Sabine Durrant
Sabine Durrant has published 10 books across 2 series. The recommended reading order starts with Having It and Eating It (2002).
Sabine Durrant is a British journalist who spent years shaping stories for The Guardian and The Sunday Times before turning to psychological thrillers that unsettle and compel in equal measure. She made her name as a features writer and deputy literary editor, conducting interviews and editing fiction, work that sharpened her eye for the darker corners of human behavior.
Her career as a novelist began in 2002 with Having It and Eating It, followed by the Connie Pickles children's series, but it was her pivot to psychological suspense that redefined her voice. Under Your Skin arrived in 2014, published by Hodder in the UK and Simon & Schuster in the US, launching a string of taut, character-driven novels translated into more than twelve languages. Remember Me This Way followed in 2015, then Lie With Me in 2016, a Richard & Judy pick. Take Me In appeared in 2018, Finders, Keepers in 2020, and Sun Damage in 2022, each tightening her grip on the domestic thriller form.
Durrant lives in London with her three children, balancing the precision of her journalistic past with the slippery uncertainties of suspense.
Shelf & Shadows
Order of Connie Pickles Books
- Tagsyoung-adultromancechildrenDescriptionThree best friends. One French mother. Zero control over anything that matters. Connie Pickles used to be the sensible one. The girl who kept her head while everyone around her lost theirs to hormones, lies, and terrible romantic decisions. But now her carefully ordered world is unraveling. Her beautiful, broke, bra-expert mother keeps falling for the wrong men. William, her chocolate-button-dispensing confidant, is acting weird. And Connie's own heart? Completely shattered. Meanwhile, Julie spins elaborate fibs, and Delilah—trapped in an all-girls school—flutters and blushes at anything remotely male. So Connie does what any desperate teenager would do: she launches a campaign to fix everything. Love. Money. Her mother's disastrous dating life. The mysteries of French kisses and underwear so uncomfortable it should be illegal. Sabine Durrant captures the glorious chaos of adolescence with sharp wit and genuine warmth. This is friendship in all its messy, loyal, exasperating glory. It's about the moment you realize you can't control other people's hearts—not even your own. Funny, tender, and bracingly honest about what it means to grow up without a roadmap.Publication dateJune 28, 2005Amazon rating4.1/5Print length256LanguageEnglishPublisherPuffin
- Tagsyoung-adultDescriptionThis is a book that understands the particular agony and ecstasy of being a girl on the cusp of everything—too old for childhood's easy comforts, too young for the sophistication you desperately crave. Connie Pickles is that girl, caught in the middle of family chaos and her own fierce longing to be someone else, somewhere else, preferably somewhere glamorous and far from the everyday disasters that seem to follow her like a shadow. When the promise of adventure arrives, it brings with it all the complications of real life: the gap between expectation and reality, the mortification of being yourself when you'd rather be anyone else, and the slow, surprising discovery that growing up might mean something different than you imagined. Sabine Durrant captures the voice of early adolescence with precision and warmth, never condescending to her protagonist or her readers. Connie's misadventures are genuinely funny, but they're also tender, rooted in the universal experience of wanting desperately to belong while simultaneously wanting to stand out. This is a story about family, friendship, and the messy process of figuring out who you are when the world keeps insisting you be someone you're not quite ready to become. It's a book that remembers what it felt like to be that age, and it treats that memory with the seriousness and humor it deserves.Publication dateMarch 25, 2008Amazon rating5/5Print length240LanguageEnglishPublisherHarperCollins
Order of Standalone Novels
- Tags---DescriptionDomestic life isn't supposed to feel like settling. But for Maggie Owen, that's exactly what it is. She's left her job, traded ambition for playdates, and wrapped herself in a thin layer of contentment that's starting to fray at the edges. She's managing. She's fine. Until Claire walks back into her life. Claire is everything Maggie used to be—or thought she could be. Confident. Magnetic. Unapologetically alive. She's a former classmate who seems to have cracked the code Maggie can't even read anymore. The looks. The sex life. The ease. Suddenly, Maggie's carefully constructed world feels small and suffocating. The comparison is brutal. The questions start creeping in. Sabine Durrant captures that specific ache of watching someone else live the life you didn't know you wanted. This is a novel about the gap between who we are and who we thought we'd become. It's sharp and uncomfortable in all the right ways. Maggie's unraveling isn't loud—it's the quiet kind, the kind that happens in the margins of motherhood and marriage. Durrant doesn't offer easy answers, and that's the point. This is a story about desire, envy, and the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day.Publication dateJanuary 1, 2002Amazon rating3.8/5Print length352LanguageEnglishPublisherTime Warner Paperbacks
- TagsromanceDescriptionThe walls close in differently when you've chosen them yourself. Sabine Durrant's *The Great Indoors* examines the peculiar claustrophobia of domestic life through a lens that's both sharply observant and unexpectedly tender, tracing the interior geography of a woman whose world has contracted to the dimensions of her own home. What begins as voluntary retreat—a stepping back from the noise and demands of the outside world—gradually reveals itself as something more complicated: a reckoning with the self that occurs when there's nowhere left to hide. Durrant maps this territory with the precision of someone who understands that the smallest spaces can contain the largest questions. The novel distinguishes itself through its willingness to sit with discomfort, to linger in the mundane until it becomes strange and significant. There's no dramatic inciting incident here, no clear villain except perhaps the accumulated weight of choices made and unmade. Instead, Durrant offers something rarer: an honest portrait of how we become trapped not by circumstance but by our own careful construction of safety. Her prose moves between the quotidian details of household routine and the deeper currents of anxiety and longing beneath, finding unexpected poetry in the familiar. It's a book that asks what happens when staying in becomes the only way forward.Publication dateJanuary 3, 2006Amazon rating3.5/5Print length320LanguageEnglishPublisherRiverhead Books
- TagsmysterysuspensecrimethrillerDescriptionWhat happens when the man you've mourned for three years turns out to be someone you never really knew? Sabine Durrant's psychological thriller dismantles the architecture of grief with surgical precision, revealing the fault lines beneath a widow's carefully maintained composure. Lizzie Carter has spent years perfecting her role as the bereaved wife, clinging to the memory of Zach, her charismatic husband who died in a house fire. But when small inconsistencies begin to surface—a credit card charge, a photograph that doesn't quite align—the foundation of her mourning starts to crack. What follows is a masterclass in narrative unreliability, as Durrant peels back layers of deception with the patience of someone who understands that the most devastating revelations arrive quietly. The novel operates on two timelines, past and present braiding together until the reader can no longer trust which version of events—or which version of Lizzie—is real. This is domestic suspense that earns its twists, less interested in shock value than in the psychological toll of living inside a lie. Durrant writes with cool intelligence about marriage, memory, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive, crafting a thriller that lingers not because of what it reveals, but because of what it understands about the human capacity for self-deception.Publication dateMarch 12, 2015Amazon rating3.9/5Print length368LanguageEnglishPublisherMulholland Books
- TagsmysterythrillercrimesuspenseDescriptionThis morning, Gaby Mortimer found a body on the common near her home. By evening, her perfect life will begin to unravel. The police are coming for her. Gaby has it all—the kind of existence that looks flawless from the outside. But when a corpse turns up on her morning route, everything she's built starts to crack. The evidence doesn't just point in her direction. It leads straight to her door. The police are convinced. They see a woman with secrets, a woman with motive. And the more Gaby protests her innocence, the guiltier she appears. Every alibi crumbles. Every explanation sounds hollow. The trap is closing, and she can't see who set it. Sabine Durrant crafts a psychological thriller that tightens like a noose. This is domestic suspense at its sharpest—claustrophobic, paranoid, and ruthlessly paced. You'll question everything Gaby says. You'll wonder if she's victim or villain. And when the truth finally surfaces, you'll realize you've been looking at the wrong person all along. Under Your Skin is the kind of book that makes you lock your doors and reconsider everyone you think you know.Publication dateApril 28, 2015Amazon rating3.9/5Print length320LanguageEnglishPublisherAtria/Emily Bestler Books
- TagssuspensecrimemysterythrillerDescriptionSabine Durrant's "Lie with Me" is a standalone psychological thriller that explores the dangerous territory where charm meets deception, and a summer idyll becomes something far more sinister. Paul Morris is a man whose life has quietly unraveled—his career stalled, his marriage dissolved, his finances in shambles—when an unexpected invitation arrives to join old friends at a Greek island villa. What begins as a sun-drenched escape among the wealthy and beautiful soon reveals itself as something more calculated, as Paul's desperation and envy curdle into manipulation. Durrant crafts a narrator who is both magnetic and deeply unreliable, drawing readers into his perspective even as the moral ground shifts beneath their feet, forcing us to question not just what happened during that fateful summer, but how complicit we've become in his version of events. This is a novel that understands the seductive power of self-justification, the way we all narrate our lives to cast ourselves as heroes rather than villains. Durrant writes with precision and psychological acuity, peeling back layers of class resentment, masculine fragility, and the lies we tell ourselves before we ever lie to others. The Mediterranean setting provides a shimmering contrast to the darkness at the book's core, making "Lie with Me" a compulsively readable exploration of how far one man will go when he has nothing left to lose.Publication dateJanuary 1, 2016Amazon rating3.9/5Print length293LanguageEnglishPublisherHODDER & STOUGHTON
- TagsthrillermysterysuspensecrimeDescriptionDave Martin pulls a drowning man from the sea on a family holiday, a split-second act of heroism that should fade into memory like any other vacation story. But Marcus, the man he saved, doesn't fade. He reappears in their London neighborhood, at their son's school, in the fabric of their carefully constructed middle-class life. What begins as gratitude curdles into something far more unsettling, and Dave's wife Tessa starts to wonder: who exactly did her husband drag from the water? Durrant crafts a domestic thriller that tightens like a noose, examining how a single good deed can unravel everything you've built. The Martins' marriage, already strained by financial pressures and unspoken resentments, becomes the real battleground as Marcus's presence exposes the fault lines they've papered over. The novel shifts between Dave and Tessa's perspectives, and the gap between what they know and what they're willing to admit creates a queasy, mounting dread. This is psychological suspense that understands how terror works in ordinary life—not through masked intruders but through the slow realization that you've let danger past your threshold and locked the door behind it. Durrant writes with precision about class anxiety, marital distrust, and the stories we tell ourselves to sleep at night. The result is a taut, unnerving exploration of how quickly safety can become a lie we're desperate to believe.Publication dateJanuary 10, 2019Amazon rating3.7/5Print length352LanguageEnglishPublisherMulholland Books
- Tagsthrillermysterysuspensecrimeliterary-fictionDescriptionAilsa Tilson finds a wallet on the beach. Inside, cash and cards belonging to a man named Max. She could return it. She should return it. But Ailsa's life is fraying at the edges—her marriage is stale, her teenage daughter barely speaks to her, and she's stuck in a rut so deep she can't see the sky anymore. So she keeps it. Just for a little while. Just to see what it feels like to be someone else. What starts as a small transgression spirals into something darker. Ailsa begins to follow Max, piecing together his life from the fragments she's stolen. She tells herself it's harmless curiosity, but the line between fascination and obsession blurs fast. Sabine Durrant crafts a taut psychological thriller that digs into the lies we tell ourselves and the dangerous allure of other people's lives. This is a story about a woman unraveling, about the small choices that lead to catastrophic consequences. It's unsettling, sharply observed, and impossible to put down. You'll question every decision Ailsa makes—and wonder what you'd do in her place.Publication dateOctober 20, 2020Amazon rating4.2/5Print length320LanguageEnglishPublisherHodder & Stoughton
- Tagsthrillermysterysuspensecrimeliterary-fictionDescriptionThis is a novel that understands how the past never stays buried, especially under the unforgiving glare of the Mediterranean sun. Sabine Durrant crafts a taut psychological thriller that peels back the veneer of a seemingly idyllic Greek island holiday to expose the rot beneath—secrets, lies, and the kind of desperation that makes people do unthinkable things. When a woman escapes to a sun-drenched island retreat, she's running from more than just the gray skies of home. But the heat has a way of making everything shimmer and distort, and what begins as a chance at reinvention quickly spirals into something far more dangerous. Durrant excels at building dread in paradise, using the claustrophobic intimacy of island life to tighten the noose around her characters. The result is a story that asks how well we ever really know anyone—and how far we'll go to protect the versions of ourselves we've carefully constructed. Sharp, unsettling, and impossible to put down.Publication dateMay 16, 2023Amazon rating4/5Print length272LanguageEnglishPublisherHarper
Frequently Asked Questions about Sabine Durrant
Sabine Durrant writes both standalone novels and a series. The Connie Pickles books form a series. For those, the first book is Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles (2005), followed by Bon Voyage, Connie Pickles / Ooh La La! Connie Pickles (2008). The standalone novels can be read in any order. If you wish to read the series in order, start with Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles. The standalone novels offer a good starting point if you prefer not to begin with a series. Having It and Eating It was published in 2002.
A good place to start with Sabine Durrant is with her standalone novels, which do not need to be read in any particular order. Having It and Eating It, published in 2002, is her earliest standalone novel. Alternatively, you can start with the Connie Pickles series. The first book in that series is Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles, published in 2005. This approach allows readers to explore different aspects of her writing without a predetermined sequence.
The Connie Pickles books are part of a series and are best read in the order they were published. Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles came first in 2005, followed by Bon Voyage, Connie Pickles / Ooh La La! Connie Pickles in 2008. However, Sabine Durrant also writes many standalone novels. These individual books do not have a required reading order and can be enjoyed in any sequence. Readers can choose to start with a standalone or jump into the Connie Pickles series.
Sabine Durrant writes both standalone novels and series. The Connie Pickles books constitute a series. Her other novels, such as Having It and Eating It (2002), The Great Indoors (2006), Remember Me This Way (2015), Under Your Skin (2015), and Lie with Me (2016), are all standalone works. This means readers have the option to engage with her novels either as part of a connected narrative or as individual stories.
Sabine Durrant has written at least 10 books. This includes the two published books in the Connie Pickles series: Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles (2005) and Bon Voyage, Connie Pickles / Ooh La La! Connie Pickles (2008). In addition to the series, she has published several standalone novels, with the list provided including at least eight titles. The exact total number of books is not specified but is more than ten.
The first book Sabine Durrant wrote was Having It and Eating It, published in 2002. This marked the beginning of her career as a novelist. While she later went on to write the Connie Pickles series, this earlier work stands alone and does not require knowledge of any other titles. It offers an entry point into her writing from its earliest stages.
The most recent book listed for Sabine Durrant is Lie with Me, published in 2016. This title is one of her standalone novels. Other standalone novels published in the same year include Under Your Skin. It is important to note that the provided information may not include all of her published works, and there could be more recent titles available.
Sabine Durrant writes psychological thrillers. Her novels often explore complex relationships and suspenseful situations, drawing readers into intricate plots. The Connie Pickles series and her standalone novels all fall within this genre, focusing on the darker aspects of human behavior and mystery. Readers can expect narratives filled with tension and intrigue.
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We verified the reading order for Sabine Durrant's books by cross-referencing official publication dates, ISBN databases, and publisher catalogs.
Last verified: April 2026
Shelf & Shadows. (…). “Sabine Durrant Books in Order.” Retrieved …, from https://www.shelfandshadows.com/authors/sabine-durrant