Below is the complete list of Victoria Thompson’s Counterfeit Lady books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Counterfeit Lady Books
with Ellen Thompson
About Counterfeit Lady
Victoria Thompson’s Counterfeit Lady series follows Elizabeth Miles, a professional con woman who unexpectedly finds herself moving between New York’s criminal underworld and the drawing rooms of respectable society during the years surrounding the First World War. Elizabeth comes from a family of confidence artists and has been trained to read people, create convincing identities, manipulate expectations, and exploit the greed of men who believe themselves too clever to be deceived. Those skills become the foundation for an unusual historical mystery series in which solving a crime often requires constructing an even better con.
City of Lies begins with Elizabeth fleeing businessman Oscar Thornton after a scheme costs him a substantial amount of money. Desperate to disappear, she takes refuge among a group of women involved in the suffrage movement. The situation introduces her to a social world far removed from the one in which she was raised and, more importantly, to Gideon Bates, an attorney whose commitment to honesty makes him almost comically different from Elizabeth and her family. What begins as concealment gradually gives Elizabeth relationships she has never expected to value.
That contrast between Elizabeth and Gideon becomes the emotional center of the series. Gideon believes strongly in law, evidence, and ethical conduct; Elizabeth knows from experience that legal systems and respectable institutions do not always produce justice. Their different instincts frequently collide, but they also complement one another. Gideon can pursue solutions available through legitimate channels, while Elizabeth recognizes when deception may be the only effective weapon against someone already manipulating the rules.
Thompson also uses Elizabeth’s movement into high society to expose how closely respectable behavior can resemble a confidence game. Wealth, marriage, inheritance, business reputation, and social status all depend to some extent on convincing other people to believe a particular version of the truth. Elizabeth may be an acknowledged con artist, but she repeatedly discovers that supposedly respectable people are capable of frauds far more damaging than the schemes her family once used to make a living. The author’s own description of the series makes that irony explicit: Elizabeth discovers that high society may be the biggest con of all.
The historical setting develops alongside her personal life. City of Scoundrels places Gideon’s legal work against the American experience of the First World War, including soldiers preparing wills before deployment. Later, City of Shadows reflects the grief left by both the war and the influenza pandemic, using the period’s renewed fascination with séances and spiritualism as the setting for a scheme targeting bereaved families. These historical pressures are not merely background decoration; they create opportunities for exploitation that Elizabeth is uniquely qualified to recognize.
Elizabeth’s relationship with her own past changes as well. Marriage and entry into the Bates family give her reasons to consider abandoning confidence games, but situations repeatedly arise where the skills she is trying to leave behind can protect vulnerable people or recover what criminals have taken. The tension is therefore not simply whether Elizabeth can become respectable. It is whether respectability is always morally superior to using dishonest methods for a just purpose.
The official Counterfeit Lady sequence currently contains eight novels, from City of Lies through City of Promises. Its continuity comes from Elizabeth’s evolving identity, her partnership with Gideon, and the recurring involvement of people from both her criminal family and her newer social world. Thompson uses that divided life to give the series its distinctive character: a historical sleuth who understands deception better than most detectives because deception was her profession long before solving mysteries became part of her life.