Asia Mackay Books In Order

Publication Order of Alexis Tyler Books

Asia Mackay is a mystery thriller novelist from London who is best known for the “Alexis Tyler” series of novels.

The half-Scottish, half-Chinese author went to Durham University where she studied anthropology, in defiance of people who told her that she would never find a job with such a degree.
Nonetheless, getting a job proved very difficult and she thought the naysayers were right. She was forced to go live in China before she got a job in television.

Living in Shanghai she used to produce and present lifestyle programs and went out a lot to try to improve her Mandarin, a quest on which she ultimately failed.

When she returned to London, she found a job as a project manager for Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor, as they worked on their documentaries riding motorbikes all around the world.
Mackay made several fleeting appearances on TV, earnestly discussing visas while wearing headbands, which excited her friends.

It was while she was on maternity leave that she began writing her debut novel “Killing It,” and then enrolled in the Faber Academy so that she could finish it.
Published in 2018, it was nominated for several prizes including the Comedy Women in Print Prize and the Richard and Judy’s Search for a Bestseller.

How Asia Mackay came to write her debut novel is a very interesting story.

Leaving her kids’ bedroom at 3 am is typically a moment when her mind is only filled with expletives interspersed with “I need more sleep, sleep, sleep.”

But as she was crawling out one night trying to make as little noise as possible, she started thinking about how easy it would have been if she had special ops training.

The thought never left her even after she made it back to bed, as she imagined a super mum as a secret agent working on high-stakes missions, only to come back home for bath time.

With her breast pumps, nappy bags, and half asleep, she began getting ideas that she would put down on her phone. A few months later, she had all manner of notes and thought, why not make something of these late-night ramblings?
Her secret agent would be named Lex and armed with a plot outline, she enrolled at the Writing A Novel Course at the Faber Academy, under the tutelage of Tom Bromley.

However, she had never written anything worth reading since school but she applied herself to the course that by the end of the seven months, she had a rough first draft.

Getting published is a major dream come true for Asia Mackay who has always wanted to become an author since she was a child.

She got a two-book deal just before she got her fourth child. She now hopes that by taking a leap into the unknown and making it as an author she will encourage aspiring authors who may be on the verge of giving up to give it a go.
In terms of her ambitions, she hopes to win an award one day just to impress her kids after being a runner-up in two prizes.

When she is not writing her novels, she can usually be found reading mystery fiction novels particularly anything by Rebecca Thornton.

Asia Mackay’s novel “Killing It” is a brilliant work of fiction that introduces the lead of the Alexis Tyler series Alexis ‘Lex’ Tyler.

She is going back to work following several months of maternity leave and this has her feeling down. She works for an elite order of the secret services known as the Rats where she is an assassin.
Soon after coming back, she is drafted to work on a high-stakes mission involving the assassination of a London-based Russian that could have worldwide consequences.

But the old boys at work do not think she is ready given that she just recently came back from maternity leave.

But nobody is ever going to stop Alexis or tell her that she cannot be as good as the men who work for the elite division of the Secret Service known as the Rats.
No matter what, she will be a mother and be home for bath time and still be an elite agent or die trying.

Nonetheless, she is feeling the pressure and could not be any more thankful that she has Will her husband, and Gigi her baby daughter back home who are something of an escape from the happenings at work.
Mackay does a good job of exploring the lead’s conflicted feelings as a mother, even as he creates a fast-moving covert operations story.

“The Nursery” by Asia Mackay is a work that follows the events of the first novel of the “Alexis Tyler” series.

Alexis Tyler is back to find that her organization has come under attack from “Tenebris,” a very mysterious website.

It is something of a marketplace for assassins just like the Silk Road was for drugs that matches killers to clients who need people taken out for the right fee.

As a result of this, the British intelligence services have had several of their agents killed and several operations go haywire. Rumor is that there could be several agents in the MI6 involved with the Tenebris website.
With so many operations torpedoes and agents killed, the services are suspended until the mole is caught.

In the meantime, Tyler and several others are the active agents charged with protecting Peng, a Chinese Minister visiting London, who is believed to be a target of the assassin website.
For Tyler, this mission could not have come at a worse time as Gigi her toddler has been causing all manner of trouble at home.

She has been plunging her tiny teeth into caregivers, even as Will her husband feels they need to get away to save their marriage, which he believes has too many secrets.

Asia Mackay’s “A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage” begins with an interesting premise. A couple has a better chance of staying together by killing together.

Fox and Hazel are an ordinary couple blessed with a kid but the one thing very different about this couple is that they happen to be former serial killers.

They had it all including five-star travels, an enviable lifestyle in London, and plenty of evil men to kill. They were also very good at getting away with murder, unlike most couples.
However, things changed when Hazel announced she had fallen pregnant and they had to stop all the killing and instead resort to dinner parties and life in the suburbs.

But in recent times, the itch to kill has come back stronger, particularly for Hazel. It is not long before she kills someone on her own and this attracts the cops to her home and she will do anything to keep the family safe.
Her intervention could save their shaky marriage but things could go wrong and it could just be the end of them.