Below is the complete list of Fiona Davis books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Point In Time Books
About Fiona Davis
Fiona Davis is an American historical novelist best known for stories built around iconic New York City landmarks and the women whose lives unfold behind their celebrated facades. A New York Times bestselling author, she has made buildings such as the Barbizon Hotel, the Dakota, Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library, Radio City Music Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art central to her fiction. Her novels typically combine meticulous historical research with mystery, family secrets, artistic ambition, and women attempting to establish independent lives during periods when social expectations sharply limited their choices.
Davis did not initially plan a career as a novelist. She moved to New York City to pursue acting and worked professionally on stage before gradually becoming interested in writing. She later earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and wrote articles for publications including The Wall Street Journal and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her experience interviewing people and researching factual stories eventually provided a foundation for the historical investigation required by her novels.
Her debut, The Dollhouse, was published in 2016 and established the approach that would become her signature. The novel explores the Barbizon Hotel for Women through storylines separated by decades, using the building’s history to examine ambition, friendship, social expectations, and secrets preserved within a changing New York. Rather than treating architecture simply as scenery, Davis made the landmark itself part of the mystery.
That method continued with The Address, centered on the Dakota apartment building, and The Masterpiece, which draws upon the once-thriving Grand Central School of Art inside Grand Central Terminal. In each case, Davis takes a famous structure familiar to modern New Yorkers and searches its history for spaces, occupations, and people that have largely disappeared from public memory.
The Chelsea Girls moved into the theatrical world of the Chelsea Hotel and the political pressures of the McCarthy era, while The Lions of Fifth Avenue used the New York Public Library to connect two generations of women through mysterious book thefts. The latter became a Good Morning America Book Club selection and further established Davis’s reputation for combining historical settings with accessible suspense.
With The Magnolia Palace, she turned to the Frick mansion, intertwining the world of artist’s model Audrey Munson with a later mystery involving the Frick family collection. The Spectacular brought readers behind the scenes at Radio City Music Hall in the 1950s, pairing a young Rockette’s struggle for independence with a fictionalized version of the investigation into the real-life bomber who terrorized New York for years.
The Stolen Queen expanded Davis’s geographical range through a story linking the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its 1978 Met Gala with archaeological work in Egypt. Although New York remains crucial, the novel demonstrates how her interest in museums, artifacts, and forgotten histories can extend beyond the city’s architecture.
In 2026, Davis also turns to an established fictional character with Samantha: The Next Chapter, the first American Girl novel written for adults. Set in 1920, it reimagines Samantha Parkington at twenty-five, connecting the character with women’s suffrage and a rapidly changing New York.
Across Davis’s bibliography, buildings operate almost like additional characters. Their renovations, hidden rooms, vanished communities, and changing purposes allow her to place different generations in conversation with one another. Her historical fiction is consequently as interested in what cities forget as in what they preserve, repeatedly uncovering the women, ambitions, and private dramas concealed behind some of New York’s most recognizable doors.