Frances Crawford Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Frances Crawford is a Scottish published author.

The author has always been passionate about lifelong learning and has advocated for it to others. Frances decided to take her own advice and was happy to graduate in 2022 at age sixty after having attended Glasgow University with her MLitt in Creative Writing.

Frances was declared the winner of the Bloody Scotland/Glencairn Crime Short Story Competition in 2023. The first chapters of her book A Bad, Bad Place also won the Highly Commended category in Moniack Mohr Emerging Writer.

The author grew up in North Glasgow. She gives credit to the people of Milton and Possilpark as being her writing inspiration. She resides in Glasgow to this day with her family. She enjoys libraries and punk rock.

A Bad, Bad Place is a 2026 novel by Frances Crawford. This is a debut story that features a young working class girl living in Glasgow in 1979. When she comes upon the body of a dead woman, she will have to deal with a community that wants answers and face herself while also keeping an eye out for a murderer. If you love thrillers, you will really like this book!

Main character Janey Devine is twelve years old and would have never stumbled over a corpse if it were not for her small dog named Sid Vicious. Samantha Watson is dead as dead can be, and Janey was the one to find her. Now she’s going to have a much tougher time sleeping at night.

Maybe if she hadn’t found that body, her nana would not be so constantly worried. Maybe Billy “The Ghost” Watson would not be after her so much, as the notorious gangster was now fully on her tail. The reason why he is so charged up is obvious. Billy’s daughter was the one who was left on those train tracks for dead, and Billy is someone who now wants answers as to why.

Gossip and fear are making their way through the community in Possilpark, which is fairly tight knit and close together. Janey cannot remember the details from that morning but despite her being truthful the cops still believe that she’s hiding something. They might be right, though, because there is something that she does actually know that she is not ready to share with anyone. Janey would not even want to tell her nana, who is upset by all of this and cannot rest until all of this is behind them.

Full of suspense and filled with humor, this debut questions who did this murder while also telling of a young girl who is coming of age. This is a picture of a working class neighborhood that combines Janey’s innocence and candor with the wisdom of her nana. The result is a tale of people just trying to survive that shows the arrival of a new voice in crime fiction. Check out A Bad, Bad Place to find out what happens!