Elizabeth Day Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Anthologies

Elizabeth Day is best known as a broadcaster, podcaster, and award-winning novelist from the United Kingdom.

Her award-winning podcast “How to Fail” is a celebration of things that have gone wrong. She has had the honor of hosting some very famous guests.

Some of the people who have been on her podcast include; Malcolm Gladwell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kazuo Ishiguro, Gloria Steinem, Mabel and Lily Allen. The podcast was the winner of the 2019 British Podcast Awards for Rising Star Award.
Day published “Scissors Paper Stone,” her debut novel in 2012. It was an award-winning novel as it won the Debut Novelist Betty Trask Award.

Reviewers at the “Sunday Telegraph” called in a conscientious and thoughtful new voice in fiction. Those at “The Guardian” praised the engaging writing style. She now has at least a dozen works published and is not slowing down any time soon.

Day was brought up in Belfast Northern Ireland and was lucky that her parents loved books. As such, she lived in a house where there was no lack of books.

Growing up, a lot of emphasis was placed on the written word and her parents used to read to her at bedtime.

When she was four years old, she told her parents that she intended to become an author. Given her parents’ background, they believed in her ambition and did not laugh at her.
When she was seven, she decided that she was more interested in journalism. At 12, she began writing to local newspaper editors. Elizabeth Day was asking if they were in need of a twelve-year-old columnist as she was ready to go.
Most editors were amused at her youthful precociousness but ultimately, “Derry Journal” would offer her a fortnightly column.

Getting contracted to write for a well-known publication and getting paid gave her a sense of independence and satisfaction and fuelled her ambition.
She still remembers how she got that £72 check which she used to buy her first ever pair of purple laced Doc Martin Boots.

Later on, Elizabeth Day got her Double First degree in History from Cambridge University.

She would then proceed to work for several magazines in the United Kingdom. Over the years, she has worked for “The Sunday Telegraph,” “The Evening Standard,” and “The Observer,” where she wrote features for nearly a decade.
Day has also won the British Press Awards Young Journalist of the Year Award while working for “The Telegraph.”
When she left “The Telegraph,” she went on to work for several publications.

From 2018 to 2021 she worked for “The Mail on Sunday’s” “You Magazine,” where she penned a weekly column. While she was working for “The Observer” as a feature writer between 2007 and 2016, she won the Feature Writer of the Year.

Elizabeth Day was inspired to launch her podcast “How to Fail” following a romantic breakup barely a month before she turned 39.

It had been the first long-term relationship she had ever since she was divorced and she was feeling like a total failure when it happened.

She was about to head into her forties and was divorced, single, and did not have children which she desperately wanted. Day’s life was different from what she had always dreamed it would be at that time.
She was then listening to all manner of podcasts as music seemed to echo much of her heartbreak. It was from the “Where Should We Begin Podcast” by Esther Perel that she realized that there was a lot of potential in honest and intimate conversations.
She believed it would be interesting to get people to talk about failures for a change in contrast to all the success podcasts out there.

Elizabeth Day’s novel “Magpie” tells the story of Jake and Marisa, who are the perfect couple, and their new lodger Kate, who is the perfect roommate.

They like her not because her tent will provide the income that they need so that they can have some security while trying for a baby but because she is just a good person.
But that does not mean she is perfect, as she is sometimes too familiar with Jake and does not care about personal boundaries.

But since Marisa believes that Kate will soon be gone, she does not let it concern her. However, conceiving a baby is not that easy and Marisa and Jake’s perfect relationship is tested to the limit through months of false starts and fertility treatments.
Meanwhile, Kate has been pushing boundaries and it seems she has now become obsessed with Marisa, Jake, and their future child. Just who is Kate and why does she seem knowledgeable about everything to do with Jake and Marisa?
Trying to learn more about their tenant, Marisa might just destroy everything including her perfect self, her perfect family, and her perfect romance.
On his part, Jake remains unaware of what Marisa stands to lose following the chaos she has created.

“The Party” by Elizabeth Day tells the story of outsider Martin Gilmour.

He has just won a scholarship and will be going to Burtonbury School. He is terrified since he does not have the right kind of accent and does not wear the right clothes.

However, he meets Ben Fitzmaurice the wealthy, popular, and dazzling man who introduces him to an exclusive world. Before long, Martin is living a life of Easter egg hunts and tennis parties at the luxurious and massive Fitzmaurice family estate.
Ben is like the brother he never had. However, Martin knows a dark secret about his new friend that will bind them together for the better part of a quarter century.

At the 40th birthday of his best friend, the good and the great of British society come together to celebrate in a haze of glamour, drugs, and champagne.

Amid the hundreds of guests that include the newly rich, the politicians, the old money, and the celebrities, Martin once again gets a feel of what it is not to belong. Lucy his wife has her reservations and there is a lot of disquiet.
However, she believes Ben would never do anything that would destroy their relationship but he may just be wrong.

Elizabeth Day’s work “How to Fail” is a part manifesto, part memoir that has chapters on friendship, dating, anger, work, families, sports, and babies.

The work is based on the premise that we only get stronger when we understand why we fail. It is all about not being afraid and learning all we can from our mistakes. These are rich, inspiring, and uplifting stories from the author’s own life.
It asserts that we are not defined by failure but rather by our responses to failure which is what shapes us. For Elizabeth Day, learning how to fail makes one better at success.
The reason for this is that failure teaches us many important lessons that you can never learn when you are successful.