Jessica Stirling

Author Information
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  • Bibliography:
    42 Books (11 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1974
  • Latest Book:
    February 2015
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About the Author

Hugh Crauford Rae was born on November 22, 1935 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, son of Isobel and Robert Rae. He published his first stories aged 11 in the Robin comic, winning a cricket bat the same year in a children’s writing competition. After graduating from secondary school, he worked as an assistant in the antiquarian department of John Smith's bookshop. At work, he met her future wife, Elizabeth. Published since 1963, he started to wrote suspense novels as Hugh C. Rae, but he also used the pseudonyms of Robert Crawford, R.B. Houston, Stuart Stern (with S. Ungar) and James Albany. On 1973, his novel "The Shooting Gallery" was nominee by the Edgar Award. On 1974, he wrote the first few romance novels with Peggie Coghlan, using the popular pseudonym Jessica Stirling. However, when she retired 7 years after the first book was published, he continued writing more than 30 on his own, and also as Caroline Crosby. His female pseudonyms first became widely known in 1999, when "The Wind from the Hills" was shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Widowed nine years ago, Hugh died on September 24, 2014 at the age of 78.

Full Series List in Order

Beckman Trilogy

1 - Deep Well at Noon (Dec-1979)
1 - The Drums of Time (Dec-1979)
2 - The Blue Evening Gone (Oct-1981)
3 - The Gates of Midnight (Jun-1983)

Burnside Saga

1 - The Penny Wedding (Aug-1994)
2 - The Marrying Kind (Nov-1995)

Clare Saga

1 - Lantern for the Dark (Jan-1992)
2 - Shadows on the Shore (Nov-1993)

Conway Trilogy

1 - Prized Possessions (Nov-1998)
2 - Sisters Three (May-2001)
3 - Wives at War (Feb-2003)

Franklin-McColloch Trilogy

1 - The Piper's Tune (May-1999)
2 - Shamrock Green (Jan-2002)
3 - The Captive Heart (Apr-2004)

Hooper Trilogy

1 - A Corner of the Heart (Dec-2010)
2 - The Wayward Wife (Apr-2013)
3 - The Constant Star (Aug-2014)

Isle of Mull

1 - The Island Wife (Jun-1997)
2 - The Wind from the Hills (Mar-1998)
3 - The Strawberry Season (May-2000)

Jim Kinsella

1 - Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? (Feb-2015)

Nicholson Quartet

1 - The Good Provider (Apr-1988)
2 - The Asking Price (Apr-1989)
3 - The Wise Child (Mar-1990)
4 - The Welcome Light (Jan-1991)

Patterson Trilogy

1 - Treasures on Earth (Jul-1985)
2 - Hearts of Gold (Jun-1987)
3 - Creature Comforts (Aug-1986)

Stalker Trilogy

1 - The Spoiled Earth (Jan-1974)
2 - The Hiring Fair (Aug-1976)
3 - The Dark Pasture (1977)

Book List in Order: 42 titles

  • The Spoiled Earth

    Stalker Trilogy - 1

    The mining disaster of 1875 killed the men of the Stalker family, but it could not kill their ambitions, pride, or love for one another. Alex Stalker's last command was to forge a better life for Drew, his only surviving son, but the burden of this w...

  • Strathmore

    In Victorian Scotland, poor single girls were not supposed to fall in love with rich married men......

  • The Dresden Finch

  • The Hiring Fair

    Stalker Trilogy - 2

    Set in the Scotland of the bleak 1870s, in the Colliery at Blacklaw, the dangerous work has taken the lives of many men. But the Stalkers dream of a better future. In Edinburgh, Drew Stalker studies law, determined never to return to the grinding pov...

  • The Dark Pasture

    • / Historical Romance
    • Buy Buy
    Stalker Trilogy - 3

    1890s. Seventeen years have passed and the Lanarkshire mining village of Blacklaw has weathered both depression and the driving ambition of its coalmaster. But at last, falling wages have driven the miners to desperate rebellion... During a violent p...

  • Call Home the Heart

    THE STALKERS Drew--The Brother. He made power his goal--and his family a tool. Kate--The Plain Sister. Early in life, she'd given up on happiness--and settled for survival. Betsy--The Pretty Sister. At 17, she's already lelarned how to play a man ...

  • Beloved Sinner

    Escaping with her governess from the wretched clutches of her domineering stepmother, the lovely Sophy Richmond soon found herself deep in the arms of a handsome young Hussar. It was then that she learned the terrible price of illicit love... The af...

  • Deep Well at Noon

    Beckman Trilogy - 1

    Holly Beckman was a gifted and determined Jewish young. She suddenly inherited a share in the antique shop where she'd worked as a dedicated apprentice, it was the beginning of both her climb to success and her descent into heartbreak. Her burning am...

  • The Drums of Time

    Beckman Trilogy - 1

    Holly Beckman was a gifted and determined Jewish young. She suddenly inherited a share in the antique shop where she'd worked as a dedicated apprentice, it was the beginning of both her climb to success and her descent into heartbreak. Her burning am...



  • The Blue Evening Gone

    Beckman Trilogy - 2

    Though the Great Depression has brought misery to many, Holly Beckman has a thriving art business, a devoted husband and a son she adores. Until the holiday in Monte Carlo where for the first time she experiences romance. Almost reluctantly, Holly fa...

  • The Gates of Midnight

    Beckman Trilogy - 3

    Holly Beckman and her family move into the dark years of World War II. Recently widowed, Holly has lost interest in her antique business with the outbreak of war, and her life is now overshadowed by fears for her son, an RAF fighter pilot. When Holly...

  • Treasures on Earth

    Patterson Trilogy - 1

    Scotland 1791: on a wild November night, highlander Gaddy Paterson strays into the staid lowland parish of Balnesmoor, and stumbles on a dead girl and her abandoned baby. Gaddy adopts the child but when she falls in with the ageing Col Conran in her ...

  • Creature Comforts

    Patterson Trilogy - 3

    Elspeth and Anna Patterson of Balnesmoor have married well: Elspeth to a wealthy wool merchant, Anna to the son of a respected factor. But they are not happy. The two married sisters, leading oddly parallel lives, find themselves entanglement in a we...

  • Hearts of Gold

    Patterson Trilogy - 2

    Elspeth and Anna Patterson have at last to face the disgrace that has stalked them since childhood. Driven from home by fear and shame, Elspeth and her baby find refuge among coal miners, where she becomes a harness-wife on the deep sea-coast pits of...

  • The Good Provider

    Nicholson Quartet - 1

    19th century. Kirsty Barnes, an orphan indentured to a lecherous old farmer, escapes from his advances with the help of her childhood sweetheart, Craig Nelson. With little money and still strangers to each other, they travel to Glasgow. Marriage take...

  • The Asking Price

    Nicholson Quartet - 2

    Imprisoned in a false 'marriage' and trapped in Glasgow's mean streets, Kirsty Barnes and Craig Nicholson are drifting apart, held together only by their son, Bobby. Kirsty finds herself drawn more and more to David Lockhart, the young minister who c...

  • The Wise Child

    Nicholson Quartet - 3

    Both Kirsty and Craig Nicholson sacrifice lovers to hold their marriage together for the sake of their crippled son. For a time all seems well until Kirsty seizes an opportunity to buy a small shop and makes a roaring success of her new career. Lonel...

  • The Welcome Light

    Nicholson Quartet - 4

    Only love for their son holds Kirsty and Craig Nicholson's stormy marriage together. But when a crippling disease strikes the child, Craig's adamant male pride turns to tenderness and concern, and Kirsty, drained by worry and overwork, seeks comfort ...

  • Lantern for the Dark

    Clare Saga - 1

    Unmarried Clare Kelso awaits trial in Glasgow in 1787 for the death by poison of her 10-month-old son. The baby's father, Frederick Striker, has vanished. Orphaned and poor, Clare had been taken in by wealthy relatives to care for their three young c...



  • Shadows on the Shore

    Clare Saga - 2

    1790. In Europe, the war against the French rages. In Ayrshire, a different kind of battle begins... Once, Frederick Striker betrayed her, then abandoned Clare thirteen years earlier. Now, Clare Quinn is no longer a guileless, impressionable innocent...

  • The Penny Wedding

    Burnside Saga - 1

    Glasgow, 1928. Alison Burnside is sixteen when her mother dies. Her father, Alex, a shipyard worker, unexpectantly supports the idea that Alison should become a doctor, and the family's whole destiny changes. When the 1930s depression hits Glasgow, A...

  • The Marrying Kind

    Burnside Saga - 2

    Poverty and the Depression in 1930s have hit Glasgow hard, but Burnside family have been luckier than most. Alison Burnside, studying medicine thanks to the financial support of her teacher and boyfriend, Jim Abbott. But Jim is now in a sanatorium, a...

  • The Workhouse Girl

    Robert Montague, a fiery preacher with an adventurous past, is a perfect catch for any girl in the parish of Ravenshill. Stockbroker Cuthbert Armitage certainly thinks so and sets his daughters, Cassie and Pippa, into competition for the minister's a...

  • The Island Wife

    Isle of Mull - 1

    On the beautiful island of Mull off Scotland's wild west coast, Vassie Campbell has scraped a precarious living by raising cattle on a parcel of land that lies close to the sprawling estate of Fetternish. Her daughters, Innis, Biddy, and fey young si...

  • The Wind from the Hills

    Isle of Mull - 2

    An epic of love, greed and betrayal set on the beautiful, remote Isle of Mull... For Innis and Biddy, daughters of the embittered Vassie Campbell, life has changed greatly from the days when they were poor tenant farmers. Innis and Biddy Campbell mar...

  • Prized Possessions

    Conway Trilogy - 1

    Glasgow during the Depression. Lizzie Conway has clawed her way out of the slums of the Gorbals despite the crippling debt left behind by a long-vanished husband. Lizzie sacrifices her own chance of happiness to break the endless round of poverty tha...

  • The Piper's Tune

    Franklin-McColloch Trilogy - 1

    Jessica Stirling's Glasgow comes to scintillating life in The Piper's Tune, a story of love and fortune set in Edwardian Scotland.Lindsay Franklin's life is an adventure she has just begun to enjoy. At eighteen, Arthur Franklin's cosseted daughter ha...

  • The Strawberry Season

    Isle of Mull - 3

    Since the dawn of time, the Isle of Mull, off the Scottish coast, has had to fend off ferocious winds and a ravenous ocean intent on swallowing the island whole. Roughened by ceaseless storms and chill, Mull remained a quiet community, set in its way...

  • Sisters Three

    Conway Trilogy - 2

    There are four Conway women: indomitable Lizzie, who endures despite everythign that life in Glasgow can throw at her, and Lizzie's three daughters, each one combining Lizzie's iron will with her own ambitions and desires. Now, as the 1930s draw t...



  • Shamrock Green

    Franklin-McColloch Trilogy - 2

    The marriage of Sylvie and Gowry McCulloch was not made in heaven and has gone through difficult times. Settled now in Dublin, they have a daughter, Maeve, whom they both love dearly. Sylvie presides over the respectable Shamrock Hotel while Gowry is...

  • Wives at War

    Conway Trilogy - 3

    As Glasgow waits for enemy bombers to reach Clydeside and the German invasion to begin, Lizzie Conway's daughters throw themselves wholeheartedly into the war effort and eagerly accept their roles as working wives in Jessica Stirling's enthralling ne...

  • The Captive Heart

    Franklin-McColloch Trilogy - 3

    World War One ended well for the Franklins, prosperous Clydeside shipbuilders. But trouble is brewing behind their respectable facade...Rebellious teenager Maeve McCulloch has arrived from Ireland to stay with the Franklins, much to the dismay of her...

  • One True Love

    Britain in the 1840s. Susanne Thorne is an orphan of means, one reason why Bette Hollander carries the young English girl off to her home in far-away Scotland. Bette would be more than happy for Susanne to fall in love with her handsome, headstron...

  • Blessings in Disguise

    Victorian Glasgow comes to life in this story of greed, ambition, and true love against all odds. Glasgow is a city teeming with immigrants, rich and poor, schemers and victims alike. And the McKennas, fresh from Ireland, have no intention of bein...

  • The Fields of Fortune

    The streets of eighteenth-century Edinburgh, where disease and squalor jostle with high culture and grand ambitions, are the setting for Jessica Stirling's powerful new novel.On the brink of a disastrous marriage Nicola Templeton finally rebels, and ...

  • A Kiss and a Promise

    Servant girl Betsy McBride thinks she has as much right as any girl to Tom Brodie, the most dashing young man in the district. When her master asks her to help out the Brodie family she jumps at the chance to get a bit closer to him. She doesn't real...

  • The Paradise Waltz

    Christine Summers is the local schoolteacher -- far too pretty to be stuck out in the country with only the elderly Brigadier and her scottie for company. Alan Kelso is an eminent surgeon with sadness in his past, far too young to be content with the...

  • A Corner of the Heart

    Hooper Trilogy - 1

    Jessica Stirling's enthralling new novel is set in 1930s England, where an East End girl with ideas of her own makes a surprising journey from the back streets of Shadwell to the salons of Mayfair. Susan Hooper is private secretary to bestselling aut...

  • The Last Voyage

    The TITANIC wil be their face. At first handsome, freewheeling Clive Cavendish does not appear to be an ideal catch for Julie. But when a whirlwind seduction leads to love and marriage and Clive's ambitious schemes begin to pay off Julie is more t...



  • The Wayward Wife

    Hooper Trilogy - 2

    The war everyone dreaded has begun at last but for Susan Hooper it is more an adventure than a tragedy. Helped by a white lie about her marriage to Danny Cahill she has a new job as a producer's assistant at the BBC. And glamorous new friends, includ...

  • The Constant Star

    Hooper Trilogy - 3

    The Second World War hits home to a scattered East End family in new and unexpected ways in the third volume of this series about Britain under siege. Susan Hooper Cahill enjoys her job at the BBC until a bomb destroys the building and brings unwe...

  • Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom?

    Jim Kinsella - 1

    The first in a new series featuring Detective Jim Kinsella. Who murdered Molly? Was it Leopold Bloom, in the kitchen, with a teapot . . .? This finely crafted historical mystery, using several recognizable characters and the famous setting from Ja...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Jessica Stirling has published 42 books.

Jessica Stirling does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom, was published in February 2015.

The first book by Jessica Stirling, The Spoiled Earth, was published in January 1974.

Yes. Jessica Stirling has 11 series.
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