Phryne Fisher Books in Order: All 23 Novels (Kerry Greenwood)

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She arrives in Melbourne in 1928 with a wardrobe of Paris frocks, a gold cigarette case, a pearl-handled pistol in her handbag and absolutely no intention of being respectable. The Honourable Phryne Fisher drove an ambulance in France, flies her own aeroplane, takes lovers as she pleases, and solves murders because the police are slow and she is not. Kerry Greenwood wrote her for thirty-six years, from Cocaine Blues in 1989 until her own death in March 2025, and the series she left behind is one of the great pleasures of the genre — sharper and more worldly than most cozies, but just as warm.

This is the complete Phryne Fisher reading order: all 23 novels with their years, the two short story collections, where to start, and how the books differ from the television series. Spoiler-free throughout.

Phryne Fisher Books in Order: All 23 Novels

Years below are first Australian publication by Allen & Unwin, which is where every Phryne book appeared first. US editions from Poisoned Pen Press often landed a year or more later, so an American library catalogue may show a different date for the same novel. Where sources disagree, we have said so.

1. Cocaine Blues (1989). The Honourable Phryne Fisher is bored with London drawing rooms, so she sails to Melbourne to look in on a friend’s daughter and stays to break up a cocaine ring. Everything the series will become is already here: the clothes, the nerve, the pearl-handled pistol.
2. Flying Too High (1990). Phryne takes an aeroplane up over Melbourne and a kidnapping case on the ground, while a client frets that her son means to kill his father. The book that fixes her as a pilot as well as a detective.
3. Murder on the Ballarat Train (1991). Chloroform in a sleeping carriage, a dead passenger, and a dazed girl who cannot remember her own name. Phryne gains a household member and one of the series’ longest-running threads.
4. Death at Victoria Dock (1992). A young anarchist is shot and dies in Phryne’s arms on the wharf. The trail runs through Melbourne’s radical politics and a girl nobody is looking for.
5. The Green Mill Murder (1993). A man dies on the floor of the Green Mill ballroom during a dance marathon. Finding the one witness who can clear her partner takes Phryne and her Gipsy Moth into the Victorian high country.
6. Blood and Circuses (1994). Phryne gives up her silk, her car and her servants to go undercover with a travelling circus that someone is sabotaging. Many readers’ favourite, and the book that strips her of every advantage she has.
7. Ruddy Gore (1995). Phryne arrives late for Gilbert and Sullivan at His Majesty’s Theatre, rescues two people on the stairs on the way in, and spends the evening with a company convinced their theatre is haunted.
8. Urn Burial (1996). A house party at a Gothic pile in the mountains, cut off by weather and thoroughly sinister. Greenwood enjoying herself with the English country-house mystery, transplanted to Victoria.
9. Raisins and Almonds (1997). A death at a Jewish book fair draws Phryne into Melbourne’s Jewish community, a poisoning question and a young man nobody else will defend. Some US sources date this one 1999.
10. Death Before Wicket (1999). Phryne goes to Sydney for the cricket and stays for a missing university student, a theft and some decidedly unsporting occultism.
11. Away with the Fairies (2001). An illustrator of fairy pictures is found dead, so Phryne takes a job at the women’s weekly that employed her — all while waiting for news of Lin Chung.
12. Murder in Montparnasse (2002). Bert and Cec’s old wartime comrades are dying one after another, and the answer lies back in Phryne’s own Paris years. The book with the most of her past in it.
13. The Castlemaine Murders (2003). A day out at Luna Park produces a mummified body with a bullet in it, and sends Phryne to Castlemaine after her own family’s history.
14. Queen of the Flowers (2004). Phryne is crowned Queen of the Flower Parade in St Kilda, one of her flower maidens disappears, and the pasts of her adopted daughters come calling at once.
15. Death by Water (2005). A jewel thief is working a luxury liner bound for New Zealand, and the shipping line would very much rather Phryne caught them quietly.
16. Murder in the Dark (2006). A four-day party at a grand estate over Christmas, with threats arriving between the cocktails and a guest taken. Phryne in holiday mode is still Phryne.
17. Murder on a Midsummer Night (2008). Two cases at once: a death on the beach at St Kilda that the family refuses to accept as suicide, and the hunt for a lost inheritance.
18. Dead Man’s Chest (2010). A seaside holiday at Queenscliff with the whole household. The housekeepers have vanished, the neighbours are odd, and there is persistent talk of buried treasure.
19. Unnatural Habits (2012). Pregnant girls are disappearing from a Magdalen laundry, and the journalist who started asking about it has disappeared too. The darkest book in the series, and the angriest.
20. Murder and Mendelssohn (2013). A choral conductor is murdered with his own sheet music, and Phryne is asked to keep a brilliant, impossible mathematician alive. The last book before a seven-year gap.
21. Death in Daylesford (2020). Phryne returns after seven years, invited to a spa hotel in Daylesford that treats shell-shocked veterans, with a second mystery running alongside it. Australian publication 2020; the US edition followed in 2021.
22. Murder in Williamstown (2022). Threatening letters start arriving for Phryne herself, and the case reaches into Melbourne’s Chinese community and Lin Chung’s family. Published in Australia in 2022, with the Poisoned Pen Press edition for US readers after that.
23. Murder in the Cathedral (2025). Phryne travels to Bendigo for an old friend’s investiture as bishop and finds church politics, blackmail and a body. Published in Australia in November 2025, after Greenwood’s death that March, and billed by Allen & Unwin as the final Phryne Fisher novel; the US paperback from Poisoned Pen Press is listed for 17 November 2026.

The Phryne Fisher short stories

Two collections sit outside the novel sequence and can be read at any point once you know the household:

• A Question of Death (2008) — an illustrated gathering of short Phryne cases, with period recipes and notes mixed in. A lovely gift book and a good sampler.
• The Lady with the Gun Asks the Questions (2021) — the complete Phryne short stories collected in one volume, including pieces that had been hard to find for years.

Where to start with Phryne Fisher

Start at the beginning. Cocaine Blues is short, brisk and does the introductions properly, and the early books are quick enough that you will be at book five before you have quite decided to commit. If you want to test the water with one standalone first, Blood and Circuses (book 6) and Ruddy Gore (book 7) are the two most often handed to new readers, and neither spoils much of what comes before.

One warning worth having: the Phryne books are cozy in their comforts — food, frocks, a loyal household, no gore on the page — but Greenwood was a criminal defence lawyer for decades, and she writes about abortion, prostitution, anti-Semitism and institutional cruelty without flinching. Unnatural Habits in particular is a hard book. If you prefer your mysteries entirely gentle, our guide to cozy mysteries for beginners has softer places to land.

Phryne Fisher on screen

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries ran on Australia’s ABC for three series and 34 episodes between February 2012 and June 2015, with Essie Davis as Phryne and Nathan Page as Detective Inspector Jack Robinson. A feature film, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, followed in February 2020 and picks up after the final series. A spin-off, Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, moved the family to 1960s Melbourne with Geraldine Hakewill as Phryne’s young relative Peregrine Fisher, beginning on the Seven Network in 2019.

The television Phryne is a warmer, more romantic creation than the one on the page, and the slow-burning Phryne-and-Jack romance is largely an invention of the screenwriters. Episodes borrow titles and premises from the novels freely but rework the plots, so reading the books after watching rarely spoils them. Readers who come from the show usually report the same two surprises: the books are franker about sex, and Jack is a much smaller presence.

Frequently asked questions

Do you have to read the Phryne Fisher books in order?

No, and Greenwood’s own publisher says as much — each mystery is self-contained. But the household changes: Dot, Mr and Mrs Butler, Bert and Cec, Jane and Ruth, and Lin Chung all arrive at particular moments, and meeting them out of sequence takes the fun out of it. Publication order is the best order.

How many Phryne Fisher books are there?

Twenty-three novels and two short story collections. You will see some retailers number Murder in the Cathedral as book 24 because they slot a collection into the sequence; counting novels only, it is the twenty-third.

Is there going to be another Phryne Fisher book?

Kerry Greenwood died on 26 March 2025, aged 70, and Allen & Unwin published Murder in the Cathedral that November as the last book in the series. No continuation by another author has been announced. Her other long-running series, the Corinna Chapman mysteries about a Melbourne baker, is also complete and worth picking up if you are not ready to leave her voice behind.

Are the Phryne Fisher books cozy mysteries?

Mostly yes — amateur detective, recurring cast, strong sense of place, nothing gruesome on the page. They are more adult than the American cozy standard, with sex, politics and a heroine who answers to nobody. Think of them as the glamorous, slightly dangerous end of the cozy shelf. For something closer to the traditional village mystery, try our Agatha Raisin reading order.

More reading orders like this one live on our cozy mystery series in order hub. And if you would like a new series put in order every week — plus the occasional argument about which Phryne book is the best one — come and join us on The Teacup Sleuth on Facebook. Tell us there: book or television, which Phryne is your Phryne?

Sources

For reading order and publication years on this page our source of record is Poisoned Pen Press’s numbered Phryne Fisher editions. We also cross-check Allen & Unwin’s Australian editions. If anything here is out of date, tell us in the comments and we will fix it.