicity in political violence.
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8. Apple Tree Yard
A respected married scientist embarks on an impulsive affair with a mysterious stranger she meets in Westminster, a decision that spirals into secrecy, violence, and a murder trial. As clandestine encounters give way to a shocking assault and a desperate attempt at retribution, her carefully constructed life—career, marriage, and identity—begins to collapse. In the courtroom, shifting truths, unreliable loyalties, and moral ambiguity force her to reckon with desire, consent, and the devastating cost of deception.
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