Author Guide · Contemporary and Historical Fiction
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Before she wrote fiction, Diane Chamberlain was a hospital social worker in San Diego and Washington, D.C., and then a psychotherapist in Alexandria, Virginia, working mostly with adolescents. She did not start writing seriously until she was thirty-one. Her first novel, Private Relations, came out in 1989 and won a RITA Award; 28 novels later, most of them are set in North Carolina, where she lives, and most turn on a secret a family has kept for years. Her later books go back into the state’s own history: forced sterilisation in 1960, a Depression-era post office mural, voter registration in 1965. This guide covers her 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1992–2022 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Diane Chamberlain has published 28 novels since 1989. Her best-known are Necessary Lies (2013), The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes (2006), Big Lies in a Small Town (2020) and The Last House on the Street (2022). Start with Necessary Lies, set inside North Carolina’s real sterilisation programme. Below are her 13 key books in order, the series links between them, and how her years as a social worker shape the stories.
Where to Start with Diane Chamberlain
If you want her best-known novel
→ Necessary Lies (2013) — a young social worker and a 15-year-old girl in 1960.
If you want a family secret told as suspense
→ The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes (2006) — a kidnapping in 1977 and the woman who disappeared.
If you want a dual-timeline historical novel
→ Big Lies in a Small Town (2020) — a 1939 mural and the woman hired to restore it.
If you want her most recent book
→ The Last House on the Street (2022) — civil rights in 1965 and a new house in 2010.
13 Diane Chamberlain Books, in Order
Keeper of the Light
Her fourth novel and the first of three set around the Kiss River lighthouse on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Annie O’Neill, an artist known locally as “St. Anne” for her devotion to good causes, is at the centre of a story of obsession and betrayal among the people around her. Kiss River (2003) and Her Mother’s Shadow (2004) continue it.
Breaking the Silence
Before he dies, the father of Laura Brandon, an astronomer, asks her to visit Sarah Tolley, an elderly woman he had never mentioned. Following that request leads Laura into psychiatric history and her own family’s past. Publishers Weekly called it a “disturbing story of dark secrets and redemption”.
The Courage Tree
Janine Donohue, a single mother, is in a race against time when her eight-year-old daughter, who is seriously ill, goes missing in the West Virginia wilderness. Publishers Weekly described it as a suspenseful family drama that “keeps pages turning”.
The Bay at Midnight
Two families spend the summer of 1962 at the Jersey Shore, where a death goes unsolved and both families keep what they know to themselves. Decades later the secrets come back. Publishers Weekly called it a “smooth, deceptively simple tale”.
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes
In 1977 the pregnant wife of North Carolina’s governor, Genevieve Russell, was kidnapped and killed. Nearly thirty years later a man is charged with her murder, and the only person who could clear him is CeeCee Wilkes, who vanished. Eve Elliot, a therapist in Raleigh, has to choose between her family and the truth, and her daughter Corinne starts asking questions. It was a Target Book Club pick.
The Midwife’s Confession
Noelle Downie, a midwife whose calling defined her among her friends, takes her own life, and her closest friends find that they knew far less about her than they thought. What they uncover reaches back to a decision she made years before.
Necessary Lies
Raleigh and rural Grace County, North Carolina, 1960. Jane Forrester, a newly married social worker, is assigned to Ivy Hart, 15, who lives on a tobacco farm with her grandmother, her older sister and her sister’s baby, and who has epilepsy. Ivy’s sister has already been sterilised without her knowledge. The novel draws on North Carolina’s real eugenics programme, which sterilised more than 7,000 people between 1929 and 1975. It was a Target Book Club pick and on the RUSA Reading List shortlist.
The Silent Sister
Riley MacPherson grew up believing that her older sister Lisa, a teenage violin prodigy, drowned herself in the Potomac at 17. Twenty-three years later, clearing her late father’s property in North Carolina, Riley finds evidence that Lisa did not die. Kirkus called it “a compulsively readable melodrama”. The e-short The Broken String (2014) is a prequel.
Pretending to Dance
Molly, a 38-year-old lawyer in San Diego, is trying to adopt a baby with her husband, Aidan, and has told him little about her past. The story moves back 24 years to Morrison Ridge, her family’s land near Asheville, North Carolina, where at 14 she typed the manuscripts of her father, a psychotherapist paralysed by multiple sclerosis.
The Stolen Marriage
In 1944 Tess DeMello, a nursing student from Baltimore, marries a near-stranger, Henry Kraft, and moves to Hickory, North Carolina, as a polio epidemic reaches the town. Publishers Weekly called it a “well-crafted crime-tinged tale” of a marriage of convenience.
The Dream Daughter
In 1970 Carly Sears is pregnant and widowed, her husband killed in Vietnam, when she learns her unborn baby has a heart defect that doctors of the time cannot treat. She risks everything by travelling forward in time to save the child. It was a Target Book Club pick.
Big Lies in a Small Town
In 1939 Anna Dale, a 22-year-old artist from New Jersey, wins a federal contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. In 2018 Morgan Christopher, just out of prison, is hired to restore the unfinished mural and finds out what happened to Anna. It was a LibraryReads Hall of Fame pick and an Audie Award finalist.
The Last House on the Street
Round Hill, North Carolina. In 1965 Ellie Hockley, a college student from a respectable white family, spends the summer registering Black voters, to her parents’ horror. In 2010 Kayla Carter, an architect whose husband died at the house they designed, moves in and is warned off by a stranger; her neighbour is the elderly Ellie. It was nominated for the 2022 Goodreads Choice Award for historical fiction.
In What Order to Read Diane Chamberlain
Most of Chamberlain’s novels stand alone, so you can read them in any order. Three exceptions: Keeper of the Light, Kiss River and Her Mother’s Shadow form the Kiss River trilogy and are best read in that order; Necessary Lies has a short prequel, The First Lie (2013); and The Silent Sister has one, The Broken String (2014). The prequels are short e-stories and are not needed to follow the novels.
Publication order does show a shift. The books up to about 2012 are contemporary family dramas and suspense; from Necessary Lies on, most of them use a real piece of North Carolina history and often split the story between two timelines.
A reading path
1. Necessary Lies (2013)
2. The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes (2006)
3. Big Lies in a Small Town (2020)
4. The Last House on the Street (2022)
5. Keeper of the Light (1992)
Everything Else Diane Chamberlain Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 17 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early novels
7
7 books · 1989–1997
- 1989Private Relationsher first novel; won the RITA Award in 1990
- 1990Lovers and Strangers
- 1991Secret Lives
- 1993Fire and Raina stranger arrives in a town hit by drought and fire
- 1995Brass Ring
- 1996Reflection
- 1997The Escape Artist
Later novels
8
8 books · 2000–2012
- 2000Summer’s Childa baby is found on a beach at Kill Devil Hills
- 2002Cypress Point
- 2003Kiss Riverthe second Kiss River novel
- 2004Her Mother’s Shadowthe third Kiss River novel
- 2008Before the Storm
- 2009Secrets She Left Behind
- 2010The Lies We Toldtwo sisters and the aftermath of a hurricane
- 2012The Good Fathera single father, Travis Brown
Short e-stories
2
2 books · 2013–2014
- 2013The First Lieprequel to Necessary Lies
- 2014The Broken Stringprequel to The Silent Sister
The years · 1950–2022
Quick facts about Diane Chamberlain
- Known for
- Diane Chamberlain is known for book-club novels about long-kept family secrets, many set in North Carolina and built around real episodes from the state’s history.
- 1950
- Born in Plainfield, New Jersey
- 1978
- Master’s in social work, San Diego State
- 1989
- First novel, Private Relations
- 2013
- Necessary Lies
- Born
- 18 March 1950, Plainfield, New Jersey; her father was a school principal
- Education
- San Diego State University: BA 1975, MSW 1978
- Before writing
- Hospital social worker in San Diego and Washington, D.C.; psychotherapist in Alexandria, Virginia
- Lives
- North Carolina, with the photographer John Pagliuca
- Prize
- RITA Award (1990) for Private Relations
- Novels
- 28 since 1989, published in more than twenty languages
The red mark is 2013: Necessary Lies, her novel about North Carolina’s sterilisation programme.
How Diane Chamberlain Writes: Secrets Kept to Protect Someone
Almost every Chamberlain novel is built on a secret, and she traces that to her years as a therapist: “As a therapist, I saw the damage caused by family secrets,” she told Bookreporter in 2013, adding that those secrets were often kept to protect someone. The plots work backwards from the moment the secret surfaces: a body found decades later in The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes, a father’s papers in The Silent Sister, a suicide in The Midwife’s Confession.
She usually tells a story through three or four points of view, and in her later books through two timelines that meet at the end: 1939 and 2018 in Big Lies in a Small Town, 1965 and 2010 in The Last House on the Street. Her social work also gave her a recurring subject, power over other people’s lives, which is at the centre of Necessary Lies, where the social worker herself is the one with the power.
From Necessary Lies onwards she has taken her subjects from North Carolina history. For that book she interviewed people who grew up in the state in the 1950s and 1960s, Black and white, rural and urban; she has said that the state’s 2011 hearings, where sterilisation victims told their stories, left her “absolutely driven” to write it.
Watch
Diane Chamberlain on The Last House on the Street
Diane Chamberlain talks about her novel The Last House on the Street in a Reader Meet Writer conversation posted in January 2022. From the official SIBA channel.
Frequently asked questions about Diane Chamberlain’s books
How many books has Diane Chamberlain written?
28 novels, from Private Relations (1989) to The Last House on the Street (2022), plus a few short e-stories. This page covers 13 key novels; the other 15 are listed under “Everything else”.
What are Diane Chamberlain’s books in order?
The key books are Keeper of the Light (1992), Breaking the Silence (1999), The Courage Tree (2001), The Bay at Midnight (2005), The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes (2006), The Midwife’s Confession (2011), Necessary Lies (2013), The Silent Sister (2014), Pretending to Dance (2015), The Stolen Marriage (2017), The Dream Daughter (2018), Big Lies in a Small Town (2020) and The Last House on the Street (2022).
Where should I start with Diane Chamberlain?
With Necessary Lies (2013), which follows a young social worker and a 15-year-old girl in rural North Carolina in 1960. If you prefer suspense, start with The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes; for a dual timeline, Big Lies in a Small Town.
What is Diane Chamberlain’s most famous book?
Necessary Lies (2013), a Target Book Club pick that is widely read by book clubs. The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes (2006) and Big Lies in a Small Town (2020) are close behind.
Is Necessary Lies based on a true story?
The characters are invented, but the background is real. North Carolina ran a eugenics sterilisation programme from 1929 to 1975 and sterilised more than 7,000 people, many of them poor and without their full knowledge. The state later agreed to compensate living victims.
Do Diane Chamberlain’s books need to be read in order?
Mostly not. The exception is the Kiss River trilogy: Keeper of the Light, Kiss River and Her Mother’s Shadow. Necessary Lies and The Silent Sister each have a short e-story prequel that is optional.
Was Diane Chamberlain a social worker?
Yes. She has a master’s degree in social work from San Diego State University and worked as a hospital social worker in San Diego and Washington, D.C., then as a psychotherapist in Alexandria, Virginia, mostly with adolescents, before writing full time.
Has Diane Chamberlain won any awards?
Her first novel, Private Relations, won the RITA Award from Romance Writers of America in 1990. Big Lies in a Small Town was an Audie Award finalist, and The Last House on the Street was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in 2022.
Where are Diane Chamberlain’s books set?
Mostly in North Carolina, where she lives: the Outer Banks, Raleigh, Edenton, Hickory and the mountains near Asheville. Others are set on the Jersey Shore, in Virginia, West Virginia and San Diego.
Is Diane Chamberlain still alive?
Yes. She was born on 18 March 1950 in Plainfield, New Jersey, and lives in North Carolina.
Footnotes
- Chamberlain, Diane 1950– — Encyclopedia.com
- Diane Chamberlain — Romance Wiki, University of Birmingham
- Interview with Diane Chamberlain — Bookreporter, 2013
- Necessary Lies — BookPage
- The Silent Sister — Kirkus Reviews
- The Last House on the Street — BookBrowse
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.
“As a therapist, I saw the damage caused by family secrets.”
— Diane Chamberlain, interview with Bookreporter (2013)
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