Celeste Connally Books In Order

Publication Order of Lady Petra Inquires Books

Publication Order of Cozy Case Files Mystery Sampler Books

Celeste Connally is best known as a historical mystery fiction novelist.

She published “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord” her debut novel in 2023. The novel would win her a nomination for the Agatha Award, which paved the way for her to leave her former life as a freelance editor and writer.
She has said that she has been a longtime fan of adaptation and historical novels since she is a huge lover of history in addition to “PBS Masterpiece,” which she has to consume every week.

Celeste also loves writing and reading about women who lived in past times who refused to agree to everything they were told to believe and do.

She gets much of her inspiration from things she reads in the news and what she hears or sees when she is out and about.

Connally loves to follow and listen to social media accounts and podcasts with a historical slant and sometimes she can get inspiration from a post about something historical or just interesting.

Celeste Connally happens to be one of two pseudonyms of Stephanie Perkins.
Writing as S.C. Perkins, she penned the “Ancestry Detective” series which follows Lucy Lancaster the contemporary Texas genealogist, who makes use of her professional skills to solve present and past crimes.

She decided to adopt a different name since there was already another Staphenie Perkins working as a novelist. Initially, she went with S.C. Perkins in which the C. stood for her middle name Celeste.

However, given that S.C. is not so easy to get off the tongue, she used to tell people that she was Stephanie. This resulted in another problem as readers would search for her and land on Stephanie Perkins, which is what she did not want.
For this reason, she took on a new pen name which meant a lot to her. She took Celeste her middle name, which she combined with the maiden name of her ancient grandmother on the mother’s side.
This is the name she has been publishing under since 2023.

Before she became a bestselling author, she used to work freelance as an editor and writer. Back then she used to edit and write for an educational publishing house and edited scientific journals.

Celeste also had a lot of fun working for the “Houston Livestock Rodeo and Show,” and was an organizer for the curtain-raising “World Championship Bar-B-Que Competition” that ran for three days.

Similar to many of her contemporaries, she has written for much of her life. She got into journalism while she was in high school and majored in the subject while in college, before she graduated to become an editor and writer.
The urge to write was something she believed was her destiny and when she finally had the opportunity she went for it. Like many novelists, she found inspiration for the lead in her novel during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

During this time, she was watching far too many Regency-era dramas such as “Bridgerton,” “Downton Abbey,” “Emma,” and “Pride and Prejudice.” Most of these featured a spinster but she was never cast in a positive light.

It is for this reason that she decided to pen something different and hence was born her debut.

“Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord” is a work that has often been referred to as Agatha Christie meets Bridgerton. It is an impressive debut under her pseudonym that is a brilliant Regency romance with a feminist slant.
When Lady Petra Forsyth’s soulmate and fiance dies a few weeks before their wedding, she does the unthinkable. She proclaims before one of the loosest lips in London that she will never marry again.

She is an independent woman and does not see why she should give up her freedom and wealth to any man or be confined to a country home, now that her soulmate is no more.

Instead, she makes use of her noble title to get into elite spaces, where she can gallivant with the high ranking in society without a care in the world.

But then there is ballroom gossip suggesting that one of her best friends died of melancholia while being treated by a physician suspected of being a fraud.

She vows to use her titles to investigate and soon unearths a private asylum where men pay to have their daughters and wives locked away.

She is convinced that her friend is being held prisoner and is not dead but then her thirst for independence and headstrong action may just put her own life in danger.
It is a historical feminist fiction that has throwbacks to Sherlock and insights in what life was like living in the 19th century as a woman.

Celeste Connally’s “All’s Fair in Love and Treachery” is a work set in London in 1815. The city is celebrating the news coming out of Waterloo saying that Napoleon has surrendered.
However, Lady Petra Forsyth is not celebrating anything since she recently discovered that her viscount fiance’s death three years earlier had not been an accident.

Duncan Shawcross her half-Scottish, handsome paramour has gone missing and is the lead suspect in the murder.

Since she cannot hunt down the man who has turned out to be a traitorous lover, she decides to concentrate on what the queen has tasked her with.

Queen Charlotte wants her to look into the mysterious death of the matron of an orphanage.
What is even more interesting is that there may be a connection between some radicals with links to the aristocracy and the death of the matron according to an intercepted letter.
With the clock counting down to the execution of a plot to topple the monarchy, Petra is going insane as her present and past collide.

While her life is in danger there is no way she is going to give in, particularly when that would jeopardise the lives of many orphaned girls.

To save her country and the girls, she will need to fight like a queen and muster the strength of an army of soldiers.