Everyone loves to cozy up with a good murder mystery, but Ruth Galloway likes to solve it.
Recommended VideosThe fictional character is from the mind of the prolific British crime novelist Elly Griffiths, which is actually the pseudonym for author Domenica de Rosa. With three series’ to her name and a handful of other standalone works of diction, de Rosa has penned nearly 30 works of fiction since 1998.
Fifteen of those nearly 30 novels belong to the Ruth Galloway series, by far de Rosa’s — or should we say Griffths’ — most popular series. The first installment, The Crossing Places, hit shelves in 2009, but Griffith’s pen hasn’t paused once in the decade and a half that followed. In 2023, the 15th novel, The Last Remains, reached readers worldwide, once again bringing Dr. Ruth Galloway into the thick of a murder investigation.
A forensic archeologist by trade, Dr. Ruth Galloway is a 40-something-year-old bachelorette living in North Norfolk, England, when we first meet her in The Crossing Places. She’s come a long way in the nearly 15 years since Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson wrangled into a missing child’s murder investigation in TCP. Nowadays, she’s regularly called upon for her archeologic expertise, each promising the prospect of a disturbing yet equally satisfying murder mystery case.
While every Ruth Galloway novel is written as a standalone piece that doesn’t require extensive insight into the earlier novels, the series does follow a linear timeline and includes a relationship that progressively evolves. To get the full Ruth Galloway experience, it’s best to read the novels in order. Here’s how you can do that.
The Ruth Galloway books in order
Unlike some murder mysteries, the Ruth Galloway series doesn’t include any prequels or spin-offs save one (Ruth’s First Christmas Tree), meaning it’s pretty simple to read the series in order.
As mentioned, the 15 novels can serve as standalone pieces, but behind every murder mystery is an evolving storyline occurring between Dr. Ruth Galloway and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, which at the very least makes it worthwhile to read the series in chronological order.
Reading the Ruth Galloway books in order only requires you to read them in publication order. Below is every book in the series, listed both in publication and chronological order.
- #1: The Crossing Places (2009)
- #2: The Janus Stone (2010)
- #3: The House at Sea’s End (2010)
- #4: A Room Full of Bones (2011)
- #4.5 Ruth’s First Christmas Tree (2012)
- #5: A Dying Fall (2012)
- #6: The Outcast Dead (2014)
- #7 The Ghost Fields (2015)
- #8 The Woman In Blue (2016)
- #9 The Chalk Pit (2017)
- #10 The Dark Angel (2018)
- #11 The Stone Circle (2019)
- #12 The Lantern Men (2020)
- #13 The Night Hawks (2021)
- #14 The Locked Room (2022)
- #15 The Last Remains (2023)
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