Robert Goddard

Author Information
Robert Goddard's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    37 Books (3 Series)
  • First Book:
    August 1986
  • Latest Book:
    June 2025
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About the Author

Robert Francis Goddard was born on 13th November 1954 in Fareham, Hampshire. He writes mystery and crime fiction. He was educated at Wallisdean County Junior High School and Price’s Grammar School in Fareham before going on to study at Cambridge. After unsuccessful attempts at a career in both journalism and teaching he worked for a time as an educational administrator in Devon before becoming a full time novelist. His thrillers usually have a historical element and settings in provincial English towns and cities, and many plot twists. Regarded as one of Britain’s premier historical/ crime thriller authors, His first novel, ’Past Caring’ was published in 1986. He has since written another twenty novels, the majority of which have been Sunday Times Top Ten bestsellers in the UK.

Full Series List in Order

Harry Barnett

1 - Into the Blue (Feb-1995)
2 - Out of the Sun (Jun-1997)
3 - Never Go Back (Jul-2006)

Inspector Taleb

1 - This is the Night They Come For You (Mar-2022)
2 - This is the Day They Dream Of (Jun-2025)

A James Maxted Thriller

1 - The Ways of the World (Jun-2015)
2 - The Corners of the Globe (Jun-2016)
3 - The Ends of the Earth (Aug-2015)

Book List in Order: 37 titles

  • Past Caring

    At a lush villa on the sun-soaked island of Madeira, Martin Radford is given a second chance. His life ruined by scandal, Martin holds in his hands the leather-bound journal of another ruined man, former British cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. What...

  • Painting the Darkness

    From the author of the James Maxted series, “a plot worthy of Wilkie Collins” unfolds as an Englishman struggles to maintain his sanity and his marriage (Kirkus Reviews).   Robert Goddard’s international bestselling third novel is a m...

  • Take No Farewells

    Geoffrey Staddon had never forgotten the house called Clouds Frome, his first important commission and the best thing he had ever done as an architect. Twelve years before that day in September 1923 when a paragraph in the newspaper made his blood ru...

  • Debt of Dishonour

  • Debt of Dishonor

  • Hand in Glove

    In her seaside cottage, Beatrix Abberley bravely confronts an intruder moments before her life is brutally taken. The crime stuns the elderly spinster’s family -- especially Beatrix’s niece, Charlotte Ladram. But Charlotte has little time to mour...

  • Closed Circle

    Targeting the beautiful daughter of a wealthy munitions dealer in the hopes of receiving a payoff from her father, scam artists Guy Horton and Max Wingate find their plan upset when Max really falls in love. Reprint....

  • Into the Blue

    Harry Barnett - 1

    A sudden disappearance. A twisting hunt for the truth. A harrowing journey...“Robert Goodard’s manipulation of suspense and surprise rarely fails to dazzle.” -- The New York Times Book ReviewHarry Barnett lives the life of an Englishman on perm...

  • Borrowed Time

    It is a golden evening of high summer in July 1990. Robin Timariot has set out that morning on what he has planned as a six-day tramp along part of Offa's Dyke. At the close of his first day's walk he encounters an elegant middle-aged woman who seem...



  • Out of the Sun

    Harry Barnett - 2

    Although unaware of David Venning's existence, Harry Barnett begins an international search to help his long-lost comatose son after he learns that two other scientists from David's company have recently died due to mysterious causes....

  • Beyond Recall

    On a bright autumn afternoon in Truro, the Napier family celebrates one couple’s golden wedding anniversary and another’s marriage. But for one member of the clan, the day turns dark. Chris Napier, prodigal son, suddenly spots the ragged specter ...

  • Set In Stone

    Recovering from the recent death of his wife in a tragic accident, Tony Sheridan goes to stay with his sister-in-law, Lucy, and her husband, long-time friend Matt Prior, at their new home in the country - Otherways. It is a strange, circular, moated...

  • Caught in the Light

    On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls passionately in love with the mysterious and beautiful Marian. Back in the UK, Ian resolves to leave his wife for her - only to find Marian has disappeared, and the photographs of their brief ti...

  • The Desperate and the Blest

    Though this book is fiction, it is based on Bible prophecy. The scenario is a figment of the author's imagination, however, as you will find, there is much to be learned from this cast of characters during the first hectic days following "The Great D...

  • Sea change

    An international thriller set in eighteenth-century Europe by the “master of the clever twist” and acclaimed author of the James Maxted series (The Sunday Telegraph).   It’s January 1721, and London is still reeling from the recession caus...

  • Dying to Tell

    Lance Bradley, idling his life away in the little Somerset town of Glastonbury, suddenly receives a call for help from the eccentric sister of his old friend Rupert Alder. Rupe appears to have vanished without trace. Reluctantly, Lance goes to London...

  • Days Without Number

    Nick Paleologus is summoned to the unyielding bosom of his family to help resolve a dispute which threatens to set his brothers and sisters against their aged and irascible father. Michael Paleologus, retired archaeologist and supposed descendant of ...

  • Sight Unseen

    It happened in broad daylight -- the shocking abduction of a two-year-old girl at Avebury, an ancient stone monument in England. David Umber, a callow young student of history, saw it all. As fate would have it, the tragedy introduced David to the na...

  • Upper House Conspiracy

    While pursuing a scandal story for his tabloid, Will O'Brien, a discredited former investigative reporter, discovers an aging senator's recent death by heart attack was an assassination. He makes that claim in his weekly article, which produces a mys...



  • Play to the End

    Once Toby Flood played a Bond-like hero in a Hollywood film. Now he's serving a sentence in a crippled traveling production of a newly unearthed Joe Orton play -- a play that might have saved Toby's career if only someone enjoyed watching it. Painful...

  • Never Go Back

    Harry Barnett - 3

    In the spellbinding new mystery by the master of "the clever twist," a group of ex-RAF comrades journey to a Scottish castle for a reunion. But by the time they reach their destination, two of them are dead. Harry Barnett is leading a contented li...

  • In Pale Battalions

    Six months after her husband's sudden death, Leonora Galloway sets off for a holiday in Paris with her daughter Penelope. At last the time has come when secrets can be shared and explanations begin... Their journey starts with an unscheduled stop...

  • Name To a Face

    A sequence of extraordinary events over the past 300 years provides the links in a chain of intrigue, deceit, greed and murder: The loss of HMS Association with all hands in 1707. An admiralty clerk's secret mission thirty years afterwards. ...

  • Found Wanting

    Richard Eusden is on his way to work in London one unremarkable winter morning when he is intercepted by his ex-wife, Gemma. She has sad news of his old friend, Marty Hewitson. Marty is dying, but needs a favour done for him at once.Eusden reluctantl...

  • Long Time Coming

    Stephen Swan is amazed when he hears that the uncle he thought had been killed in the Blitz is actually alive. For nearly four decades, Eldritch Swan has been locked away in an Irish prison and now, at last, has been released. Shocked and suspicious,...

  • Blood Count

    There's no such thing as easy money. As surgeon Edward Hammond is about to find out. Thirteen years ago he performed a life saving operation on a Serbian gangster, Dragan Gazi. Gazi is now standing trial for war crimes in the international court in T...

  • The Ways of the World

    A James Maxted Thriller - 1

    From the Edgar Award-winning writer Robert Goddard comes a captivating new historical thriller, set at the tail end of World War I and featuring the devilishly charismatic James "Max" Maxted, a Royal Flying Corps veteran who has a knack for getting h...

  • The Ends of the Earth

    A James Maxted Thriller - 3

    A thrilling climax to Robert Goddard's bestselling adventure trilogy, The Wide World. July 1919. Ex-flying ace James 'Max' Maxted's attempt to uncover the secret behind the death of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, murdered while serving as an a...

  • The Corners of the Globe

    A James Maxted Thriller - 2

    In The Ways of the World, the first novel in this gripping historical series by bestselling author Robert Goddard, James "Max” Maxted arrived in Paris during the 1919 peace conference to investigate the suspicious death of his diplomat father. But ...



  • Panic Room

    ‘Is this his best yet?...Full of sinister menace and propulsive pace with twisty plotting’ Lee ChildWHAT REALLY LIES WITHIN?High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of mysterious backgro...

  • One False Move

    What value can be put on a human mind?How Joe Roberts does what he does is a mystery. He has a brain that seems able to outperform a computer. To a games company like Venstrom that promises big profits if his abilities can be properly exploited. So t...

  • The Fine Art of Invisible Detection

    'One of the finest crime writers of any generation' Daily Mail'He's the high priest of plot ... deftly woven, but also beautifully written ... I loved it' Mel Giedroyc_______________________________Umiko Wada has recently had quite enough excitement ...

  • Fault Line

  • The X-B Ranch in Perilous Times

    The X-B Ranch folk face more than their share of trouble, as they battle the difficult times of the Great Tribulation. They are forced to contend with the threat of an evil world government, as well as many natural disasters in this sequel to The Des...

  • This is the Night They Come For You

    Inspector Taleb - 1

    A pulse-pounding, breathless crime thriller, perfect for fans of Anthony Horowitz's Hawthorne series, Robert Galbraith's Cormoran Strike series and LJ Ross's Alexander Gregory thrillers'Truly ingenious' The TabletGoddard sprinkles head-turning double...

  • The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction

    The unmissable new novel from the author of the BBC ‘Between the Covers’ book club hit, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection'The world's greatest storyteller' GUARDIAN'One of the finest crime writers of any generation' DAILY MAIL'Our finest practi...

  • This is the Day They Dream Of

    Inspector Taleb - 2

    The sequel to the Times Thriller of the Year bestseller, This is the Night They Come for You.The past is coming for Chief Inspector Taleb. He may not know it but he will soon enough. And the past in Algeria is venomous, vengeful and relentlessful, de...

Award-Winning Books by Robert Goddard

Long Time Coming
2011 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- Paperback Original


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Robert Goddard has published 37 books.

The next book by Robert Goddard, This is the Day They Dream Of, will be published in June 2025.

The first book by Robert Goddard, Past Caring, was published in August 1986.

Yes. Robert Goddard has 3 series.
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