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For nearly two decades Jane Fallon made television that belonged to other people. She came into EastEnders as a script editor in 1985 and was producing it by 1994; the shows she is named for, This Life and Teachers, carry her credit in the part nobody reads. She was forty-six when her first novel appeared. What she has built in the nineteen years since is stranger than a second career: she has written more or less the same book fourteen times, deliberately, and got sharper at it each time. A woman is wronged. She does not forgive and she does not fall apart. She makes a plan. The thing Fallon keeps testing — book after book, and it is the reason the books last — is what the plan costs the woman who made it.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 books in full · Book club picks · 2007–2026 · Updated September 2026
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Quick answer
Jane Fallon has written fourteen novels, published between 2007 and 2026, all of them with Michael Joseph. Every one is a standalone — no series, no recurring characters, no reading order to get wrong. What there is instead is a formula she has spent nineteen years refining, and three or four books where she deliberately breaks it. All fourteen books, and what each one is → If you have never read her, start with Getting Rid of Matthew (2007), where the formula begins — or with Queen Bee (2020), where it is at its best.
Where to Start with Jane Fallon
If you have never read her
→ Getting Rid of Matthew (2007). Her debut, and the cleanest statement of what she does: a mistress of four years gets the married man she wanted, realises within days that she does not want him, and befriends his wife under a false name to engineer his return. It goes wrong in the way her books always go wrong — she starts liking the wife.
If you want her at her best
→ Queen Bee (2020). One street of London mansions, one woman in a studio above a garage, and one reigning neighbour who has decided to destroy her. The most controlled thing she has written, and the funniest about class.
If you want the most elaborate plan
→ My Sweet Revenge (2017). Paula does not confront her cheating husband. She sets out to make him fall in love with her again so that she can leave him — and takes lessons from his mistress on how to do it.
If you want the one about friends, not husbands
→ Faking Friends (2018). Amy loses her fiance, her job and her flat in a single weekend, and the woman at the centre of it is her best friend. This is where Fallon stops writing about marriages and starts writing about women betraying women.
If you want the internet one
→ Over Sharing (2023). Four years after her husband left her for his life coach, Iris finds the life coach on Instagram as a beloved family influencer — with a different husband, twin toddlers, and no sign of Tom at all. My book club picks list goes further in the same direction.
If you want the newest
· Authors like Bella Mackie: who to read next → Welcome to the Neighbourhood (2026). Kitty moves to Ashdown Close, sets out to befriend the glamorous couple at number 8, and sees a stranger leaving their house. Her fourteenth, and a deliberate return to the territory of Queen Bee.
All 14 Jane Fallon Books, in Order
Getting Rid of Matthew
Helen has been Matthew’s secret lover for four years. When he finally leaves his wife Sophie and their two daughters and moves into her flat, Helen discovers she no longer wants him. She tries first to repel him by becoming unbearable, then befriends Sophie under a false identity in order to engineer his return home.
The template, and still one of the two best. The engine of the book is not the revenge but the thing Fallon does to complicate it: Helen has to spend time with the woman she wronged, and starts to like her. Every later novel is a variation on that move.
— LisanneGot You Back
James, a vet, keeps a wife in London and a girlfriend in the country. Stephanie finds a text from a strange woman; Katie is contacted by someone claiming to be his wife. Once the two women know about each other they can either throw him out or join forces first — and they do not agree on when to stop.
Her second, and the book where she found the disagreement that saves the formula: two avengers, one of whom wants out. That the plot became a jukebox musical set to Roxette songs is genuinely odd, and it did premiere, at Malmö Opera in Sweden in 2024.
— LisanneFoursome
Rebecca and Daniel, Alex and Isabel — best friends since university, two marriages, twenty years inseparable. Alex walks out on Isabel, and Rebecca learns why, which leaves her holding a secret she would rather not have. Meanwhile her most loathed colleague starts turning up socially.
The first time she takes the cheating out of the marriage and puts it into the friendship group, which is the direction the whole career eventually goes. Her only novel to be nominated for a comedy-fiction award.
— LisanneThe Ugly Sister
Abi has spent her life in the shadow of her older sister Cleo, headhunted as a model at sixteen and more or less gone from her life for twenty years. Invited to spend a summer at Cleo’s large London house, Abi finds herself minding two spoilt nieces and an unhappy brother-in-law while Cleo is plainly preoccupied with something else.
The outlier of the early run — no infidelity plot, no revenge scheme, just a woman moving into a life she envies and finding out what it costs. The title is a question the book actually asks.
— LisanneSkeletons
Jen was an only child with a lonely mother, and what she always wanted was a big happy family. Marrying Jason gave her the Mastersons, who are exactly that. Then she sees something she was never meant to see — not her husband’s secret but his family’s — and has to decide what to do with a truth that will take the whole thing down.
Her most suspenseful book, and the one where the moral question is hardest: Jen gains nothing by telling, and the people she would destroy are the family she wanted her whole life. Widely misdescribed online as being about her husband’s affair. It is not.
— LisanneStrictly Between Us
Tamsin and Michelle have been inseparable since childhood, along with Michelle’s husband Patrick. When Tamsin’s assistant Bea passes on a rumour that Patrick is cheating, Tamsin sets a honey trap using Bea as the bait. Bea turns out to have an agenda of her own, and Patrick keeps staying one step ahead.
The book where the schemer is not the wronged party at all — Tamsin is meddling in someone else’s marriage — and it is the most uncomfortable of the fourteen for exactly that reason.
— LisanneMy Sweet Revenge
Paula finds out her actor husband Robert is having an affair. She does not cry, shout or throw him out. She decides to make him fall back in love with her, so that once he has given up his mistress and has nowhere to go, she can leave him. And who better to teach her what Robert wants than the mistress, Saskia.
The most purely mechanical of her revenge plots, and the funniest premise she has had: the revenge requires Paula to become a genuinely better wife, which works, which is the problem. Often confused with Getting Rid of Matthew — there is no false identity here.
— LisanneFaking Friends
Amy, an actress working in New York, comes home to find that her long-distance fiance Jack and her best friend Melissa are together. Inside a weekend she has lost the wedding, the job and the flat. She does not fall apart; she starts methodically taking their lives apart instead.
The hinge of the whole bibliography. From here the betrayer is another woman rather than a husband, and the books get colder and better. Her most decorated novel, though the nominations are all nominations.
— LisanneTell Me a Secret
Holly has just been promoted and wants to celebrate with Roz, her closest friend and colleague, who supported her the whole way. Roz is not as pleased as she should be. Small things start going wrong at work, and Holly realises she has been fighting a war she did not know about.
Fallon’s office novel, and the tightest. Nothing here is about romance at all — it is about what a woman will do to another woman for a job, which turns out to be a great deal.
— LisanneQueen Bee
When her marriage collapses, Laura needs a home for herself and her daughter fast, and takes a tiny studio above a garage on The Close — a street of mansions where the glamorous Stella is the undisputed queen bee. Stella decides Laura has designs on her fiance. Then Laura finds out what the fiance is actually hiding, and has to get close to the woman trying to ruin her in order to warn her.
My pick of the fourteen. It is one street rather than a town, and the confinement is what makes it work: the class comedy is sharp, the plot obliges the two women to need each other, and the last quarter is the best-controlled writing she has done.
— LisanneWorst Idea Ever
Georgia and Lydia are as good as sisters. When Lydia’s new online business struggles, Georgia sets up a fake account to pose as an enthusiastic customer, because Lydia would never take a handout. Then Lydia starts confiding in the stranger, and eventually tells her something that could end Georgia’s marriage.
The best idea she has ever had, whatever the title says: the deception is kind, the deceiver is the heroine, and she cannot stop reading. It is also the first of the three internet novels.
— LisanneJust Got Real
Joni is too nervous for online dating to use her own photographs, so she posts fake ones — and then finds a way to meet Ant without admitting it. Months in, she finds intimate messages on his phone from two other women. She calls them. They are angry, and they want revenge.
The one where the heroine starts as the liar, which is Fallon testing her own formula to see whether the reader will still side with a woman who cheated first. Nothing whatever to do with two women from opposite ends of the social spectrum, which is how it is described in a lot of places.
— LisanneOver Sharing
Four years ago Iris and Tom were trying for a baby when he left her for his life coach, Maddy. Now a friend sends Iris a video: Maddy is a successful family influencer with an enormous following, a husband called Lee and three-year-old twins — and no Tom anywhere. Iris starts working out what the persona is covering.
Her sharpest book about the gap between a life and the edit of it, and the one that reads most like a mystery. Picked for the Richard & Judy Book Club, which is what put it in front of a much bigger audience.
— LisanneWelcome to the Neighbourhood
Nothing happens on Ashdown Close until Sian and Richard move into number 8 — cool, glamorous, everything Kitty hoped London would be. Kitty makes befriending them her project. Then she sees a stranger leaving their house, and she and her reluctant best friend Grace start digging, on a street where everyone already knows everything.
A deliberate return to the street-level setting of Queen Bee, six years on. If that is the book of hers you liked, this is the one to read next.
— LisanneThe years · 1960–2026
Quick facts about Jane Fallon
- Known for
- Jane Fallon is known for fourteen standalone novels that refine one formula, from Getting Rid of Matthew to Queen Bee, written after nearly two decades producing television such as This Life.
- 1960
- Born in Harrow, north-west London
- 1985
- Joins EastEnders
- 2026
- Latest, Welcome to the Neighbourhood
- Born
- 9 December 1960, Harrow, north-west London — the youngest of five
- Full name
- Jane Elizabeth Mary Fallon
- Education
- St Bernard’s Convent School, Slough; BA in history, University College London, 1982
- Before the books
- Script reader, then script editor, then television producer — nearly two decades
- EastEnders
- From 1985; producing by 1994
- Her best-known shows
- This Life (1996–97) and Teachers (2001), both as producer
- Went full-time on fiction
- 2006. Her debut came out the following year, when she was forty-six
- Novels
- Fourteen, between 2007 and 2026 — all standalone, all with Michael Joseph
- Sales
- Penguin says the thirteen books through Over Sharing have sold over two million copies in the UK
- Translations
- More than twenty languages
- Awards
- None won. Nominated for the Melissa Nathan Award (2011) and the National Book Awards (2018); longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize (2019); shortlisted for Page Turner of the Year (2022)
- Honorary fellowship
- University College London, 2020
- Partner
- Ricky Gervais, since 1982 — they met at UCL
- Adaptations
- Got You Back became the Roxette jukebox musical Joyride, premiered at Malmö Opera in 2024. Penguin says Getting Rid of Matthew is being adapted for film with Luke Wilson and Heather Graham; no release has been announced
- Lives
- Hampstead, London
The red mark is 2007: Getting Rid of Matthew, her first novel, where the formula begins and where this guide suggests starting.
She Keeps Making the Avenger Pay for the Revenge
It is easy to describe Jane Fallon dismissively: fourteen novels in which a woman is betrayed and gets even. Read four of them in a row and something more particular shows up. Fallon is almost never interested in whether the cheat deserves it. She takes that as given in chapter two and spends the rest of the book on a different question — what carrying out the plan does to the woman carrying it out.
The move is there in the debut. Helen befriends the wife she stole Matthew from, under a false name, in order to hand him back. It should be a farce, and for fifty pages it is. Then she starts liking Sophie, and the book stops being about getting rid of Matthew and becomes about what Helen owes a woman she has been lying to for four years. My Sweet Revenge runs the same engine in reverse: Paula’s scheme requires her to become a genuinely better wife, and it works, and that is the trap. Strictly Between Us goes furthest — Tamsin is not the wronged party at all, she is meddling in a marriage that is not hers, and the novel refuses to let her off.
Around 2018 the subject changes without the method changing at all. Up to My Sweet Revenge the betrayal is nearly always a husband. From Faking Friends onward it is another woman: a best friend, a colleague, someone on the same street. Tell Me a Secret is about a promotion. Queen Bee is about a street. Faking Friends is about a friendship of twenty years. The books get colder and considerably better, because a husband who cheats is a type and a friend who does it is a person you have to keep describing.
The last four are the internet ones, and they are the reason she has not run out. Worst Idea Ever has a woman deceiving her best friend out of kindness. Just Got Real opens with the heroine as the liar — fake photographs, a fake meeting — before anyone lies to her, which is Fallon checking whether the reader will still take her side. Over Sharing is about the distance between a family and the version of it posted daily. The formula did not change. The place where people now pretend to be someone else did.
What she does not do is the interesting part. There are no monsters and no redemptions; nobody makes a speech. The endings are usually smaller than the schemes that led to them, which is why the books are called comedies and read like something slightly harder. Fallon spent two decades producing television built on exactly that — This Life and Teachers are shows about unremarkable people behaving badly and then having to see each other the next day. She has been writing the same thing ever since, in a form where the credit finally has her name on the front.
Watch
Jane Fallon on starting again in midlife
On HELLO!’s Second Act podcast, she talks to Ateh Jewel about leaving a successful career in television to write novels, about getting older, and about how insomnia pushed her into her bravest move.
Frequently asked questions about Jane Fallon’s books
How many books has Jane Fallon written?
Fourteen novels, published between 2007 and 2026: Getting Rid of Matthew (2007), Got You Back (2008), Foursome (2010), The Ugly Sister (2011), Skeletons (2014), Strictly Between Us (2016), My Sweet Revenge (2017), Faking Friends (2018), Tell Me a Secret (2019), Queen Bee (2020), Worst Idea Ever (2021), Just Got Real (2022), Over Sharing (2023) and Welcome to the Neighbourhood (2026). Lists that say thirteen are counting up to Over Sharing and have not been updated.
Who is Jane Fallon?
An English novelist and former television producer. She produced EastEnders, This Life and Teachers before turning to fiction with Getting Rid of Matthew in 2007, and has since published fourteen standalone novels with Michael Joseph. Penguin says her books have sold more than two million copies in the UK.
Which Jane Fallon book should I read first?
Getting Rid of Matthew (2007) if you want to see the formula being invented, Queen Bee (2020) if you want it at its best. Neither depends on the other. None of her novels is a sequel and no characters carry over, so you can start anywhere.
Do Jane Fallon’s books need to be read in order?
No. All fourteen are standalone. Reading them in order is only interesting if you want to watch the subject shift — the early books are about cheating husbands, everything from Faking Friends (2018) onward is about women betraying women.
Are all of Jane Fallon’s novels Sunday Times bestsellers?
That claim comes from publisher copy, and it cannot be checked. Penguin’s own author biography says her “Sunday Times bestselling books” — naming all thirteen titles through Over Sharing — have sold over two million copies in the UK. The weekly Sunday Times charts are not publicly searchable, so no independent source confirms that every individual title charted. “Sunday Times bestselling author” is accurate; “all fourteen were bestsellers” is marketing language.
What is Getting Rid of Matthew about?
Helen has been the secret lover of a married man for four years. When Matthew finally leaves his wife Sophie and moves in with her, Helen realises she does not want him. She tries making herself unbearable, then befriends Sophie under a false identity to steer him home — and starts to like her.
What is Queen Bee about?
Laura and her daughter move into a studio above a garage on The Close, a street of London mansions ruled socially by the glamorous Stella. Stella wrongly decides Laura is after her fiance. Then Laura discovers what the fiance is genuinely hiding, and has to befriend the woman trying to destroy her in order to tell her. It is a street, not a town, and not a small-town comedy.
Is Jane Fallon married to Ricky Gervais?
No. Ricky Gervais has never married. He and Fallon have been together since 1982 and have lived together since 1984. She has said she has no interest in marrying, and he told The Times in 2010 that they are “married for all intents and purposes”.
How did Ricky Gervais and Jane Fallon meet?
As students at University College London in 1982. They have been a couple ever since, and UCL made her an honorary fellow in 2020.
Did Ricky Gervais lose his wife?
No. Jane Fallon, his partner of more than forty years, has not died; they are not married, which is why she is often wrongly called his wife. In March 2026 she said she had been diagnosed with very early-stage breast cancer, found on a routine mammogram, and that her prognosis was excellent.
Is Jane Fallon related to Jimmy Fallon?
No family connection has ever been reported. She is English, born in Harrow in 1960; Jimmy Fallon is an American talk-show host, born in Brooklyn in 1974. They only share a surname.
How old is Jane Fallon?
She was born on 9 December 1960 in Harrow, north-west London, so she turns 66 in December 2026.
What television did Jane Fallon make?
She joined EastEnders in 1985 as a script editor and was producing it by 1994. After that she produced This Life (1996–97), Undercover Heart (1998), Teachers (2001), 20 Things to Do Before You’re 30 (2002) and Single (2003). She went full-time on fiction in 2006. Bios that call it “two decades as a producer” are stretching it — she was a script editor for most of the first decade.
What is the newest Jane Fallon book?
Welcome to the Neighbourhood, published by Michael Joseph on 15 January 2026. Kitty moves onto Ashdown Close, sets out to befriend the glamorous couple at number 8, and sees a stranger leaving their house.
Has Jane Fallon won any awards?
No literary prize. Foursome was nominated for the Melissa Nathan Award in 2011, Faking Friends for the National Book Awards in 2018 and longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize in 2019, and Worst Idea Ever was shortlisted for Page Turner of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2022. She received an honorary fellowship from UCL in 2020. The “multi-award-winning” in her publisher bio refers to her television work.
Have any of her books been adapted?
One has. Got You Back became Joyride, a jukebox musical built on Roxette songs, which premiered at Malmö Opera in Sweden in 2024. Penguin says Getting Rid of Matthew is being adapted for film with Luke Wilson and Heather Graham, but no release has been announced — treat it as unconfirmed.
Is Worst Idea Ever the same book as Worst. Idea. Ever.?
Yes. The 2021 novel is styled with full stops on some editions and without on others. There is one book.
Which Jane Fallon book is the funniest?
My Sweet Revenge (2017) for the premise — a woman getting revenge by becoming the perfect wife — and Queen Bee (2020) for the class comedy. Skeletons (2014) is the least funny and the most tense, if that is what you are after instead.
Where should I not start?
Strictly Between Us (2016), which is the most uncomfortable of the fourteen because the schemer is interfering in a marriage that is not hers, and The Ugly Sister (2011), which is good but is the least like the rest of her work.
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Footnotes
- Jane Fallon — Penguin Books UK author page
- Jane Fallon — Wikipedia
- Welcome to the Neighbourhood — Penguin UK
- Queen Bee — Penguin UK
- Just Got Real — Penguin UK
- Skeletons — Penguin UK
- My Sweet Revenge — Penguin UK
- Over Sharing — Penguin UK
- Jane Fallon — Fantastic Fiction
Bibliography last verified 20 September 2026. Every plot description on this page was checked against the publisher’s own synopsis. Two things are deliberately left vague: the “all her novels are Sunday Times bestsellers” claim, which comes from publisher copy and cannot be verified per title, and the uploading channel and date of the interview below, which YouTube would not confirm and which are therefore left out of this page’s structured data. Foursome, The Ugly Sister and Skeletons carry 2017–18 dates on some Penguin pages; those are reissues, and the years given here are first publication.
Nothing here was suggested by a machine.
I read these myself,
and the reasons are on the page.
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.
“Fourteen novels in, the plot is never really the revenge. It is what the woman has to become in order to carry it out.”
— Lisanne, on reading all fourteen
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