Christina Lynch Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Christina Lynch
Christina Lynch’s picaresque journey includes chapters spent in Chicago and at Harvard, where she was one of the editors on the Harvard Lampoon. She was the Milan correspondent for W magazine and Women’s Wear Daily, and vanished for four years in Tuscany.

In LA, she was on the writing staff for Unhappily Ever After; Encore, Encore; The Dead Zone; and Wildfire.

Christina has loved reading for as long as she can remember, so it’s tough to narrow down her favorite novels. But she loves “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov since it’s touching, funny, and sad, and it is about writing. It’s one she re-reads quite often. She wrote her thesis back in college about Nabokov.

Primarily she reads according to need and mood. Need means that she is researching that subject area in particular, so this will cover all books about the 1950s in Italy (for “The Italian Party”) or the 1940s in California and Italy. Mood is everything else, like murder mysteries on rainy days (Dorothy Sayers), British comedies for when she is worn out (Waugh and Wodehouse), American humorists for when she’s worn out yet tired of British novels (Paul Beatty, Dorothy Parker, SJ Perelman), and anything unpredictable.

The inspirations and ideas for “The Italian Party” were a long time coming, swirling, and gathering before she began writing it. From 1987 to 1994, she lived in Italy, beginning just a year after she graduated from college, so that’s a major part of it. Her parents lived in South America during the 1950s, and she has always been curious about what that must have been like for them. Another inspiration was that while living in Italy, Italians would mention American interference in their politics and she did not understand what they were talking about. It wasn’t until many years later that it truly started to dawn on her just what happened there, and she started reading about all the reasons why the CIA and State Department would be so interested in Italy. All of this was stewing in her brain as she finished her MFA and asked what she wanted to write next. Then she wondered what book she most wanted to read, yet didn’t exist yet? That was the book she wrote.

When Christina talked to people that survived WWII, and reading the wartime diaries of women, she was struck by just how funny they were, how they were able to laugh even during a tragedy. This sense of humor, that desire to find the light in the darkness intrigued her. She started seeing how humor was a potent weapon when fighting a Fascist government which sought total control over its people. From here, “Sally Brady’s Italian Adventure” was born.

“The Italian Party” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2018. A novel of espionage and love in 1950s Italy plays a lot like a confectionary Hollywood romance with deeper notes reminiscent of John le Carre.

1956. Tuscany. Michael and Scottie are a newlywed American couple and they have just arrived in Tuscany with a bunch of luggage and just a few heavy secrets. Michael has no clue that Scottie is pregnant with somebody else’s kid. Scottie’s got no idea yet that her husband’s a covert CIA operative. After Scottie’s young Italian teacher vanishes, her quest to find him takes her to some dark truths about herself, her country, and her marriage.

Michael’s dedication is to saving the world from communism. However he is beginning to realize that he is merely a pawn in a much different game. Michael and Scottie, having been driven apart by lies, have to find their way through a maze of memory, history, hate, and love to a new sort of complex truth.

Half glamorous fun, half an examination of America’s role in the world, and full of sun-dappled pasta lunches, charming spies, prosecco, and horse racing, this is fun, dashing, sexy, and witty. It’s a fun read on many levels.

“Sally Brady’s Italian Adventure” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2023. What if you found yourself in the middle of a war armed with just lipstick and a sense of humor? Sally Brady (a dust bowl refugee) was abandoned as a child in Los Angeles back in 1931, and convinces a Hollywood movie star to adopt her, and she grows up to an effervescent gossip columnist that secretly satirized Europe’s upper crust. By 1940 saucy Sally is conquering Fascist-era Rome with charm and cheek.

One good deed leaves her stranded in wartime Italy brandishing a biting wit, her fake passport, and an elastic sense of wrong and right. In order to save her friends and find her way back home through a land of besieged villas and castles, she has to combat tragedy with comedy, force the cruel to be kind, tie up pompous bureaucrats in their own red tape, and unravel the mystery, weight, and meaning of her own family. Heir to Odysseus’ wiles and Cadide’s optimism, Sally Brady is a heroine for the 21st century.

“Pony Confidential” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2024. In a one-of-a-kind mystery with humor and heart, this hilariously grumpy pony has to save the one human he has ever loved after learning that she stands accused of a murder that he knows she did not commit.

Pony has been passed around from one owner to the next longer than he can even remember. Fed up, he busts out and heads out on this cross-country mission to reunite with Penny, that little girl that he got separated from and has not seen in years now.

Penny is now an adult and lives an ordinary life when she gets a knock on her door and finds herself in handcuffs, being accused of murder and is whisked back to the place that she grew up. Her one comfort once the past comes back to haunt her is the memory of her rebellious and precious pony.

Hearing about Penny’s fate, Pony knows that Penny’s no killer. So, as devious and smart as he is cute, this pony has to use his hard-won knowledge about human weakness and cruelty in an effort to clear her good name and locate the real killer.

This acutely observant and feel good mystery reveals the humanity of animals and beastliness of humans in this rollicking escapade of epic proportions.