Charity Blackstock / Paula Allardyce Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Ursula Joyce Torday was born February 19, 1912 in London, England. She was the daughter of mixed parentage; her dad, Emil Torday, was a Hungarian anthropologist and her mom, Gaia Rose MacDonald, was Scottish.

Ursula studied at Kensington High School in London before going to Oxford University, where she got a BA in English at Lady Margaret Hall College. Later, she got a Social Science Certificate at London School of Economics.

During the 1930s, she wrote her first three novels under own name. The first of which, called “The Ballad-Maker of Paris”, was released in the year 1935. Besides writing under her own name, she also publishes under the names of Paula Allardyce, Charity Blackstock, Charlotte Keppel, and Lee Blackstock.

During the second world war, she worked as a probation officer for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau. Over the next seven years she ran a refugee scheme for Jewish kids, which served as an inspiration for many of her future novels.

Ursula also worked as a typist at the National Central Library (England and Wales) in London, and was the inspiration for “Dewey Death” (published under the Charity Blackstock name). She taught English to adults, too.

When she returned to publishing at the beginning of the fifties. She used Charity Blackstock (sometimes in the US it was re-edited as Lee Blackstock) or Paula Allardyce to sign all of her mystery and gothic romances.

“Witches’ Sabbath” received a Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists’ Association. “Miss Fenny”, also called “The Woman in the Woods”, was nominated for an Edgar Award.

She died March 6, 1997 at the age of 85 in Haywards Heath Sussex, England.

“My Dear Miss Emma” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 1958. By leaving England, Emma Forbes, who is impoverished and plain, hopes she can leave behind all the pain of losing both her fiance and her entire inheritance.

She gets a job of English teacher/ governess to the wards of Ignace, a cold, harsh featured French noblemen living in Arles during the 1750s. He is both cynical and bitter. And is sardonically amused by her schoolgirl level of French.

Then the Black Death, the Plague, comes to this tiny walled town.

Fans of the novel loved the brave, feisty, and brilliant Emma and followed along as she went on her adventures through France with strong interest. Paula’s character development and plotting is well done in this. Her descriptions of the setting, and the period were brought to life well in the novel.

“The Rogue’s Lady” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 1961. Ahab forgot just how wonderful and lovely she truly was, this deceitful and spoiled ‘lady’ who once did her best to see that he was hanged. Now, she is imprisoned by marriage to a brute of a man named Lord Dacre, and was desperately begging for his help to escape to her own childhood home back in New Jersey.

It was a moment he had been waiting for six years now. She was now at his mercy. He would have savored refusing her and hurting her, however, it was not a triumph, somehow. It was just cruelly unfair and strange that this lady, who had been his enemy, should have the power to touch his heart with pity, not to mention desire.

“Witches’ Sabbath” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 1961. Tamar Brown shows up in a small English village in order to do research for her newest book, which is about a woman named Abigail Parkes who got burned as a witch three hundred years before. Tamar is a redhead, just like Abigail was, and quickly the superstitious villagers fear that the witch has returned from the grave in order to get revenge. Never mind all that, though.

In the most amazing of coincidences, Tamar gets reunited with William, her lover that left her six years before. The suspicion of William’s involvement in his wife dying, any speculation that she could be a reincarnation of Abigail only lead to further nearly fatal and vengeful deeds.

“Octavia” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 1965. Octavia could not know that lurid novel she wrote total secret would become the most sensational scandal of the entire London season.

Octavia was much less prepared to have her identity as the book’s writer revealed, and then get branded as some shocking adventuress. The guy she loved accused her of using him as the model for the villain in her novel, Octavia believed life could hold nothing for her than his cruel accusations.

That was before she realized that the sophisticated drawing rooms she accurately portrayed in fiction hid a smooth-talking traitor. Since England was warring with France, and Octavia wound up unwittingly spilling dirt on more than the foibles of all the aristocracy. She also wound up exposing the treachery of a spy.

This novel feels entirely real, just like Paula’s characters who are not always good looking and their lives have warts and lumps.

“Miss Philadelphia Smith” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 1977. Nothing ever happened to Philadelphia until she had gone and made that one wish on that night in the fall. Her dreams came true that same night when she got a lot more attention than she had ever bargained for.

Her handsome fiance, named Jamie, got tired of waiting to get married. He planned on jilting Philadelphia that very evening. Or had she planned on jilting him?

Her jaded and rich neighbor, named Mr. Atherton, was rather enchanted by her young and fresh beauty. The more he tried consoling the distraught and crying Philadelphia, the more he wanted to seduce her.

Mr. Atherton’s gambling companion, named Ferdy, was the blackest of sheep in the noblest of families. He had all kinds of plans for Philadelphia, and all of them were evil.