Susan Fletcher Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Susan Fletcher b. 1979 UK

Born January 1st, 1979 in Birmingham, United Kingdom, Susan Fletcher attended the independent school Saint Martin’s School in Solihull, West Midlands, England.

Ms. Fletcher writes Historical Mysteries and History Fiction. (She is not to be confused with the author Susan Fletcher born in the US in 1951). She is a graduate of the esteemed University of East Anglia (UEA) Creative Writing Course.

Ms. Fletcher made a big splash with her first novel, Eve Green, which won the 2004 Whitbread Award for First Novel. Eve Green was also awarded the 2005 Betty Trask Prize and was shortlisted for the LA Times Book Award, and it was given the Authors’ Club Award.

Eve Green is pregnant with her first child and it’s bringing old memories to the surface. After her mother’s death when she was eight, she was sent to live with her grandparents in rural Wales. Her father, an Irish criminal had abandoned her mother, and she was forbidden to talk or ask questions about him.

She finds friendship with Billy, a reclusive friend of her mother’s and the reticent farmhand Daniel. When a lovely local girl goes missing, one of the men becomes the primary suspect. Evie will do anything she can to protect him, but at eight years old, she can’t fully understand the situation.

Evie is trying to understand her parents’ relationship with the mystery and romance. In the process she discovers longstanding family secrets and how suspicious the town folk are. Through her investigations, dramatic, scandalous decisions are exposed.

The Highland Witch (Originally published under the title Corrag: a Novel and also published in the UK under the title Witch Light) has been called an essential historical novel for Scottish history lovers.

On February 13th, 1692 thirty-eight Macdonald clan members were killed. The soldiers had, for ten days, been guests of the clan. Many more clan members fled to the mountains where they perished from the harsh winter weather.

After the Massacre of Glencoe rumors were flying. The Protestant King William was rumored to having been a part of the slaughter and the Irish propagandist Charles Leslie is anxious to get details that could condemn King William and enable the Catholic James to take the throne.

Fifty miles away, Corrag, an herbalist, who predicted the attack and tried to warn the Macdonald clan, is accused of being a witch and of being involved in the massacre. She’s imprisoned and is waiting until they will put her to death. She tells her story to Charles Leslie, and as he gets to know Corrag, Leslie begins to reexamine his beliefs and purpose in life.

She shares her personal story of courage, love, and the magic of her own natural world. The friendship that grows between Corrag and Leslie alters both of them in a permanent way. It’s an unexpected friendship and relationship coming from the most unlikely of situations.

The Silver Dark Sea is a contemporary story about life and what it can take from us as well as what it can give us. Four years ago Parla islanders suffered a loss that hadn’t healed. When a man with no name, no clothes, and no history is tossed onto their shores by the ocean, the community is changed.

He’s called a mythical sea man with powers of kindness and beauty. Of course there are those who don’t trust him and are suspicious of him. For Maggie, heartbroken and frozen in time, this mysterious stranger gives love to the island and her. Every one of the islanders is changed by him. Eventually he tells his story…

Ms. Fletcher did a YouTube interview with the release of her book The Silver Dark Sea. We are allowed a wonderful, personal glimpse into the author’s world and method of writing this particular novel.

Her inspiration for the location of this story was when she lived for awhile on the western coast of Scotland in the Highlands. Ms. Fletcher was able to capture many descriptions of nature such as the wind, smells, animals, and textures of living on the wild coast. She declared that Nature is a character unto itself in this story.

The main theme of this novel is story telling. Many little stories are contained within this story. One, about the island of Merm, has no stories left to tell because all the inhabitants have moved off the island, which imbues a certain sadness about it.

On the frontispiece of the book there is a detailed family tree. Ironically the family tree was added after the fact. Ms. Fletcher drew a large family tree for her own use to help her keep track of the twenty-two individual characters while she was writing. It morphed into an artistic element when the book was printed.

She found herself emotionally connected to her characters. Ms. Fletcher would have a good cry, get a tissue and a cup of tea and get back to it. When she is writing her novels she doesn’t share it with anyone. She feels it’s so delicate that with one good kick from someone it would fall apart.

Ms. Fletcher has been complimented for her ability to give accurate and realistic voices to her characters. Older and younger men, children, women; they all have their own voice. She said she managed this by spending time writing out in public. She would listen to conversations, not to eavesdrop but to get clues on how people talk and how they talk to each other. She gets the emotions behind their words. Sitting in a pub full of guys gave her the opportunity to hear how guys talk to each other and what they talk about.

In the last six weeks of writing the book she had to really push hard to get it done. She was sleeping maybe five or six hours a night; it was all consuming. When she finished it and got it sent off she went to a pub to relax. She looked out a window and in the carpark thought she saw one of her characters standing there. With twenty-two distinct characters she was so involved; it took awhile to unwind from that.

Her other novels were shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild fiction, the John Llewellyn Rhys, and the Romantic Novel of the Year awards. Ms. Fletcher’s novel Witch Light (aka The Highland Witch in the US) was awarded the Saint Maur en Poche 2013 in France.

More recently, 2016-2018, she was a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund at the University of Worcester.