Anna Downes Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Anna Downes is an actress and author.

Anna grew up in the United Kingdom in Sheffield. She attended the University of Manchester, where she studied drama. She also spent three years in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before going on to put her training into practice by working in theater and television.

Some of her acting credits include appearing on Pascoe, Dalziel, Holby City, Casualty, and EastEnders, as well as a stage production of The Dresser in the West End in London. She spent some time traveling in 2009 and went to Central America, Egypt, and France before ultimately settling down in Australia.

Anna moved to Australia in 2011. She began writing not long after the birth of her second child. Her debut novel was titled The Safe Place and was an international bestseller. It was published and released at the same time in the U.K., the U.S., and Australia in 2020. It made the shortlist for the 2021 Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards.

Downes would follow this up with The Shadow House, her second novel, and her third novel, Red River Road. The book was a bestseller in 2024 upon release. It hit five on the top ten nationally and was the number one Australian fiction title for six weeks.

Anna has been longlisted in 2018 for the Margaret River Short Story Competition and was shortlisted in 2017 for the Sydney Writers Room Short Story Prize.

Anna currently resides on the NSW Central Coast along with her family, which consists of her husband and their two children.

Anna was an actress long before she wrote.

The Safe Place is the debut fictional novel to come out from Anna Downes. It was inspired by the author’s own life experiences working as a live-in housekeeper from 2009 to 2019 on a remote French estate.

When it comes to a gorgeous home, you never know what is hiding inside. And sometimes, the more perfect the home, the more ugly the secrets that it is keeping.

Main character Emily Proudman is excited for her new job. She’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. She can change out her messy life in London for something new and hopefully pull her life all the way together.

She can switch things around and go to France to live on a gorgeous estate while also assisting the wife of her boss in taking care of their daughter. It may seem a little too good to be true, but in this case, the chance to start things over again and do things a little better just is too perfect to pass up. She would be kicking herself if she let this chance go by her without at least seeing if it’s a good fit.

While she is there, Emily starts thinking that her new employers aren’t exactly being honest with her. She starts suspecting that there might be secrets that are being hidden beneath the facade of being an idyllic family and home.

She starts having questions of her own, too. Like why the family decided that they wanted to pick up and move so far from their home to this nice but isolated house? Why does the daughter not want anyone to touch her and why doesn’t she speak? Why does the night have whispers?

The more that Emily knows, the more she understands that she doesn’t think that she will ever be able to leave this place. Can she find out enough without getting involved in this thing? Or is her accepting the job and being at the estate mean that she already has gotten in too deep? Read this contemporary thriller to see what you think!

The Shadow House is the second novel from Anna Downes. Published in 2021 in Australia and New Zealand, the book quickly was released in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2022. It has been translated into over ten languages.

This is a mysterious story that follows along with one woman’s effort to try and protect the children that she has no matter what the cost. This all takes place in a remote place where things may not always be what they appear.

This is the story of a woman and a house that is hiding horrible secrets, as well as a mother who is going to put everything on the line to try and bring them to light.

Alex is a mother to two children, and she wants nothing more than to make a fresh start for them all. She’s trying to get away from her past, and she does what she can to seek shelter in a small rural community.

Pine Ridge seems like the perfect place to start over again. The forests all around them are gorgeous and the locals there seem to be mostly welcoming. This could at last be the new place and the new start that Alex feels that she needs to try and get them back on track and in a better place emotionally.

Even though things seem great at first, Alex quickly starts to wonder what’s going on here. The new home was supposed to be the ideal place to raise her kids, but she feels that as soon as they arrived there they started to stir up some strange energy that exists within the home.

Alex soon discovers that her new home may be keeping secrets, and she may be the one stirring them up. As more events start to happen, events that are familiar to the people who have been there for a long time, the single mother starts to understand that they might be in greater danger than ever.

What is the best way that she can protect her family? Is it to take on the secrets in Pine Ridge and try to do whatever she can to restore balance? Is fixing this supernatural strangeness even a possibility? Read this book from Anna Downes to find out what happens with Alex and her children!