Angela Marsons is a British crime thriller author known for her D.I. Kim Stone series which took the world by storm in 2015 when the first book in the series was published by Bookouture in the UK. Her D.I. Kim Stone made her an almost instant bestselling novelist all over the world.
Bookouture is known to release books by some formidable British crime and thriller authors, including Robert Bryndza with his Erika Foster series, Betty Rowlands with her Melissa Craig series, Caroline Mitchell with her several series and standalone thrillers, and Lucy Dawson with her standalone psychological thrillers. It is no surprise that the company decided to take a gamble with Angela Marsons and publish her main series. The author is really that good.
Here are the Angela Marsons books in order of reading for her popular Detective Kim Stone novels. First Blood, published in 2019, is the prequel book to the entire series, so it should be read first.
New Angela Marsons Books
(D.I. Kim Stone #21), 2024
D.I. Kim Stone Books in Publication Order
- Silent Scream, 2015
- Evil Games, 2015
- Lost Girls, 2015
- Play Dead, 2016
- Blood Lines, 2016
- Dead Souls, 2017
- Broken Bones, 2017
- Dying Truth, 2018
- Fatal Promise, 2018
- Dead Memories, 2019
- Child’s Play, 2019
- First Blood, 2019
- Killing Mind, 2020
- Deadly Cry, 2020
- Twisted Lies, 2021
- Stolen Ones, 2021
- Six Graves, 2022
- Hidden Scars, 2022
- Deadly Fate, 2023
- Bad Blood, 2023
- Guilty Mothers, 2024
D.I. Kim Stone Books in Chronological Order
- First Blood, 2019 (prequel story)
- Silent Scream, 2015
- Evil Games, 2015
- Lost Girls, 2015
- Play Dead, 2016
- Blood Lines, 2016
- Dead Souls, 2017
- Broken Bones, 2017
- Dying Truth, 2018
- Fatal Promise, 2018
- Dead Memories, 2019
- Child’s Play, 2019
- Killing Mind, 2020
- Deadly Cry, 2020
- Twisted Lies, 2021
- Stolen Ones, 2021
- Six Graves, 2022
- Hidden Scars, 2022
- Deadly Fate, 2023
- Bad Blood, 2023
- Guilty Mothers, 2024
Standalone Novels in Publication Order
- The Forgotten Woman, 2013
- Dear Mother (aka The Middle Child), 2014
- If Only, 2021
Anthologies and Short Story Collections
- Dead Simple, 2017 (Quick Reads, edited by Harry Bingham)
- Written in the Stars: A Charity Anthology, 2022
DI Kim Stone Series Overview
First Blood is where it all began. While the book was published in 2019, it is in fact the prequel to the detective Kim Stone novels, so it’s worth reading it before the others. Kim has just been transferred from West Bromwich to work at Halesowen Police Station, when a new case came knocking at the door. A man was murdered, decapitated, and his body staked to the ground. Kim and her team take over the case, and whey they search the victim’s home, they discover that the victim’s sister is actually glad that he’s dead. The more they investigate, the more secrets they uncover and some strange ties to a particular women’s shelter. Now Kim and her new squad have to find the killer before he or she strikes again.
We meet detective Kim Stone for the first time in Silent Scream, when she has to go after a twisted serial killer who might have started killing again after a long time. But to do that, Kim might have to go back to her own past and confront the demons that have haunted her for years. The twisted serial killer has been killing for many years, and as the body count rises, Kim must stop the murderer before he kills again.
In Evil Games, when a rapist is found murdered, initially, it looks like the work of a vigilante. Bad people are killed off and people rejoice. However, the more Kim and her team look into the case, the more sinister it all becomes. Soon, Kim realizes that she is part of a twisted person’s experiment, and if she is not careful, there will be hell to pay because the sociopath will not stop until he reaches his ultimate goal.
In Lost Girls, someone’s playing a lethal game of highest bidder. When two girls, Charlie and Amy, go missing, only the one returns for whom a higher price is fetched. The other one will die. The terrifying kidnapping is involved in a sick mind game that puts the team on high alert. Now Kim has to find the missing girl before it’s too late, even for her.
In Play Dead, a body farm should only have bodies accounted for ready for research. Fresh, unknown bodies should never be part of it, not when they’re not expected for delivery. So when a young girl’s body is found at the premises, and then a second one, Kim knows she has a serial killer on the loose. When Tracy Frost, Kim’s nemesis reporter disappears, Kim has to bury her old resentment to try to find the missing woman and stop the killing spree.
In Blood Lines, two very different people are killed with the same MO. Even though nothing connects the two victims, detective Kim Stone feels that it’s the work of the same person. But when she receives a message from her real nemesis, Alex Thorne, she knows she hast to meet the person face to face. She might know something about the case, although Kim is sure her interest is of another nature.
In Dead Souls, at an archaeological dig, during the sorting of some found bones, it turns out that they contain the bones of several victims. While Kim is working the case with Detective Travis, she has to dig in the families’ past to find the connections that brought them those bones. In addition, her own team is subjected to crimes of hate, and if Kim doesn’t hurry, there will be soon more bodies.
Kim Stone grew up in foster care. And now, in Broke Bones, in her new case, she might have to confront the very past she wanted to forget. Sex workers and babies are getting murdered, and they might have to do with modern slavery. Now Kim is once again in a race against time to find the killer before more women and children are killed.
In Dying Truth, when a student takes a hike from the top of her school, it looks like a suicide. But when they find a body of a young body at the same school, that can’t be a coincidence. And when the teacher who could reveal it all is found dead, Kim knows that something really sinister is going on at that school. Her investigation reveals a link between these recent murders and a series of pranks from past times that happened at that very school.
In Fatal Promise, when a doctor with whom Kim has once worked on a case is brutally murdered, then his son suffers an accident which Kim doesn’t believe was just an accident, and then a woman is also murdered, Kim makes a shocking connection between these fatalities and a particular hospital where the doctor has once worked at. As Kim and her team are still grieving the loss of a team member, which hit them hard, Kim has to struggle to keep the team together and solve the case before it’s too late for everyone.
When she lost her little brother, Kim and Mikey were chained to a radiator. Mikey died but Kim lived. Now, in Dead Memories, someone is recreating her story when two kids are found chained to a radiator. While the boy died, the girl remained alive. Just like Kim and Mikey. And when the bodies of two people are found in a burned car, Kim can’t help but remember the way Erica and Keith, the only parents she ever knew, died. Is someone recreating deaths from Kim’s past?
In Child’s Play, Belinda Evans, a retired college Professor of Child Psychology, is found dead in Haden Hill Park. She is tied with barb wire to a swing, and an X is carved in the back of her neck. Soon Kim figures out that there is a ruthless serial killer who plays a game with gifted, genius people and wants to see who will win. Now Kim has to find an opponent tougher than what she had encountered before. Her investigation leads her team to the dark world of the child prodigy circles.
In Killing Mind, detective Kim Stone is investigating the death of Samantha Brown, who was found dead on her bed apparently from suicide with a knife. But soon Kim discovers that things are not quite as they seem. When the body of a young man is also discovered, apparently from the same type of injury, the cases are most than certain linked. Kim sends Bryant undercover into Unity Farm to investigate, and what he finds could put him and the entire team at risk. Can Kim keep everyone she cares about safe?
While Katrina is shopping with her little girl, she is taken and killed, leaving the child clutching her teddy bear while crying after her mom. Kim Stone is on the case, and she feels things are more complicated than initially thought, especially when days later another body is found, murdered the same way Katrina was before. While Detective Stacey Wood works another case, Kim is left alone to investigate the current one, which points to a ruthless serial killer who is using his victims to communicate with someone…but with whom?
A new twisted serial killer is targeting his next victim, and Kim and her team are on the case again. Soon Kim is fighting against powerful enemies when the family of one of the victims disappears, while forced to be, including officers on the force, have secrets about the murders they don’t want divulged. The victims’ families are not cooperating, and we also have a nosy reporter, Tracy Frost, who likes to complicate the investigation by opening a huge can of worms.
When eight-year-old Grace Lennard, a bracelet belonging to a previously abducted girl, Melody Jones, is found at the scene. At the same time, Steven Harte is at the police station giving information about Melody’s kidnappping, except he wants Kim Stone to play his little mind games in order to find Grace alive. Kim races against time to find clues to both kidnappings, and while doing so, her team uncover clues to even more kidnapped kids, some that had returned home unharmed, while others, not so much.
When Kim arrives at the scene of a house fire, the clues show that the mother pulled the trigger on her two teenage kids. Then all four family members were burned by the fire. But soon Kim finds evidence that things are slightly different, and the mother might not have killed her kids. Could the Daynes family have been killed by someone else? As the team races to solve the case, Kim is also pulled back into her painful past involving her abusive mother.
Initially, Jamie Mills’s death was considered a suicide. His body was found hanging from a tree in a local park. But Detective Kim Stone has her instinct shouting at her that things are not right. Jamie’s mother has a very different reaction when she learns of her son’s death, and Jamie could not have climbed the tree when he was recovering from an injury. The case turns for the worse when Kim comes across a conversion therapy clinic, run by the Gardner family, and she learns that other previous patients of this clinic also died before. What secrets does the clinic want to keep hidden for good?
Sandra Deakin could communicate with the dead, and the group of women who last had a seance with her were the last to also see her alive. Kim learns Sandra was banned from the church and also received death threats. But when another murder occurs soon after, Kim starts to believe that a twisted killer is targetting people with psychic abilities. Not only that, but the killer might just be among the people present at a local psychic show, which puts pressure on Kim to solve the case before more people are killed.
Eric Gould was found on the verge of death and he died soon after on the way to the hospital. While saving him, the team lost all clues to his murder while trampling all over the place, so there was not much to go on for the investigation. Eric’s past shows an abusive tendency, and when a second guy was found also on the verge of dying, Kim learns that the two men were part of a gang of 6 who once bragged about their crimes as kids. Could someone be taking revenge on those men for their evil youths or does someone believe these men were still dangerous even today?
Sheryl Hawne is dead on her kitchen floor, and next to her is her daughter who is still holding the knife that killer her mom. The daughter was a participant of a beauty pageant as a child, and when another woman is found dead and her daughter was also a beauty pageant, Kim starts to connect the killings with this competitive event. Could these mothers be guilty of abusing their daughter back then? Kim is once again troubled by her own past with her own abusive mother hurting her years ago.
Angela Marsons Biography
Angela Marsons was born in Brierley Hill in Black Country, in the UK, an area covering four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, and Wolverhampton. This is also the setting for her DI Kim Stone series. At Junior School during classes, she would make up stories about her classmates. At the age of 12, her English teacher gave her some Andrea Newman books, and she got hooked on them. This is when she discovered her love of writing. She didn’t attend college as she decided to go to work straight from high school, so she went to work as a security guard (duty security manager) at Merry Hill Shopping Centre, where she oversaw over 70 officers. She remained there for 19 years.
Over the years, she has written a few books, but they didn’t really go anywhere. She started writing the detective Kim Stone novels in 2011, but she was rejected by publishing houses for 25 years before joining up with Bookouture, a UK digital publisher that houses many modern British mystery authors. In fact, Angela Marsons was Bookouture’s first-ever crime thriller author.
Most of the Angela Marsons books feature D.I. Kim Stone, her leading character who has her own series. After doing so well under Bookouture, the books got a print deal with the private publishing company Bonnier Publishing Fiction, who operates under 15 European countries, including Sweden, Malta, Germany, Norway, Finnland, and several others.
In addition, due to the books’ popularity, Angela Marson signed a deal for a total of 16 detective Kim Stone books with Bookouture. Considering there are already 11 books released so far, it means we can expect with anticipation at least another 5 more books.
Before writing crime thriller fiction (with her DI Kim Stone crime books), the author wrote two books in other genres that focused more on character development. These were The Forgotten Woman and Dear Mother (which was also published under the name The Middle Child). From her writing style, it looks like Angela Marsons is mostly a pantser (writing by the seat of her pants) rather than a plotter, as she only once tried to outline an entire novel and got bored before she finished writing it. Most of the times, she creates a brief outline and then begins writing wherever the story takes her.
As for her research, she uses factual books on various topics such as archaeology, motorcycle restoration, and osteoarchaeology, and then she checks online accounts of people related to that topic. She also has the PACE manual next to her for crafting her police procedural scenes to check on factual accuracy, while also reading articles and books on Forensics.
Overall, Angela writes a Kim Stone crime book every half a year, so nowadays there are usually two books published per year. Her novels have been so far translated into over 20 languages all around the world.
Angela Marsons was nominated for the CWA Dagger in the Library award in 2024. The nominations of this specific award are decided by library users.
Currently, the author is living in the Black Country with her partner, Julie, her cream Labrador, and a parrot who was more than once an esteemed guest at various podcasts.
Praise for the Angela Marsons Books
DI Kim Stone is the most fascinating character to arrive on the scene since Val McDermid gave us Tony Hill. (Mark Edwards)
Marsons for me is the QUEEN of this genre. She knows how to add the human touch to each story and I just adore her. (Postcards Reviews)
I have nothing but praise for this amazing series, 11 books and counting and the series keeps getting better with each instalment. I highly recommend this series to all fans of original high-quality mystery thrillers. (Bookish)
The author writes to such a consistently high level. Yet again, gripping plot line, strong characters and a well-paced story that builds to a crescendo. If you haven’t already tried this author do yourself a favour and start reading now. (Worchester Source)
Angela Marsons is fast becoming one of the best crime fiction authors going. (The Laughing Librarian)
References
Books Reading Order » Authors »
All Angela’s books are a fantastic read. They are “I can’t put you down “books. They must be read in order at there best but not necessarily.
The same characters are all the way through so you get to know each one individually.
Give them a go and you won’t be disappointed