Lizzie Pook Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Lizzie Pook
Lizzie Pook is an award winning journalist and writer. She started her career in women’s magazines, covering everything from conspiracy theorists to cognitive enhancing drugs. In the year 2015, she moved into travel journalism, reporting for publications like Rough Guides, The Sunday Times, Lonely Planet, and Conde Nast Traveller.

She was born in Salisbury, a tiny city in southern England. Growing up it was a lovely and peaceful little place where not too much happened. Her parents were each social workers and each readers. Her father used to head to the library every weekend and return with bags of books for everybody to read.

She attended university in Wales before moving to London in order to complete her Master’s degree in journalism.

Lizzie’s assignments have taken her to some of the most remote parts of the world, from the haunting mountains of the trans-Himalayas to track some endangered snow leopards to the uninhabited east coast of Greenland in searching for roaming polar bears.

“The Secret History” by Donna Tartt pulled Lizzie out of a gigantic reading slump which plagued her late teens/early twenties. She had fallen out of the habit of reading at all, and had kinda lost her love for books. Then she picked a copy of this book off of her mom’s bookshelf and got obsessed. It reignited her passion for storytelling. She feels pretty grateful for that novel.

“Life of Pi” by Yann Martel, she believes, is evidence that the best things come to you when you take risks and push the boundaries of what’s expected form you. And that there is wonder to be found in things which could initially just be dismissed as ridiculous.

“Do No Harm” by Henry Marsh (a brain surgeon), reminds her that writing books is a privilege, and not a life or death situation. This helps her alleviate the pressures when stress threatens to get on top of her or if she is banging her head against the desk attempting to find the right word for something.

Authors that she admires include Sarah Collins, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Jessie Burton, Elizabeth Macneal, and Hannah Kent. But she also just admires any writer that sits their bum down in the chair to write. Particularly those that have battled for a long time to get published, and still (in the face of all that rejection) continue putting their souls and hearts into telling these stories. Writing can be gruelling and lonely, and to keep on going when there is no guarantee that your work is going to be read by others takes a lot of guts. She respects that.

Lizzie was inspired to write “Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter”, her debut book, after she spent time in northwestern Australia researching the fascinating and dangerous pearl diving industry.

It took her a countless amount of drafts to get the novel into a state that she felt was decent enough to show another person. Now she knows that her first drafts are going to be horrible and she accepts that. Because she also knows that she can make them better by redrafting and redrafting. It takes the tyranny of the blank page when you know going in that it doesn’t have to be perfect from the start.

And having been a journalist for so long, there is something pretty appealing to the fact that a novel can be redrafted so many times. With journalism, you often just have a few hours to write a piece in a panic and then ping it is off into the ether. She also loves the immersive research process that can come with writing a novel, seeing new places and uncovering some hidden stories. For this novel, she spent a ton of time in Western Australia, one of her absolute favorite places on earth. Getting the chance to travel and then write about what she has found out is a dream come true.

“Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2022. Fortune favors the brave in Lizzie Pook’s mesmerizing debut novel. A feminist adventure story set against the dangerous backdrop of the dangerous pearl diving industry during 19th century Western Australia. About this young English woman that sets out to uncover the truth surrounding her eccentric dad’s disappearance.

Bannin Bay, Australia, in 1886. The Brightwell family has sailed all the way from England in order to make their new home in Western Australia. Eliza, ten years old, knows very little of what’s waiting for them on these shores beyond shells as big as soup plates and shining pearls, which her dad’s promised are going to make their fortune.

Charles Brightwell, ten years later, is now the bay’s most prolific pearler, disappears from his ship while he’s out at sea. Whispers from townsfolk suggest murder and mutiny, however the headstrong Eliza, who is convinced there’s a lot more to this story, refuses to believe that her dad’s dead, and it falls upon her to ask the questions that nobody else dares to even consider.

However a town teeming with blackmail, corruption, and blackmail, she quickly discovers that the truth can cost even more than just pearls, and she’ll have to decide just how much she’s willing to pay, and just how far she’s willing to go, in order to find it.

A transporting feminist adventure tale that is based on Lizzie’s deep research conducted into the pearling industry and the era of British colonial rule in Australia, this is ultimately about the lengths that one woman will travel in order to save her family.

Lizzie, right from the very first line, draws you fully into its gritty yet captivating landscape. This novel paints a memorable portrait of sacrifice, ambition, and corruption while also exploring personal loss as your driving force.

Readers found this to be breathtaking, gritty, and lyrical and they just could not put it down for very long, drawn by its wealth of historical detail and vividly drawn characters. This is a lush mystery with a unique and vivid setting, wondrous prose, some layered characters, and this satisfying conclusion. Lizzie has created a historical adventure novel that you will not soon forget.