Anthologies#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Loves Me, Loves Me Not |
2009 |
Buy |
Birmingham Reading Order#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Birmingham Rose |
1995 |
Buy |
| Birmingham Friends |
1998 |
Buy |
| Birmingham Blitz / Kate and Olivia |
1998 |
Buy |
Chocolate Girls Reading Order#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Chocolate Girls |
2003 |
Buy |
| The Bells of Bournville Green |
2008 |
Buy |
| Secrets of the Chocolate Girls |
2022 |
Buy |
| Wartime for the Chocolate Girls |
2023 |
Buy |
Hopscotch Summer Reading Order#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| A Hopscotch Summer |
2009 |
Buy |
| Soldier Girl |
2010 |
Buy |
| All the Days of Our Lives |
2011 |
Buy |
Narrowboat Girl Reading Order#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| The Narrowboat Girl |
2001 |
Buy |
| Chocolate Girls |
2003 |
N/A |
| Water Gypsies |
2004 |
Buy |
| The Bells of Bournville Green |
2008 |
N/A |
Sisters of Gold Reading Order#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Sisters of Gold |
2018 |
Buy |
| The Silversmith’s Daughter |
2019 |
Buy |
Standalone Novels#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Orphan Of Angel Street |
1999 |
Buy |
| Poppy Day |
2000 |
Buy |
| Miss Purdy’s Class |
2005 |
Buy |
| Family of Women |
2006 |
Buy |
| Where Earth Meets Sky |
2007 |
Buy |
| My Daughter, My Mother |
2012 |
Buy |
| Papa Georgio |
2012 |
Buy |
| The Women of Lilac Street |
2013 |
Buy |
| Meet Me Under the Clock |
2014 |
Buy |
| War Babies |
2015 |
Buy |
| Now The War Is Over |
2016 |
Buy |
| The Doorstep Child |
2017 |
Buy |
| Mother and Child |
2019 |
Buy |
| Girls In Tin Hats |
2020 |
Buy |
| Black Country Orphan |
2021 |
Buy |
Annie Murray studied English at St John’s College Oxford and began her writing career in the early 1990s, winning a short story competition and finding her way to the historical saga form. Her debut, Birmingham Rose (1995), introduced the setting and social world she would return to repeatedly: Birmingham’s working-class neighborhoods, women’s lives in industry, and the transformations wrought by the First and Second World Wars.
Her most popular series, the Chocolate Girls books, centers on the lives of women who work at the Cadbury factory in Bournville — a real factory in a real Birmingham neighborhood — and spans from the wartime period to the late twentieth century. Murray brings the same attention to period detail and community life to all her series, whether they are set on the Birmingham canals, in the inter-war city, or in the postwar factories. With over thirty books published between 1995 and 2023, she has built one of the more substantial bodies of Birmingham fiction in British popular literature.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many books has Annie Murray written?
Annie Murray has written 32 books across seven series.
What was Annie Murray's first book?
Annie Murray’s first book is Birmingham Rose, published in 1995.
What city does Annie Murray write about most often?
Birmingham and the surrounding Midlands are the heart of most of her fiction. Murray is one of the most sustained chroniclers of Birmingham’s working-class history in British fiction, from the pre-war slums of the 1930s to the factory towns of the wartime and postwar years.