Donna Douglas Books In Order

Publication Order of Nightingales Books

Publication Order of Steeple Street Books

Publication Order of Yorkshire Blitz Books

Donna Douglas is a Sunday Times bestselling writer of Romance and historical fiction author of the Nightingale books. She was raised in South London, where she started making up stories seated in the coal shed in their backyard. She creates heartwarming sagas whose settings are in wartime Britain.

Books have always been a rare material in her family, but she got inspired through watching storytellers on TV. The Nightingale novels are set in a hospital in 1930’s East London, which turned out as a success.

Nightingale Girls
Nightingale Girls is the first in the Nightingale series. They are girls of Nightingale Teaching Hospital located in London. The novel opens up in the 1930s, centering around three students, Helen Millie and Dora. The three are so different with varying experiences and backgrounds but brought together by their goal to be nurses.

Helen is always quiet and loves to study, and she is referred to as tell-tale. The rest of the girls don’t trust her because of her formidable mother, a Trustee of the Hospital, and rules the staff and her daughter with an iron fist. She doesn’t have many friends and keeps everything by herself, and deep down, she’s unhappy. Her controlling mother monitors every aspect of her life so that she feels good when she gets a chance to live a life of her own far from her mother.

Dora comes from a humble background in a working-class district. In Nightingale, she is looked down upon by some students in the college. Coming from a tough life, she has fought hard to get far from home, especially away from her abusive step-father. She’s so passionate and determined to be a nurse as it’s her career choice, not that someone forced her into it.

It also helps her escape her poor home setting, but with no money to buy textbooks, can Dora keep the pace of the other students after she’s left behind in her students since she can’t get the books?

Millie is the beloved daughter of her parents, and she is carefree and flippant, and most people believe that she’ll never qualify to become a nurse. She is a carefree girl, often arriving at school late after night outs. She is already repeating the preliminary training after failing, and this time, she realizes that she needs to get serious with her studies. Can she be more focused and prove that she has what it takes to be a nurse? The three girls come together to form an odd alliance and slowly open up to each other as they spend 14 hours a day washing bed sheets and spreading beds.

They are on their feet all day in uncomfortable shoes and heavy uniforms, and to make matters worse, the sister of the ward treats them so low. They share a cold attic room, and all appear to be running from something that they need each other’s help

The author has weaved three fascinating characters filled with fun, pain, honesty, and sadness. She seems to have done enough research concerning the lives of student nurses in the 1930s, which made the story more compelling. Despite the hardship in the novel, the story captures the youthful, fun student experience as it covers stories from mishaps, impossible patients, cover-ups, and arrogant doctors.

Each student has their own story, which makes the story interesting. Every character is well developed, and the author lets the reader learn more about them while cheering them on to see each make it through nursing. The story gets you sucked in the right from the beginning with its amazing storyline.
Nightingale Sisters

Nightingale Sisters is the second in the Nightingale series and picks up from where the Nightingale girls ended. The girls are at the start of their second year in nursing school, and the ward sisters keep on making life more difficult for them. The student nurses at the Nightingale hospital find the ward sisters so frightening and heartless with odd standards. The sisters also appear to have problems of their own which they are dealing with at the moment.

Violet is one of the new sisters, and she isn’t all she appears to be. Who might she be, and what dark secret might she be keeping? Her story is fascinating, and her friendship with the matron shows the matron’s good and human side. As the story opens up and the mystery becomes complex, Sister Wren is determined to find the truth.

On the other hand, Millie is a nurse student stuck in between two men in her love life. But when she builds a friendship with an older patient, it makes her doubt her heart and wonders about her future. Dora is Millie’s fellow student trying to hide her secret, and after the heartbreak over Nick, the man she was interested in left to date her friend. When a new person comes to the ward, she sees this as a chance to smile back at her face. Can she be able to get over Nick so fast?

Just when the nation is still mourning the death of King George V, it appears everything isn’t going to be the same again, especially for the ladies at the Nightingale. Millie and Dora try working through their family issues as they build their relationship, and the author shows more of their home lives while bringing out their dedication and resilience.

The compelling story also discusses spousal abuse and backstreet abortionists, racism, and Blackshirt rising. It reveals how deep racism and hatred are still present among people who grew up together. The protests and fear brought by the Blackshirts focus on the high-ranking sisters who have been the lifeblood of Nightingale for many years and maintain the war. Sisters who prefer staying on night duties instead of taking rotation rounds, Nurses who clean the wards and patients before doctors attend to their wounds.

The novel also reveals the life of the student nurses as those on probation shower with cold water since by the time it’s their turn to go to the bathroom, no hot water is remaining. The senior nurses learn what it means to the patients to ‘be made comfortable’ in the wards. There is despair in the patients, some fearing their fate while others have given up on life, but there is compassion and kindness in it all.