Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the Family / The Most Difficult Thing | 2019 | Charlotte Philby | Buy |
| 2 | A Double Life | 2020 | Charlotte Philby | Buy |
| 3 | The Second Woman | 2021 | Charlotte Philby | Buy |
| 4 | Edith & Kim | 2022 | Charlotte Philby | Buy |
| 5 | The Secret Lives of Women Spies | 2025 | Charlotte Philby | Buy |
The three books that open Philby’s output as a novelist share a common preoccupation: women who are not what they appear to be. Part of the Family introduces Anna Witherall, whose enviable domestic life conceals a secret that threatens everything around her, including people who have done nothing to deserve the consequences. A Double Life and The Second Woman extend this territory, building a loose triptych about female identity, surveillance, and the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from maintaining a false version of yourself over years.
Edith and Kim marks a shift into more explicitly historical ground. Drawing on her grandfather’s story, Philby constructs a fictional portrait of Kim Philby and Edith Tudor-Hart, the Austrian-born photographer and Soviet agent who introduced him to the communist networks of the 1930s. The novel examines idealism, betrayal, and the long shadow that both cast across the people closest to the people who carry them.
The Secret Lives of Women Spies, published in 2025, moves into non-fiction for younger readers. It collects the true stories of more than twenty women who worked in intelligence, from Edith Cavell and Elizebeth Friedman to Noor Inayat Khan, offering a counterpoint to the male-dominated spy canon that Philby’s fiction has been quietly questioning all along.