Hope Adams Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Hope Adams
Hope Adams is the pen name of Adele Geras. She was born in 1944 in Jerusalem and spent her early childhood in so many different countries since her dad was in the Colonial Service. Before she’d even turned eleven, she had lived in Nigeria, North Borneo, and Cyprus, and later her parents also got sent to Tanganyika (which is now Tanzania) and the Gambia where she would join them on her summer holidays.

She went to a boarding school in England (Roedean School, Brighton) in 1955 and went on to read Spanish and French at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. She graduated in 1966.

She has been a singer, a French teacher, and actress in a girls’ school in Manchester before she became a full time writer in the year 1976. Since then she has published over 90 books for kids and young adults. She’s also written 4 novels for adults.

For “Dangerous Women”, she tried sticking closely to the known facts of the real voyage, even though she did take the liberty of adding in a crime and a ticking clock in order to keep readers captivated and glued to the story. The actual voyage was a much more peaceful and uneventful one overall. Which would never do for a novel.

Hope did alter the timings of certain things, however otherwise, she added in the crime aspect, which she hopes she’ll be excused for since she is writing a novel. She decided it was best not to use any of the real women’s names.

It took her quite a lot of editorial interventions and shiftings around of huge slabs of narrative before they could finally fix on an order. Hope always had this back and forth structure and this order which she believed would be fine however there were others involved that made it even better. Both her USA and her UK editors worked on it together, which was the most efficient, but she did have a bit of juggling of scenes. The time scheme had to be carefully worked out to get it just right. Hope slightly changed the actual timing of the love affair in order to suit her plot. Putting the actual knifing right at the beginning came quite late on, however she hopes that it still works.

Besides Kezia Hayter, James Donovan, Charles Ferguson, and the Reverend Davies, the rest of the women that show up in the novel are fully of Hope’s own imagination.

The real people are in the novel since she did not see any reason to leave them out. Charles is especially important to the plot and together they provided a ready-made panel of judges.

She had the idea to write about the Rajah Quilt ever since she first saw it in 2009 in the V&A museum in this exhibition called QUILTS. She began writing it in earnest in the year 2017.

The novel went through so many titles before landing on “Dangerous Women”. It has been called “Miss Hayter’s Company”, “Great Waters”, “The Work of their Hands”, as well as others. “CONVICTION” was considered to be a good title, but Hope never cared for it, because Denise Mina had a novel with the same title, which came out shortly before Hope’s novel did. It was just when Reese Witherspoon selected Mina’s novel for her book club that her American editor told Hope they couldn’t have two novels with the same title so close together, since no book club would pick it. So they came up with “Dangerous Women”, which Hope loves and is a perfect title for this novel.

Hope has loved and been interested in patchwork her entire adult life. “Apricots at Midnight”, one of the first books she wrote for children, which was about an old lady telling these stories based on the patches in this quilt she had. She regards patchwork to be a wonderful metaphor for life as well as a beautiful craft and art form. She loves the history of patchwork which is a very ancient way of preserving memories and using and reusing what you have at hand.

“Dangerous Women” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2021. Almost two hundred condemned women hop onto a transport ship bound for Australia. One of them is a murderer. Hope Adams delivers a thrilling novel based on the 1841 voyage of the Rajah (the convict ship) about hope, confinement, and the horrible things that we do in order to survive.

London in 1841. 180 Englishwomen file onto the Rajah, embarking on their three month voyage clear to the other side of the world. They are moms, daughters, and sisters. Not to mention convicts. All being transported for petty crimes. But one of them has got a deadly secret, and will do anything in order to flee from justice.

While the Rajah continues sailing farther away from land, these women forge a rather tenuous kinship. Up until, during the middle of the unforgiving and cold sea, one young mom gets mortally wounded, and the hunt’s then on for the assailant before she or he can strike again.

Each of these women get called in for questioning and they’ve all got something to fear: Is she going to be the one attacked next? Is she going to be believed? Because far from the land, there is nowhere to flee, and how can you prove innocence when you have already been found guilty?

This novel is a perfect recreation of a rather unique moment in time. It is an examination of the shocking treatment of women in our not that distant past. “Dangerous Women” is a must read for lovers of fearless historical fiction. It’s a dazzling novel, and Hope takes the fascinating history of a convict ship and she brings it to such life in a captivating tale that is filled with dark secrets and intrigue. Hope delivers an immensely satisfying story of innocence, guilt, and second chances. Hope’s debut is a moving, thought provoking, and heartbreaking novel that really shakes you right to your core.