Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Midsummer Garden | 2017 | Kirsty Manning | Buy |
| 2 | The Song of the Jade Lily / The Jade Lily | 2018 | Kirsty Manning | Buy |
| 3 | The Lost Jewels | 2020 | Kirsty Manning | Buy |
| 4 | The French Gift | 2021 | Kirsty Manning | Buy |
| 5 | The Hidden Book | 2024 | Kirsty Manning | Buy |
Kirsty Manning’s standalone novels all use a dual-timeline structure that alternates between a historical storyline and a present-day investigation or discovery. The Midsummer Garden (2017) was her debut, followed by The Jade Lily (2018), which moves between 1930s Shanghai and contemporary Melbourne to tell the story of two young women, one Jewish and one Chinese, whose friendship is tested by the approaching war.
The Lost Jewels (2020) shifts to London, where a cache of jewelry found beneath a construction site leads back to an Edwardian-era family of gem thieves. The French Gift (2021) is set in wartime and modern-day France, and The Hidden Book (2024) continues Manning’s pattern of uncovering buried histories through objects and places. Across all five books, Manning uses the past-present structure not as a gimmick but as a way to show how wartime choices continue to shape families and communities decades later.