C.J. Cooke Books In Order

Publication Order of C.J.Cooke Standalone Novels

C.J. Cooke
CJ Cooke, also known as Carolyn Jess-Cooke, grew up on a council estate in Belfast, Northern Ireland, right at the height of the Troubles. She began writing at seven years old and pestered publishers for several years with manuscripts typed out on her grandparents’ ancient typewriter and cover notes written out on pages ripped out of school jotters.

Cooke has won the Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, a K Blundell Award, a Tyrone Guthrie Prize, and has won a Northern Writer’s Award three times. “the Lighthouse Witches” was an Indigo Book of the Month and an international bestseller.

CJ has a BA, MA, and PhD from Queen’s University, Belfast, and commenced her academic career in the year 2005 as a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sunderland. Shortly after, she published four academic pieces in swift succession on Shakespearean Cinema and Film Sequels, before she established her career as a novelist, poet, and editor.

From 2013 until 2018, she directed the Writing Motherhood project, which explored the impact of motherhood on women’s writing.

She is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, and convenes the prestigious MLitt Creative Writing and researches different ways that creative writing is able to help with mental health and trauma.

She is also the director and founder of the Stay-at-Home! Literary Festival, which is dedicated to providing people with inclusive, accessible, and eco-friendly ways of accessing literature.

“I Know My Name” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2017. A woman without a name. An abandoned and wild island. A family that’s desperate for answers.

On a tiny Greek island, a woman washes ashore without any memory of where she is from, who she even is, or how she came to get shipwrecked there. Worse, she doesn’t have a way of leaving. While being nursed back to health by the only inhabitants of the island, four friends that are on an annual retreat, she senses tensions between this group which suggest that not all is exactly like it seems. These new acquaintances all seem to be hiding something. Which may relate to the mystery behind her identity.

At the same time, in a pretty suburb located on the outskirts of London, Eloise (mom of a toddler and a newborn) disappears right into thin air. Lochlan, her husband, is desperate to find her, however while the cops look into this disappearance, it becomes obvious that Eloise and Lochlan’s marriage wasn’t the perfect union that it seemed to be.

While Lochlan races to find his wife, Eloise starts an investigation all her own. What both are going to learn is going to place many lives at risk and upend everything that they believed they knew about their past, their marriage, and what the future holds for them.

“The Blame Game” is the second stand alone novel and was released in the year 2019. Michael and Helen Pengilly, in a desperate effort to forget the past, take their family on the trip of a lifetime. It is on a deserted paradise.

However while there, they are victims of an awful car crash, and it quickly seems that there is somebody hunting them down. Helen starts to fear the worst when Michael vanishes from the hospital, and her carefully crafted world crashes down all around her.

Since that day so long ago, Helen and Michael have been wanting to forget. However now it seems there’s somebody that will stop at nothing to make them remember. Who is it that’s playing the blame game?

“The Nesting” is the third stand alone novel and was released in the year 2020. The woods are creeping in on one nanny and two young girls in a chilling modern Gothic thriller.

Tom Faraday, an architect, is determined to finish his high-concept, and environmentally friendly home that he is building in Norway. It’s in the same place he lost his wife, named Aurelia, to a suicide. It was their dream home, and he wants to honor her with it.

Lexi Ellis takes a job working as his nanny and soon falls in love with his two young daughters, particularly Gaia. However something just feels off in this remote house that is nestled in the forest along the fjord. She sees some mysterious muddy footprints in the home. Aurelia’s diary shows up in Lexi’s room one day. And Gaia continues to tell her about seeing the horrifying Sad Lady.

Before long Lexi suspects that Aurelia did not actually kill herself and that they’re all in danger from something much more sinister that’s lurking around them.

“The Lighthouse Witches” is the fourth stand alone novel and was released in the year 2021. Two sisters vanish on an isolated Scottish Island. Two decades later, one’s found, however she is still the same exact age as when she went missing. The secrets about witches have reached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller.

When single mom Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100 year old lighthouse on an isolated Scottish island, it is a chance to start over with Luna, Clover, and Sapphire, her three daughters. When two of the kids vanish, she becomes frantic. She learns that the cave located underneath the lighthouse used to be a prison for women that were accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings that mimic human kids, created by the witches to get revenge. Liv is told that wildlings are dangerous and have to be killed.

Twenty-two years later, Luna’s been searching for her missing mom and sisters. When she gets a call about Clover, her youngest sister, she is ecstatic initially. Clover is the one sister she remembers, except she is still seven years old, the same age as when she vanished. Luna’s worried that Clover is now a wildling. Luna’s got few memories of her time on the island, however she is going to have to go back in order to learn the truth about what happened to her family. However she doesn’t yet realize just how much the truth is going to change her.