Author Guide · Historical Fiction
Books Written by
Before her first novel came out in 2012, Beatriz Williams spent years as a communications and corporate strategy consultant in New York and London, with an MBA in finance from Columbia. Since then she has published a historical novel almost every summer. Most of them run on two timelines: a Greenwich Village speakeasy in 1924 and the same building in 1998; a murder on a New England island in 1951 and its reckoning in 1969; a diplomat’s wife in Cairo in 1951 and a mother searching for a kidney donor in 2022. The same families and places keep coming back, above all the Schuylers and the fictional Winthrop Island. She also writes as Juliana Gray, and has co-written five novels with Karen White and Lauren Willig. This guide covers her 11 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 11 key books · 2012–2026 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Beatriz Williams has published 18 novels under her own name, from Overseas (2012) to When You Loved Me (2026). Her best-known are A Hundred Summers (2013), The Secret Life of Violet Grant (2014), The Summer Wives (2018) and The Golden Hour (2019). Start with The Summer Wives: it introduces Winthrop Island, the setting she has returned to in four later novels.
Where to Start with Beatriz Williams
If you want her defining book
→ The Summer Wives (2018) — the first Winthrop Island novel.
If you want one summer and a storm
→ A Hundred Summers (2013) — Rhode Island in 1938, ending in the hurricane.
If you want the Jazz Age
→ The Wicked City (2017) — the first of the three Wicked City novels.
If you want Cold War espionage
→ Our Woman in Moscow (2021) — twin sisters, a defection and a trip to Moscow.
11 Beatriz Williams Books, in Order
Overseas
Her debut moves between present-day Manhattan, where the Wall Street analyst Kate Wilson catches the eye of the British financier Julian Laurence, and the Western Front in the First World War, where an American woman saves the life of Captain Julian Laurence Ashford, an infantry officer and war poet. Her publisher calls it a time-crossing romance.
A Hundred Summers
In the summer of 1938 the socialite Lily Dane returns to Seaview, Rhode Island, to find that her former best friend Budgie and her former fiancé Nick Greenwald have arrived as a newly married couple. The truth about that marriage comes out as the New England hurricane of 1938 moves up the coast. It was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for historical fiction in 2013.
The Secret Life of Violet Grant
Vivian Schuyler, a young woman from a wealthy Manhattan family in the 1960s, starts digging into the life of her great-aunt Violet, whose story the family has kept quiet, and the novel moves back to Violet’s own life before the First World War. It is the first of three Schuyler sisters novels and was a Goodreads Choice nominee for historical fiction in 2014.
The Wicked City
In 1998 Ella leaves her banker husband and moves into a Greenwich Village building whose basement once held a speakeasy, the Christopher Club. In 1924 the redheaded flapper Geneva “Gin” Kelly strikes a deal with the Prohibition agent Oliver Anson to help catch her stepfather, the Appalachian bootlegger Duke Kelly. The first of three Wicked City novels.
The Summer Wives
Winthrop Island, 1951: Miranda Schuyler, grieving a father killed in the Second World War, arrives with her mother’s new husband, Hugh Fisher, and falls for Joseph Vargas, the lighthouse keeper’s son. When Hugh is murdered, Joseph goes to prison for it. In 1969 Miranda, now a Shakespearean actress, returns to the island just as Joseph escapes. It was a Goodreads Choice nominee for historical fiction in 2018.
The Golden Hour
In the early 1940s Lulu Randolph Thorpe writes about the exiled Duke and Duchess of Windsor in the Bahamas for an American women’s magazine, while her husband, the British agent Benedict Thorpe, is held in a German prison camp. A second story begins in a Swiss clinic in 1900, where a young German mother, Elfriede von Kleist, meets a Londoner named Wilfred Thorpe. Kirkus gave it a starred review.
Her Last Flight
A dual-timeline novel about Irene and Sam, whose partnership is built around flying and surfing, written with close technical detail of both. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review; Kirkus called it “an inventive if imperfect solution to a decades-old mystery.”
Our Woman in Moscow
In the autumn of 1948 Iris Digby disappears from London with her husband Sasha, an American diplomat, and their children. About four years later her twin sister Ruth receives a postcard and travels to Moscow, posing as the wife of the counterintelligence agent Sumner Fox, to bring the family out. Vivian Schuyler from The Secret Life of Violet Grant appears as the sisters’ aunt.
Husbands & Lovers
In 2022 Mallory Dunne’s thirteen-year-old son Sam needs a kidney after eating a poisonous mushroom at summer camp, and the best match may be her former boyfriend, the singer Monk Adams. In 1951 Hannah Ainsworth, a Hungarian refugee married to a British diplomat in Cairo, has an affair as revolution builds in Egypt. The two stories meet at an Irish orphanage.
Under the Stars
Audrey Fisher, a chef whose husband has vanished and left her in debt, takes her mother Meredith, a film star who has to get sober for a role, to the family house on Winthrop Island. An old chest of her father’s holds paintings by a major American artist, and the journal of Providence Dare, who fled Boston on the steamship Atlantic, explains how they got there.
When You Loved Me
The widow Lucy Cooper returns with her daughter to Windward, her late father’s indebted estate on Winthrop Island, where legend says a pirate buried treasure. The last person to see her father alive was Ben Ressler, a former NFL player and her first love. A third timeline goes back to the winter of 1717, when a wounded pirate sheltered on the island with a healer.
In What Order to Read Beatriz Williams
Almost every Williams novel stands alone, so you can start anywhere. Two short series do run in order: the Schuyler sisters (The Secret Life of Violet Grant, Tiny Little Thing, Along the Infinite Sea) and the Wicked City novels (The Wicked City, The Wicked Redhead, The Wicked Widow). Read each set in publication order.
The Winthrop Island novels share a setting rather than a plot. Reading The Summer Wives first gives you the island’s families and its divide between summer people and year-round residents, which the later books take for granted.
A reading path
1. The Summer Wives (2018)
2. A Hundred Summers (2013)
3. The Golden Hour (2019)
4. Our Woman in Moscow (2021)
5. Husbands & Lovers (2024)
Everything Else Beatriz Williams Published
Beyond the 11 key books: 22 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Series novels
4
4 books · 2015–2021
- 2015Tiny Little ThingSchuyler sisters, book two
- 2015Along the Infinite SeaSchuyler sisters, book three
- 2019The Wicked RedheadWicked City, book two
- 2021The Wicked WidowWicked City, book three
Other novels
3
3 books · 2016–2023
- 2016A Certain AgeJazz Age Manhattan
- 2017Cocoa Beachalso published as The House on Cocoa Beach
- 2023The Beach at Summerlya Winthrop Island novel
Written with Karen White and Lauren Willig
5
5 books · 2016–2024
- 2016The Forgotten Roomtheir first joint novel
- 2018The Glass Ocean
- 2020All the Ways We Said Goodbye
- 2022The Lost Summers of Newport
- 2024The Author’s Guide to Murder
As Juliana Gray
9
9 books · 2012–2017
Anthologies
1
1 book · 2016
- 2016Fall of Poppiesstories of the First World War; her contribution is “An American Airman in Paris”
The years · 1972–2026
Quick facts about Beatriz Williams
- Known for
- Beatriz Williams is known for dual-timeline historical novels about wealthy American families and the women inside them, many set on the fictional New England summer island of Winthrop.
- 1972
- Born in Seattle, Washington
- 2018
- The Summer Wives
- Born
- 1972, Seattle, Washington
- Education
- Stanford University; MBA in finance, Columbia University
- Before novels
- Communications and corporate strategy consultant in New York and London
- Pen name
- Juliana Gray, for historical romance and mysteries
- Co-authors
- Karen White and Lauren Willig, five novels since 2016
- Lives
- Southeastern Connecticut, with her husband and four children
The red mark is 2018: The Summer Wives, her first Winthrop Island novel.
How Beatriz Williams Writes: Two Timelines, One Secret
Most of her novels split between two periods and let each explain the other: 1924 and 1998 in The Wicked City, 1951 and 1969 in The Summer Wives, the 1940s and 1900 in The Golden Hour, 1951 and 2022 in Husbands & Lovers. The earlier story usually holds a secret, an affair, a crime, a child given away, that the later one has to uncover.
She builds a connected world rather than a series. Characters cross between books: Vivian Schuyler, the heroine of The Secret Life of Violet Grant, turns up as an aunt in Our Woman in Moscow, and a Schuyler girl is at the centre of The Summer Wives. Winthrop Island, with its old summer families and its Portuguese fishing community, is the setting for four of the novels on this page.
Real history sets the stakes rather than the plot. The 1938 New England hurricane ends A Hundred Summers; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in the wartime Bahamas sit at the edge of The Golden Hour; Prohibition drives the Wicked City books, and Egypt on the eve of revolution shapes Husbands & Lovers. Reviewers have praised the period detail and, as Kirkus did with Husbands & Lovers, sometimes faulted her for fitting too much in.
Frequently asked questions about Beatriz Williams’s books
How many books has Beatriz Williams written?
18 novels under her own name, from Overseas (2012) to When You Loved Me (2026). She has also co-written five novels with Karen White and Lauren Willig and published nine novels as Juliana Gray. This page lists 11 key books; the rest are in the list below them.
What are Beatriz Williams’s books in order?
Overseas (2012), A Hundred Summers (2013), The Secret Life of Violet Grant (2014), Tiny Little Thing (2015), Along the Infinite Sea (2015), A Certain Age (2016), The Wicked City (2017), Cocoa Beach (2017), The Summer Wives (2018), The Golden Hour (2019), The Wicked Redhead (2019), Her Last Flight (2020), Our Woman in Moscow (2021), The Wicked Widow (2021), The Beach at Summerly (2023), Husbands & Lovers (2024), Under the Stars (2025) and When You Loved Me (2026).
Where should I start with Beatriz Williams?
The Summer Wives (2018). It shows her two-timeline method at full stretch and introduces Winthrop Island, the setting of several later novels. If you would rather start earlier in her career, A Hundred Summers (2013) is a single summer story that ends in the 1938 hurricane.
What is Beatriz Williams’s most famous book?
A Hundred Summers, The Secret Life of Violet Grant and The Summer Wives are her best known; all three were nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for historical fiction. The Summer Wives is the one most often recommended as an entry point.
What order are the Wicked City books in?
The Wicked City (2017), The Wicked Redhead (2019) and The Wicked Widow (2021). They follow Geneva “Gin” Kelly in the Prohibition era alongside a present-day storyline, so read them in that order.
What order are the Schuyler sisters books in?
The Secret Life of Violet Grant (2014), Tiny Little Thing (2015) and Along the Infinite Sea (2015). Each can be read alone, but the family links build in that order. Schuylers also appear in The Summer Wives and Our Woman in Moscow.
Which Beatriz Williams books are set on Winthrop Island?
The Summer Wives (2018), The Beach at Summerly (2023), Husbands & Lovers (2024), Under the Stars (2025) and When You Loved Me (2026). Winthrop is a fictional summer island off the New England coast.
Does Beatriz Williams write under another name?
Yes. As Juliana Gray she has published historical romances and mysteries, from A Lady Never Lies (2012) to A Strange Scottish Shore (2017), nine novels in all.
What books has Beatriz Williams written with Karen White and Lauren Willig?
Five: The Forgotten Room (2016), The Glass Ocean (2018), All the Ways We Said Goodbye (2020), The Lost Summers of Newport (2022) and The Author’s Guide to Murder (2024).
Has Beatriz Williams won any awards?
Her novels A Hundred Summers (2013), The Secret Life of Violet Grant (2014) and The Summer Wives (2018) were nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for historical fiction. She is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, and her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Footnotes
- Beatriz Williams — Wikipedia
- About Beatriz — beatrizwilliams.com
- The Golden Hour — Kirkus Reviews, 2019
- Our Woman in Moscow — Bookreporter, 2021
- Husbands & Lovers — Publishers Weekly, 2024
- When You Loved Me — Bookreporter, 2026
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I knew I’d found fertile ground for the kinds of stories I like to tell.”
— Beatriz Williams, interview with the Washington Independent Review of Books (2017)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations