Lisa Jewell is a best-selling British author who writes romance and suspense thrillers. Jewell was born in 1968 in London. She grew up in Totteridge, North London, as the oldest of three sisters. Jewell attended North London’s St. Michael’s Catholic Grammar School. She did not, however, complete her education.
She also studied Fashion Illustration at the Epsom School of Art & Design. Jewell used her skills to land a career in the fashion retail industry, including at Warehouse.
Her first work was written based on a bet. If she wrote three chapters, a friend promised her dinner at her favorite restaurant. The challenge was accepted by Jewell.
She wrote largely for amusement in those early days. Jewell continued to write after she had met Yasmin’s goal. She cranked out chapters that she forwarded to her Australian friend to read. She had no intention of submitting the manuscript for publication.
She believes that her attitude at the time contributed to the success of ‘Ralph’s Party.’
She changed in the years after that, diving into the psychological thriller genre. The transition took place over time. Every novel the author wrote was darker than the one before it.
She was soon confident enough in her abilities to begin killing some characters. Jewell gets her ideas from the things she sees in her daily life. The author is not a planner and wants her story to take her by surprise.
Lisa Jewell Books in order
Ralph’s Party
Standalone Novel Novel
- Thirtynothing (2000)
- One-Hit Wonder (2000)
- Roommates Wanted / 31 Dream Street (2000)
- A Friend of the Family (2003)
- Vince & Joy (2005)
- The Truth About Melody Brown (2009)
- The Making of Us (2011)
- Before I Met You (2012)
- The House I Grew Up In (2013)
- The Third Wife (2014)
- The Girls / The Girls in the Garden (2015)
- I Found You (2016)
- Then She Was Gone (2018)
- You Watching (2018)
- The Family Upstairs (2019)
- The Invisible Girl (2020)
- The Night She Disappeared (2021)
Similar authors
Verity by Colleen Hoover follows a struggling writer on the verge of financial collapse. She accepts an incredible employment offer.
Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris features a woman held prisoner by her husband.
See also: The After series Books in Order.
Most recommended books:
- The Family Remains (The Family Upstairs, #2) (4.29 Goodreads score)
- The Night She Disappeared (4.17 Goodreads score)
- Then She Was Gone (4.06 Goodreads score)
- The Family Upstairs (The Family Upstairs, #1) (3.96 Goodreads score)
- I Found You (3.96 Goodreads score)
Awards
Lisa Jewell won the Melissa Nathan Award in 2008.
Upcoming releases
The upcoming book by Lisa Jewell is called The Family Remains. It will be released on July, 21st 2022. It’s the third book of The Family Upstairs Series.
Book summaries
Ralph’s Party (1999)
Meet the residents of the London brownstone on 31 Almanac Road who together weave a tangled web of romance. Ralph, a ne’er-do-well artist, suddenly realizes he’s head over heels in love with his new flatmate Jem, the most fun and sensible girl he’s ever encountered. Unfortunately, Ralph’s best friend, Smith, has already won Jem’s affections, although Smith has not entirely given up his passion for the femme fatale, Cheri, who lives upstairs. Across the hall, Karl and Siobhan have been happily unmarried for years, until Karl gets a smashing job as a London rush-hour DJ and momentarily gets tempted into Cheri’s cozy lair.These six star-crossed tenants become more enamored, and more confused, as the story progresses-until their true destinies are revealed on one crucial night-the evening of the extravaganza that is . . . Ralph’s party.
After the Party (2010)
Eleven years ago, Jem Catterick and Ralph McLeary fell deeply in love. They thought it would be forever, that they’d found their happy ending. As everyone agreed, they were the perfect couple. Then two became four, and an apartment became a house. Romantic nights out became sleepless nights in. And they soon found that life wasn’t quite so simple anymore. But through it all, Jem and Ralph still loved each other. Of course they did.Now Jem is back at work part-time as a talent agent. Ralph, a successful painter, is struggling to come up with new, hopefully groundbreaking, work for his upcoming show. But the unimaginable has happened. Two people who were so right together are starting to drift apart. And in the chaos of family life, Jem feels like she’s losing herself, while Ralph, stuck on the sidelines, feels like he’s lost his muse altogether. Something has to change. As they try to find a way back to each other, back to what they once had, they both become momentarily distracted—but maybe it’s not too late to recapture happily ever after…
Thirtynothing (2000)
On his thirtieth birthday, Dig Ryan bumps into his first love Delilah, whom he hasn’t seen in twelve years. Delilah was the most beautiful girl in school and a constant thorn-in-the-side of Nadine, who has been Dig’s best friend for the last fifteen years. Nadine isn’t about to let Delilah outshine and outmaneuver her again . . . which is when she calls her first love, Phil . . . .A buoyant novel about friendship, lust, growing up, and growing older, thirtynothing is sure to delight fans of Ralph’s Party and to win this hip, thirtysomething author a wealth of new readers.
One-Hit Wonder (2000)
Shy and gawky, Ana has always daydreamed about living the life of her exotic half-sister, Bee, a pop singer who had a #1 hit single before she inexplicable vanished from the celebrity scene. When Bee turns up dead, and Ana is dispatched to the big city to clear out her apartment. Instantly seduced by the secondhand glamour of Bee’s baubles, bangles and bottles of Pierre-Jouet, Ana takes up with Bee’s wild club-hopping cronies. News of a missing cat and a remote country cottage soon convince Ana that her sister was leading a secret life. Now Ana is on a mission to discover what really happened to Bee Bearhom, the one-hit wonder–and what is about to happen to the unremarkable Ana Wills.
Roommates Wanted / 31 Dream Street (2000)
1990. Please write and tell me why you should live here.Toby Dobbs received a big Victorian house with too many bedrooms to count as a wedding present from his father, but his marriage is over within a month. Very alone, and very lonely, Toby posts an advertisement seeking the “Unexpectedly Alone” to become his roommates. Fifteen years later the wayward souls he takes in are still living with him, with no intention of leaving.2004. Please tell me how I can convince you to move out.Toby Dobbs has met Leah Pilgrim from across the road, and they’re falling in love. But before they can begin a new life together, Toby and Leah must help Toby’s house of sweet slackers and lovelorn misfits grow up, solve their problems, and set themselves free. But can their new relationship survive the test?
A Friend of the Family (2003)
Meet the Londons, a family in need of a friend. Gerry and Bernie London are proud parents of Tony, Sean and Ned, three wayward lads whose lives have suddenly reached crisis points. The Londons also have a new lodger a mysterious rockabilly called Gervase. Will he turn out to be a friend or foe to the family?
Vince & Joy (2005)
Remember falling in love for the first time? Remember thinking, This is The One? Remember life getting in the way? From adolescent snogging to apartment shares, relationships, career crises, and children, Vince & Joy is the unforgettable story of two lives lived separately but forever entwined.Back in the 1980s, teenagers Vince and Joy met, fell desperately in love, and never quite said good-bye. Now nearly twenty years later they’ve both begun to ask themselves if that long-ago romance was the enduring love that they’ve been searching for.
The Truth About Melody Brown (2009)
When she was a child, Melody Browne’s house burned down, destroying all her family’s possessions and her memories. Ever since this tragic event, Melody Browne has had no recollection of her life before she was rescued from the flames.Now in her early thirties, Melody is a single mother, living in the middle of London with her teenaged son. She hasn’t seen her parents since she left home at fifteen, but Melody has no desire to reconnect until one night, while attending a hypnotist show with a date, she faints. When she comes around, she is suddenly overwhelmed with fragmented memories of her life before that fateful fire.Slowly, she begins the arduous process of piecing together the real story of her childhood. Her journey takes her up and down the countryside, to seaside towns to the back streets of London, where she meets strangers who seem to love her like their own. But the more answers she uncovers, the more questions she is left with, and Melody can’t help but wonder if she’ll ever know the whole truth about her past
The Making of Us (2011)
Lydia, Dean, and Robyn don’t know one another. Yet. Each is facing difficult challenges. Lydia is still wearing the scars from her traumatic childhood. Wealthy and successful, she leads a lonely and disjointed existence. Dean is a young, unemployed, single dad whose life is going nowhere. Robyn is eighteen. Gorgeous, popular, and intelligent, she entered her first year of college confident of her dream to become a pediatrician. Now she’s failing her classes. Now she’s falling in love for the first time.Lydia, Dean, and Robyn live very different lives, but each of them, independently, has always felt that something was missing. What they don’t know is that a letter is about to arrive that will turn their lives upside down. It is a letter containing a secret—one that will bind them together and show them what love and family and friendship really mean.
Before I Met You (2012)
After her grandmother Arlette’s death, Betty is finally ready to begin her life. She had forfeited university, parties, boyfriends, summer jobs—all the usual preoccupations of a woman her age—in order to care for Arlette in their dilapidated, albeit charming home on the English island of Guernsey. Her will included a beneficiary unknown to Betty and her family, a woman named Clara Pickle who presumably could be found at a London address. Now, having landed on a rather shabby street corner in ’90s Soho, Betty is determined to find the mysterious Clara. She’s ready for whatever life has to throw her way. Or so she thinks…In 1920s bohemian London, Arlette De La Mare is starting her new life in a time of postwar change. Beautiful and charismatic, she is soon drawn into the hedonistic world of the Bright Young People. But two years after her arrival in London, tragedy strikes and she flees back to her childhood home and remains there for the rest of her life.As Betty navigates the ups and downs of city life and begins working as a nanny for a rock star tabloid magnet, her search for Clara leads her to a man—a stranger to Betty, but someone who meant the world to her grandmother. Will the secrets of Arlette’s past help Betty find her own way to happiness in the present?A rich detective story and a captivating look at London then and now, Before I Met You is an unforgettable novel about two very different women, separated by seventy years, but united by big hearts and even bigger dreams.
The House I Grew Up In (2013)
Our House.Our Family.Our Secret.Meet the picture-perfect Bird family: pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and towheaded twins Rory and Rhys, one an adventurous troublemaker, the other his slighter, more sensitive counterpart. Their father is a sweet, gangly man, but it’s their beautiful, free-spirited mother Lorelei who spins at the center. In those early years, Lorelei tries to freeze time by filling their simple brick house with precious mementos. Easter egg foils are her favorite. Craft supplies, too. She hangs all of the children’s art, to her husband’s chagrin.Then one Easter weekend, a tragedy so devastating occurs that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass and the children have become adults, while Lorelei has become the county’s worst hoarder. She has alienated her husband and children and has been living as a recluse. But then something happens that beckons the Bird family back to the house they grew up in—to finally understand the events of that long-ago Easter weekend and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home
The Third Wife (2014)
In the early hours of a summer morning, a young woman steps into the path of an oncoming bus. A tragic accident? Or suicide?At the center of this puzzle is Adrian Wolfe, a successful architect and grief-stricken widower, who, a year after his third wife’s death, begins to investigate the cause. As Adrian looks back on their brief but seemingly happy marriage, disturbing secrets begin to surface. The divorces from his two previous wives had been amicable, or so it seemed; his children, all five of them, were resilient as ever, or so he thought. But something, or someone, must have pushed Maya over the edge.
The Girls / The Girls in the Garden (2015)
You live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people’s houses.You’ve known your neighbours for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe.But are they really?Midsummer night: a thirteen-year-old girl is found unconscious in a dark corner of the garden square. What really happened to her? And who is responsible?
I Found You (2016)
In the windswept British seaside town of Ridinghouse Bay, single mom Alice Lake finds a man sitting on a beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside.Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, newlywed Lily Monrose grows anxious when her husband fails to return home from work one night. Soon, she receives even worse news: according to the police, the man she married never even existed.Twenty-three years earlier, Gray and Kirsty Ross are teenagers on a summer holiday with their parents. The annual trip to Ridinghouse Bay is uneventful, until an enigmatic young man starts paying extra attention to Kirsty. Something about him makes Gray uncomfortable—and it’s not just because he’s a protective older brother.Who is the man on the beach? Where is Lily’s missing husband? And what ever happened to the man who made such a lasting and disturbing impression on Gray?
Then She Was Gone (2018)
Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was fifteen, the youngest of three. Beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers, and half of a teenaged golden couple. Ellie was days away from an idyllic post-exams summer vacation, with her whole life ahead of her… And then she was gone.Now, her mother Laurel Mack is trying to put her life back together. It’s been ten years since her daughter disappeared, seven years since her marriage ended, and only months since the last clue in Ellie’s case was unearthed. So when she meets an unexpectedly charming man in a café, no one is more surprised than Laurel at how quickly their flirtation develops into something deeper. Before she knows it, she’s meeting Floyd’s daughters—and his youngest, Poppy, takes Laurel’s breath away.Because looking at Poppy is like looking at Ellie. And now, the unanswered questions she’s tried so hard to put to rest begin to haunt Laurel anew. Where did Ellie go? Did she really run away from home, as the police have long suspected, or was there a more sinister reason for her disappearance? Who is Floyd, really? And why does his daughter remind Laurel so viscerally of her own missing girl?
You Watching (2018)
You’re back home after four years working abroad, new husband in tow. You’re keen to find a place of your own. But for now, you’re crashing in your big brother’s spare room…That’s when you meet the man next door. He’s the head teacher at the local school. Twice your age. Extraordinarily attractive.You find yourself watching him. All the time. But you never dreamed that your innocent crush might become a deadly obsession.Or that someone is watching you.
The Family Upstairs (2019)
Be careful who you let in.Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.
The Invisible Girl (2020)
Young Saffyre Maddox spent three years under the care of renowned child psychologist Roan Fours. When Dr. Fours decides their sessions should end, Saffyre feels abandoned. She begins looking for ways to connect with him, from waiting outside his office to walking through his neighborhood late at night. She soon learns more than she ever wanted to about Roan and his deceptively perfect family life. On a chilly Valentine’s night, Saffyre will disappear, taking any secrets she has learned with her.Owen Pick’s life is falling apart. In his thirties and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct—accusations he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel forums, where he meets a charismatic and mysterious figure.Owen lives across the street from the Fours family. The Fours have a bad feeling about their neighbor; Owen is a bit creepy and suspect and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night. Could Owen be responsible? What happened to the beautiful missing Saffyre, and does her disappearance truly connect them all?
The Night She Disappeared (2021)
On a beautiful summer night in a charming English suburb, a young woman and her boyfriend disappear after partying at the massive country estate of a new college friend.One year later, a writer moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods that border the same estate. Known locally as the Dark Place, the dense forest is the writer’s favorite area for long walks and it’s on one such walk that she stumbles upon a mysterious note that simply reads, “DIG HERE.”Could this be a clue towards what has happened to the missing young couple? And what exactly is buried in this haunted ground?
