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In the summer of 1924 a young poet shoots himself at a society party on an English country estate, and only three people see what happens. Seventy-five years later one of them, a former housemaid aged 98, is asked to remember. That is the set-up of The House at Riverton, the 2006 debut by the Australian novelist Kate Morton, which became a Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year and sold more than a million copies in the UK. Every novel since has worked a variation on it: an old house, a crime or disappearance decades ago, and a woman in the present who digs up what her family buried. Her books have been published in 38 languages. This guide covers her seven key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 2006–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Kate Morton has published seven novels: The House at Riverton (2006), The Forgotten Garden (2008), The Distant Hours (2010), The Secret Keeper (2012), The Lake House (2015), The Clockmaker’s Daughter (2018) and Homecoming (2023). Start with The Forgotten Garden. All seven are standalones, each pairing a mystery in the past with a woman uncovering it in the present, so you can read them in any order.
Where to Start with Kate Morton
If you want her most popular formula at its fullest
→ The Forgotten Garden (2008) — a lost child, a Cornish cottage, three generations.
If you want an Upstairs-Downstairs country house
→ The House at Riverton (2006) — her debut, narrated by a former housemaid.
If you want a tight wartime mystery
→ The Secret Keeper (2012) — a crime witnessed in 1961, rooted in the Blitz.
If you want something set in Australia
→ Homecoming (2023) — her first novel set in her own country.
7 Kate Morton Books, in Order
The House at Riverton
In 1999 Grace Bradley, 98 and living in a care home, is visited by a director making a film about the summer of 1924, when a young poet shot himself during a party at Riverton, the Hartford family’s estate. Grace, who went into service there as a girl, tells the story of the Hartford sisters Hannah and Emmeline through the First World War and the 1920s. First published in Australia as The Shifting Fog, it won General Fiction Book of the Year at the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards and was a Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year.
The Forgotten Garden
In 1913 a four-year-old girl is found alone on a ship arriving in Australia, with a small suitcase and a book of fairy tales. Raised as Nell, she learns at 21 that she is not her parents’ daughter; decades later her granddaughter Cassandra inherits a cottage in Cornwall and follows the trail to the fairy-tale writer Eliza Makepeace. It won General Fiction Book of the Year at the 2009 Australian Book Industry Awards and was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
The Distant Hours
A letter posted in 1941 arrives fifty years late, and Edie Burchill learns that her mother was evacuated as a child to Milderhurst Castle in Kent. The castle still belongs to the three elderly Blythe sisters, daughters of the author of a famous children’s story, The True History of the Mud Man. It is the most openly gothic of her novels.
The Secret Keeper
At sixteen, during a summer party at the family farm in the English countryside, Laurel Nicolson sees her mother Dorothy commit a shocking crime. About fifty years later Laurel, now a successful London actress, comes home for her mother’s ninetieth birthday and goes looking for the truth, which leads back to wartime London and two people called Vivien and Jimmy. It won the 2013 Australian Book Industry Award for General Fiction Book of the Year.
The Lake House
At a midsummer party in 1933 at Loeanneth, the Edevane family’s house in Cornwall, the family’s baby son Theo disappears and is never found. Seventy years later Sadie Sparrow, a London police detective on enforced leave, comes across the abandoned house and reopens the case, while Alice Edevane, now an elderly crime novelist, guards what she knows. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Australian Book Industry Awards.
The Clockmaker’s Daughter
In the summer of 1862 the painter Edward Radcliffe takes a group of young artists to Birchwood Manor on the Upper Thames; by the end of the month one woman has been shot dead, another has vanished and a precious heirloom is missing. More than 150 years later a London archivist, Elodie Winslow, finds a photograph and a sketchbook that lead her to the house. The story is told across many voices and eras, threaded together by the ghost of Birdie, the clockmaker’s daughter of the title.
Homecoming
On Christmas Eve 1959, in the Adelaide Hills town of Tambilla, a woman and three of her children are found dead on a riverbank: the case becomes known as the Turner Family Tragedy. In 2018 Jess, a journalist who has lived in London for nearly twenty years, flies home to Sydney when her grandmother Nora falls ill, and finds a true-crime book about the case in Nora’s house. Her first novel set in Australia, it was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards in 2024.
In What Order to Read Kate Morton
None of Kate Morton’s novels share characters or continue a story, so there is no series order. Each book is built the same way: a mystery in the past, usually around a house and a family, uncovered by a woman in the present day. Reading in publication order mainly shows the structures growing longer and more layered, from Grace’s single voice in The House at Riverton to the many narrators of The Clockmaker’s Daughter.
Most readers start with The Forgotten Garden or The Secret Keeper. Her eighth novel, Christabel, is announced by her UK publisher Pan Macmillan for April 2027.
A reading path
1. The Forgotten Garden (2008)
2. The Secret Keeper (2012)
3. The House at Riverton (2006)
4. The Lake House (2015)
5. Homecoming (2023)
The years · 1976–2023
Quick facts about Kate Morton
- Known for
- She is known for long dual-timeline mysteries in which a woman in the present uncovers a family secret buried in an old house decades earlier.
- 1976
- Born in Berri, South Australia
- 2023
- Homecoming
- Born
- 1976, Berri, South Australia
- Grew up
- Tamborine Mountain, South East Queensland, the eldest of three sisters
- Education
- Licentiate in Speech and Drama, Trinity College London; first-class honours in English Literature, University of Queensland (1999); a master’s on tragedy in Victorian literature
- Married
- The jazz musician and composer Davin Patterson
- Published
- In 38 languages across 45 territories
- Honours
- Australian Book Industry Awards, General Fiction Book of the Year, 2007, 2009 and 2013
The red mark is 2006: The House at Riverton, the debut that made her name.
How Kate Morton Writes: Houses, Secrets and Two Timelines
Every Morton novel runs on at least two timelines. One is a crime, death or disappearance in the past — 1924, 1913, 1941, 1933, 1862, 1959 — and the other is a woman in the present who has a family reason to find out what happened. Information is handed out in alternating chapters, so the reader usually knows things that the present-day character does not, and the last chapters turn on a revelation about identity: who someone’s mother really was, who was in the house that night.
The houses are close to characters in their own right: Riverton, the cottage in Cornwall, Milderhurst Castle, Loeanneth, Birchwood Manor. Morton has said “I adore houses: I love them architecturally and aesthetically”, and for Birchwood she drew on real places including Avebury Manor, Kelmscott Manor and Harvington Hall, an Elizabethan house with seven priest holes. Her studies, in drama and then in Victorian tragedy and gothic-mystery fiction, show in the staging: inherited stories, fairy tales and a book within the book recur across the novels.
The structures have grown more complicated over time. For The Clockmaker’s Daughter she said that for the first time she did not write the chapters in the order the reader meets them, moving between the historical storylines instead. Homecoming adds extracts from an invented true-crime book to the alternating timelines.
Watch
Kate Morton on Homecoming with the Bookaccino Live Book Group
Kate Morton joins the Bookreporter Bookaccino Live book group in April 2024 to discuss Homecoming, her writing process, its multiple timeframes and its true-crime element, and answers readers’ questions. From the official Book Report Network channel.
Frequently asked questions about Kate Morton’s books
How many books has Kate Morton written?
Seven novels, all on this page: from The House at Riverton (2006) to Homecoming (2023). An eighth, Christabel, is announced for April 2027.
What are Kate Morton’s books in order?
The House at Riverton (2006), The Forgotten Garden (2008), The Distant Hours (2010), The Secret Keeper (2012), The Lake House (2015), The Clockmaker’s Daughter (2018) and Homecoming (2023).
Where should I start with Kate Morton?
With The Forgotten Garden (2008): a girl found alone on a ship to Australia in 1913 and the granddaughter who traces her back to Cornwall. If you prefer a single, tighter mystery, start with The Secret Keeper.
What is Kate Morton’s most famous book?
Her debut, The House at Riverton, was her breakthrough: a Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year, and a Golden Pan award for one million copies sold in the UK. The Forgotten Garden and The Secret Keeper are the other two most widely read.
Do Kate Morton’s books need to be read in order?
No. All seven are standalone novels with different characters and settings, so you can start anywhere.
Are The Shifting Fog and The House at Riverton the same book?
Yes. The novel was first published in Australia in 2006 as The Shifting Fog and appeared in the UK and US as The House at Riverton.
Is Kate Morton Australian?
Yes. She was born in Berri, South Australia, in 1976 and grew up on Tamborine Mountain in Queensland. Most of her novels are set in England; Homecoming (2023) is the first set largely in Australia.
Has Kate Morton won any prizes?
Three of her novels — The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden and The Secret Keeper — won General Fiction Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards. The Forgotten Garden was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and Homecoming for the CWA Gold Dagger.
What is Kate Morton’s new book?
Christabel, due from Pan Macmillan on 6 April 2027. An Australian publisher, Bel Wilder, travels to a Cotswold village to buy the rights to a lost fairy story from the reclusive author Iris Archer, who alone knows what once happened in a cottage in the woods.
Is Homecoming based on a true story?
It is fiction. The Turner Family Tragedy of 1959 and the true-crime book Jess finds about it are both invented for the novel.
Footnotes
- Kate Morton — Wikipedia
- Kate Morton — AustLit
- The House at Riverton — Simon & Schuster
- Homecoming — Pan Macmillan
- Christabel — Pan Macmillan
- Kate Morton: The Hidden Lives of Houses — Shelf Awareness, 2018
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 hers.
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 love writing about secrets, especially the way they tend to haunt their keepers.”
— Kate Morton, interview with Shelf Awareness (2018)
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