Caroline Scott Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Caroline Scott is a published author of fiction.

She attended the University of Durham and graduated with her PhD in history. From there she worked more as a researcher in Belgium and France. She had an interest in the experience of women as it took place during World War I and in the challenges faced by the soldiers who came back, as well as the development of tourism and pilgrimage in former conflict zones.

All four of her great-grandfathers served on the Western Front. Caroline recounts that she grew up in a house that was full of silk postcards and polished-up shell cases. When she was a child, World War I seemed like it was the answer to many questions that she had about the family history. When she was a teen, she dragged her parents around the battlefields and collected letters and photographs and says that she can’t recall a time that she wasn’t interested in this subject.

She has always loved research, something that was necessary being a history PhD student. She has said that it seemed like such a privilege to be let into the archives or behind the scenes at museums and to have the sense of being directly in contact with the past. Centuries collapse when you unroll a scroll that no one has touched for decades.

Caroline graduated university and then began work as a commercial researcher, but says that still throughout those years history was her out of hours passion. While she was busy working in Belgium and France, she had the opportunity to further pursue her interest in World War I. She would shift from researching history in 2019 over to writing historical fiction.

Scott recounts that she has discovered that she likes to look through the past by sending characters on different journeys as it gives you the chance to walk in someone’s shoes and the challenge of breathing the air of another era. The period after the World War I is one that really pulls her in and Scott says that her writing continually comes back to this time of dislocation, upheaval, processing of memory/experience, and getting back to something resembling normal.

Caroline is originally from Lancashire. Today she resides in southwest France and stays busy writing historical fiction.

The Poppy Wife is a 2019 novel by Caroline Scott. It is also known by the alternate title ‘The Photographer of the Lost’. This is an incredible debut novel that you will want to check out that features loss, forbidden love, and what families had to contend with after the conclusion of World War I.

It is 1921, and those who have managed to survive the Great War are doing whatever they can to try and put together the pieces of their lives, which in so many ways have been broken. Many of them have had the good fortune of being reunited with those that they love, but Edie’s husband Francis is among those still missing. Edie has been told that he is thought to have been killed in action, but deep down she has a gut instinct that is telling her that he is still alive.

Harry is Francis’s brother and he was there on the day that Francis disappeared in Ypres. Just like Edie, he believes that his brother is alive and maybe even living someplace in France, potentially confused and lost.

Harry has been hired by grieving families to go to the Western Front to take photos of the graves of soldiers. As he goes through France getting news for grieving British mothers and wives, he keeps his eyes open and looks for evidence that Francis is alive.

Edie gets a photograph that she thinks Francis took and this convinces her that he must be still alive. She goes on her own journey hoping that she can track down her husband and at last either be sure that he is dead or alive for certain. If he is still alive, however, is there a reason that he has not come back home?

When Harry and Edie’s paths come together, they get ever closer to finding out the truth. But will the answers that they end up finding have more impact than they would think? Can they handle the way that their lives are changed as a result?

Find out by reading The Poppy Wife, which was inspired by the real stories of the soldiers of World War I and those who loved them, as well as those who were lost and hoping to be found by their families.

Good Taste is a 2023 novel written by Caroline Scott. Kirkus Reviews called this a ‘sweet treat of a book’ and if you love historical novels and food and especially when they come together, then this is a great pick for you.

It’s 1932 and England is in the middle of a Great Depression. Stella Douglas is the author of a biography that has been received very well but has not been all that successful. She is feeling a little depressed herself.

She gets called to see her editor in London and the unusual request makes her think that her writing career is pretty much over, just when it was just getting started. But she is surprised when she finds out that instead she is being commissioned to take on the history of English food.

The book is meant to be very English and to lift the nation’s spirits. The only issue is the fact that objectively, a lot of English food is not very good– and if it is good, it is typically brought in from somewhere else.

Stella goes all over England so that she can find some type of culinary treasure. She finds oatcakes, gravy, and lots of potatoes. When her car breaks down on the way somewhere, and an antiques dealer named Freddie rescues her, can she find what she is looking for? Find out in this book that will have you turning the pages to find out what happens next!