Claire Rayner

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Claire Rayner's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    56 Books (3 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1972
  • Latest Book:
    April 2012
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Full Series List in Order

Dr. George Barnabas

1 - First Blood (1993)
2 - Second Opinion (1994)
3 - Third Degree (1995)
4 - Fourth Attempt (1996)

The Performers

1 - Gower Street (Aug-1973)
2 - The Haymarket (Aug-1991)
3 - Paddington Green (Jun-1977)
4 - Soho Square (Jan-1976)
5 - Bedford Row (Jan-1977)
6 - Long Acre (Feb-1992)
7 - Charing Cross (Jan-1979)
8 - The Strand (Jan-1981)
9 - Chelsea Reach (Aug-1992)
10 - Shaftesbury Avenue (Oct-1992)
11 - Piccadilly (Dec-1992)
12 - Seven Dials (Jul-2002)

The Poppy Chronicles

1 - Jubilee (Jan-1996)
2 - Flanders (Oct-1989)
3 - Flapper (Oct-1990)
4 - Blitz (Dec-1991)
5 - Festival (Jul-2002)
6 - Sixties (Feb-1994)

Book List in Order: 56 titles

  • A Time to Heal

    • / Medical Thriller
    • Buy Buy

    A woman researcher discovers a cancer cure and finds it difficult to escape the resultant publicity....

  • Gower Street

    The Performers - 1

    The early 1800's. Jesse Constam, a highly respected spice merchant, lives in fashionable Gower Street. Saved from poverty himself, he rescues two children from the gutter. Jesse's intervention changes their lives forever. The fate of Abel Lackland an...

  • The Rand McNally Atlas of the Body and Mind

    The Rand McNally Atlas of the Body and Mind is an exciting account of man's knwoledge of himself. The complexity and beauty of the human machine are presented here in a new and imaginitive way. More than four hundred photographs and illustrations com...

  • Soho Square

    The Performers - 4

    Passion-filled rivalry .. Lydia Mohun was the darling of the London theater, the consummate mistress of her art, and a beauty wise in the ways of the world and the flesh. Phoebe Lackland was Lydia's niece, barely emerged from the cocoon of her wealth...

  • Bedford Row

    The Performers - 5

    The Crimean war is raging a world away from London. Martha Lackland, Abel Lackland’s daughter, astonishes her family and friends by announcing her intention to go to the Crimea to work amongst the British soldiers. After the initial shock, her fami...

  • Paddington Green

    The Performers - 3

    Abby Lackland Caspar knew the heartbreak of being disowned by her family. Her father totally disapproved of her marriage -- and even after the tragic death of her beloved husband the feud had gone on. For ten bitter years. Now she thought she had fou...

  • Covent Garden

  • Charing Cross

    The Performers - 7

    Sophie Lackland is the granddaughter of the great surgeon, Abel Lackland. She is twenty-one, alone in the world and virtually penniless. A letter tells her of the death of her step-grandmother and of a strange bequest. This legacy could make it possi...

  • Reprise

    Maggy Dundas is a star jazz pianist with looks, style, and a keen business brain. And when her hated mother Dolly dies, she is free at last from the memories that mar it all - from the woman whose wanton selfishness threatened to keep her from succes...



  • The Strand

    The Performers - 8

    They have all come a long way since their childhood days as part of a Jewish family in the East End of London. Orphaned during the war years, each has sought to escape her humble background in a ruthless search for a share of worldly success. But the...

  • The Enduring Years

    A family divided by destiny... -- The Lammecks, the Damonts, and the Lazars -- once they had been one family. Through the centuries they'd been forced to separate, to flee Jerusalem to Baghdad and Bombay, to Spain and Holland. The Lammecks and Damo...

  • Family Chorus

    How many hearts will a woman break tor each the top? Lexie Asher had talent and looks, and nerve - but more than that she had charm. And she knew how to get her own way. She could will her own way out of the slums and onto the West End stage. She cou...

  • The Virus Man

    At 7am, on her twelfth birthday, Miranda Hallam is found dead in bed at Bluegates school, but her's is only the first death. For some time, Ben Pitman has been dedicated to his work towards a breakthrough antiviral cure at Minster Hospital. Jessie Hu...

  • Lunching at Laura's

    Laura's in Soho is the fashionable place to meet and eat. Only a select few can guarantee an advance booking. The food is good, the ambience attractive, buts its success is due to one woman alone, and that is Laura herself. But now Soho is changing, ...

  • The House on the Fen

    THE VOICE IN THE SHADOWS The bolt clattered, the huge door swung open, and Jeffrey loomed in the deep shadows. "Let me in, Jeffrey," Harriet pleaded. "I've never seen you before in my life." "I'm your wife," she cried hysterically. ...

  • Flanders

    The Poppy Chronicles - 2

    It is 1911. At sixteen, Poppy is becoming a woman herself, and she can appreciate that the Suffragette Movement seems to promise a fairer future for all women. Then in 1914 The First World War breaks out and brings catastrophic loss and suffering. Po...

  • Maddie

    It is New Year's Eve 1948, and Maddie Braham's birthday party. She sees Jay Kincaid, a handsome American in London on business, and immediately falls wildly in love with him. Spoiled from childhood, what Maddie wants she gets, but the price o...

  • Flapper

    The Poppy Chronicles - 3

    During the First World War Poppy finds freedom and real love. She marries, but is widowed after a brief but idyllically happy marriage. She is left to cope with Chloe, her determined and strong-willed stepdaughter who is enjoying the life of a bright...

  • Clinical Judgements

    Medical decisions can kill or cure, and this book documents one month in a hospital where staff are challenged by such decisions. Problems are faced daily by people like Kate Sayers, a surgeon whose dedication to her work makes any private life diffi...



  • The Haymarket

    The Performers - 2

    Abel Lackland, rescued from the gutter as a child, has achieved great success as a surgeon. His eldest son, Jonah refuses to follow in his father's footsteps. He secretly nurtures a desire to act on the stage. Lilith Lucas, saved from destitution at ...

  • Postscripts

    A novel of discovery, guilt and betrayal by the author of 'Maddie' and 'Clinical Judgements'. A celebrated film-maker is determined to make a film on the survivors of concentration camps. He comes to London and discovers a sinister co...

  • Blitz

    The Poppy Chronicles - 4

    London in the Blitz. Poppy is a mature and capable woman. She struggles to enable her family to lead normal lives. The problems they create are known to all mothers-a daughter torn between two men and a difficult and headstrong stepdaughter. It is a ...

  • Long Acre

    The Performers - 6

    Orphans Amy and Fenton arrive in London determined to find fame and fortune on the stage, like their grandmother, the legendary Lilith Lucas. However, Amy also harbours another desire - to discover her family. Her search is destined to rekindle a feu...

  • Chelsea Reach

    The Performers - 9

    Martha Lackland dies in 1905. Her great-niece, Letty attends the funeral. Here she meets Luke O'Hare, an aspiring actor with plans to start a theatre for the poor of London. Letty falls under the spell of Luke and his circle of Bohemian friends. ...

  • Shaftesbury Avenue

    The Performers - 10

    The powerful, personal stories of Shaftesbury Avenue are set against the dramatically changing social and political background of post-Great War Britain. The war has ended but Theo Caspar, devastated by his experiences in the trenches, cannot join th...

  • Piccadilly

    The Performers - 11

    The troubled 30's leading to the outbreak of the Second World War form the background for a further episode of 'The Performers' family saga. Harry Lackland meets Leah Landis, but because of their lack of children and the fact that she is his senior, ...

  • Dangerous Things

    For a widow with small children, a job at the local school should be ideal, but Hattie joins the Foundation with misgivings, to help look after the first intake of girls in the sixth form. There are problems with the teachers, and with the girls, and...

  • First Blood

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    Dr. George Barnabas - 1

    Dr Barnabas is the new pathologist at a big inner city hospital. She is also a police surgeon - and the first woman to hold either post. Her first post-mortem is on a well-known author, with all the attendant media circus. But trouble starts when she...

  • London Lodgings

    Without her husband Frank - the victim of a fatal accident, Tilly Quentin's decision to turn 17 Brompton Grove into lodgings is a brave one, for it is against the rigid Victorian social code for a lady to go into trade....



  • Second Opinion

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    Dr. George Barnabas - 2

    This is the second in the medical mystery series, featuring Dr George Barnabas, the forensic pathologist and police-surgeon at the Old East Hospital. In this story she is involved in investigating the harrowing case of suspicious deaths of small babi...

  • The Doctors of Downlands

    Dr Phillipa Fenwick accepted a post as a GP in a large group practice, the only woman on an all-male team. While some of the doctors were prepared to accept her, Dr Max Lester was not. He made it plain that he disapproved of women doctors in general,...

  • Sixties

    The Poppy Chronicles - 6

    It is the Sixties. Poppy is devastated at the loss of her mother. But with typical resolve she faces the future with courage and determination. Poppy has steered herself and her family to great achievements. Poppy's business is flourishing. Her d...

  • Nurse in the Sun

    Nurse Isabel Cameron had taken a job for six months at the Cadiz, a luxury hotel in Majorca. Leaving an unhappy love affair behind her in London, she swore that there would be no emotional complications in Spain, but that was before she met Biff Squi...

  • Third Degree

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    Dr. George Barnabas - 3

    A severed leg is found, but there is not much the police or their pathologist George Barnabas can do. After two further deaths George's suspicions are aroused, and when her lover, Chief Inspector Gus Hathaway, finds himself in trouble, George begins ...

  • The Lonely One

    A hospital romance about a lonely young girl, who leaves behind her sheltered upbringing when she begins training as a nurse and discovers an exciting new life within the hospital's social circle....

  • Paying Guests

    The sequel to 'London Lodgings'. Tilly Quentin has successfully turned Quentin's into a thriving guest house. But with the demanding guests, particularly the handsome Silas Geddes, and her beloved son, Duff, falling into unsuitable compan...

  • Jubilee

    The Poppy Chronicles - 1

    The marriage between Mildred Amberly and Lizah 'Kid' Harris, a Jewish boxer from the East End seems a union doomed to failure. Their daughter Poppy's first memory is of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897. She has all the strong will and...

  • Fourth Attempt

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    Dr. George Barnabas - 4

    The gossipmongers at London's Royal Eastern Hospital are working overtime. Three deaths in as many days among the staff? Worse, three suicides? Something must be very wrong. Dr George Barnabas, not one to stand for any nonsense, could have told t...

  • The Private Wing

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Student nurse Tricia Oxford wanted to work in the operating theatres at the Royal Hospital. To her dismay she found herself posted to ward duty in the private patients' wing, where the registrar was well aware of her disdainful preconceptions....



  • Legacy

    'Provides well written entertainment.' - LIBRARY JOURNAL She was born in 1893, in the slums of London. The daughter of immigrants, a descendant of exiles, she was part of a people doomed to wander, forever strangers in the lands they had chosen as ...

  • Inheritance

    'Provides well written entertainment.' - LIBRARY JOURNAL on the Legacy 'A terrific mystery thriller.' - PRIMA on Fourth Attempt At eighteen, Hannah Lazar was left a widow with a two-month-old baby girl. Five years later, Mary Bee is a lively, dema...

  • Children's Ward

    Dr Paul Martin wanted to marry Sister Harriet Brett, but she had different ideas.  About the Author: Claire Rayner, nurse, agony aunt and prolific author was born in London in 1931. Married in 1957, she began writing when she left nursing with t...

  • Festival

    The Poppy Chronicles - 5

    1951. The Festival of Britain announces a time of post-war optimism and hope in the future for the country as shortages come to an end. Poppy is beginning to have some success running her own business and she is enjoying her independence. She continu...

  • Seven Dials

    The Performers - 12

    It is 1946 and London is still reeling from the destruction and suffering of the Second World War. The formidable Letty Lackland helps to raise funds for Queen Eleanor's Hospital, destroyed in the Blitz. Dr Charlie Lucas helps Brin Lackland come to t...

  • Cottage Hospital

    Sister Barbara Hughes was disappointed to leave London's busy Royal Free Hospital because of health reasons. But when she begins work at the hospital in Sandleas, she finds it interesting - especially when she meets Geoffrey. About the Author: Claire...

  • Death on the Table

    The man admitted to casualty was a Polish seaman - an emergency - in urgent need of an abdominal operation. Four hours later, he died 'accidentally'. From then on, the 'accidents' became more frequent - and more violent....

  • Fifth Member

    Claire Rayner's 'Fifth Member' is the fifth featuring George Barnabas, the female Head of Pathology at the Old East Hospital. Her fiance, Superintendant Gus Hathaway, has got a very hot case on his hands: the brutal murder of Conservative...

  • The Final Year

    Nurse Avril Gardner had one great ambition, to become a Gold Medalist, even if it meant losing her friends and rejecting the love of Dr Dickon Bartlett. She knew she was right, especially when the handsome new Registrar agreed with her. Before long s...

  • The Hive

    Originally published in 1967 as 'A Starch of Aprons', 'The Hive' is a nursing drama in which the author, a former nurse, convincingly evokes the claustrophobic atmosphere of the wards of the Royal Hospital in London. Elizabeth Manton, a new Matron, a...



  • The Meddlers

    A novel that provides an insight into the moral risks involved in scientific efforts to control human life. After Dr Briant masterminds the birth of the world's first test-tube baby, he must defend his ethics when his experiment dramatically alte...

  • Sisters

    In a hushed courtroom, the scene is set for one of the most celebrated trials of recent years. A trial caused by a bitter family wrangle. A trial that, as it unfolds, will reveal the dramatic story of the turbulent lives and careers of its three cent...

  • Burning Summer

    Ruthie Lee is seven and England is at war. Brought back from the countryside to live with her mother and baby brother in London, she spends summer in the hot dusty streets and the warm companionship of the East End Jewish community. As if air raids w...

  • Shilling A Pound Pears

    Running a fruit barrow? Dead-easy thought the younger  members of the Jackson and Cooper clan marooned in London for a hot and dusty  summer. Even Jane, ever sober and practical, thought it could be done. Richard      was dub...

  • The Running Years

    She was born in 1893, in the slums of London. The daughter of immigrants, the descendant of exiles, she was part of a people doomed to wander, forever strangers in the lands they had chosen as home. But Hannah Lazar was different. She was born and br...

  • Lady Mislaid

    Her name was Abigail Winterburn - at least that's what the newspapers said. They also said that she was wanted in connection with the disappearance of her stepson. But Abigail couldn't remember her stepson - she couldn't even remember being married. ...

  • Trafalgar Square

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Claire Rayner has published 56 books.

Claire Rayner does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Lady Mislaid, was published in April 2012.

The first book by Claire Rayner, A Time to Heal, was published in January 1972.

Yes. Claire Rayner has 3 series.
Author Series
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