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Susan Ryeland books in order

Love BBC One’s Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders? Want to read the books behind the drama?

Magpie Murders introduces us to series character Susan Ryeland, a publishing editor who finds herself drawn into an intriguing murder mystery within the latest Atticus Pünd crime novel she’s working on.

Reading like classic tales with contemporary twists, both books in the series delve into stories within stories to turn the crime fiction genre on its head – so if you like clever, playful twists and turns, these are the books for you.

The first two books in the series have both been adapted by the BBC, starring Lesley Manville as Susan Ryeland and Tim McMullan as Atticus Pünd, along with a supporting cast of British crime drama stars.

If you’re discovering the books for the first time, we’re here to help. Here are Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland books in order.

Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland books in order:

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

1. Magpie Murders (2016)

Editor Susan Ryeland has worked with bestselling crime writer Alan Conway for years. Readers love his detective, Atticus Pünd, a celebrated solver of crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s.

But Conway’s latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

2. Moonflower Murders (2021)

Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her long-term boyfriend. But life isn’t as idyllic as it should be: exhausted by the responsibility of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does, Susan is beginning to miss her literary life in London – even though her publishing career once entangled her in a lethal literary murder plot.

So when an English couple come to visit with tales of a murder that took place in a hotel the same day their daughter Cecily was married there, Susan can’t help but find herself fascinated. And when they tell her that Cecily has gone missing a few short hours after reading Atticus Pünd Takes The Case, a crime novel Susan edited some years previously, Susan knows she must return to London to find out what has happened.

The clues to the murder and to Cecily’s disappearance must lie within the pages of this novel. But to save Cecily, Susan must place her own life in mortal danger…

Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz

3. Marble Hall Murders – coming March 2025

Susan Ryeland has had enough of murder. She’s edited two novels about the famous detective, Atticus Pünd, and both times she’s come close to being killed. Now she’s back in England and she’s been persuaded to work on a third.

The new ‘continuation’ novel is by Eliot Crace, grandson of Miriam Crace who was the biggest selling children’s author in the world until her death exactly twenty years ago. Eliot believes that Miriam was deliberately poisoned. And when he tells Susan that he has hidden the identity of Miriam’s killer inside his book, Susan knows she’s in trouble once again.

As Susan works on Pünd’s Last Case, a story set in an exotic villa in the South of France, she uncovers more and more parallels between the past and the present, the fictional and the real world – until suddenly she finds that she has become a target herself. It seems that someone in Eliot’s family doesn’t want the book to be written. And they will do anything to prevent it.

There you have it – all Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland books in order. How many have you read? Have you watched the TV series? Let us know in the comments below!

Books like Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland:

2 Comments

    Good morning, just watched Magpie Murders and reading now Moonflower Murders which includes Atticus Pund takes the case. Really intriguing so far. Where can you purchase the other 8 books mentioned in the Pund series? Do they actually exist and can you buy them or is Anthony Horowitz going to write them? Thanks for any assistance.

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