Category / 47 books
Novels and stories set against Madeira’s cliffs, levadas and lights.
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Fiction & Literature
With selection notes
English · 2013 edition
Set in Madeira after WWI, a disillusioned ex-soldier tries to rescue his family’s failing wine business as the island fills with real figures of the era — an exiled emperor, Agatha Christie at Reid’s Hotel, George Bernard Shaw learning to tango — and a murder draws him in.
Fiction & Literature
With selection notes
English · 2003 edition
A love story spanning six centuries, opening in 1429 on a Madeira consumed by a fire that has blazed for seven years, as a peasant girl and a Jewish boy off a Portuguese ship meet — their thwarted love recurring across generations.
Fiction & Literature
With selection notes
English · 2008 edition
Robert Goddard’s bestselling debut. At a lush villa on Madeira, a disgraced historian is hired to investigate the mysterious 1910 downfall of a former British cabinet minister — a quest that uncovers secrets and deaths still haunting a family.
Fiction & Literature
With selection notes
English · 2012 edition
The seventh Julia Probyn mystery (reissued by Bloomsbury Reader). Recently widowed, Julia arrives on Madeira with her infant son and uncovers strange, sinister events that may hold a clue to her husband’s death — rich in the scenes of the island.
Fiction & Literature
With selection notes
English · 1992 edition
Botanist-sleuth Celia Grant flies to Madeira to settle her dead niece’s estate, and small anomalies draw her into a web of suspicious characters, missing children, stolen orchids and blackmail.
Fiction & Literature
With selection notes
English · 2014 edition
Wealthy, disabled Roberta Ellison settles on Madeira; when she is suddenly widowed, her half-sister arrives to help but brings problems that escalate into violence and murder. A classic British mystery reissued by The Murder Room.
Fiction & Literature
With selection notes
Portuguese · 1992 edition
The acclaimed debut novel (in Portuguese) by Funchal journalist Helena Marques, set in late-19th-century Funchal — the Vaz de Lacerda family and its women across generations. Winner of the Portuguese Writers’ Association Grand Prize.
Fiction & Literature
With selection notes
Portuguese · 2014 edition
The collected poems of Funchal-born Herberto Helder (1930–2015), widely regarded as one of the greatest Portuguese poets of the late 20th century.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2022 edition
Set in 1811, a Quaker doctor leaves his London practice for Funchal hoping Madeira’s climate will cure his consumption — a vivid depiction, with nods to Dickens and Austen, of an island under military occupation and the people he meets.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2018 edition
A horse farrier who loses everything by standing on principle flees a vendetta and escapes to Madeira, finding work on a small farm reachable only by boat — and unexpected community and romance. A contemporary tale steeped in the island’s landscape.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2006 edition
An adventure novel set in late-19th-century Madeira, following a young peasant who rebels against a feudal landlord, conscription and militant priests, fighting for freedom alongside the woman he loves.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2012 edition
Tech journalist Karl Lustig travels to Madeira to lecture at the university and deliver military microchips — and stumbles onto a dangerous puzzle hidden in the chipset. A techno-thriller set largely on the island.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2012 edition
In the 1930s, told she is dying, Nancy Leigh Cameron leaves New York for the exclusive Sanfords hotel on flower-filled Madeira — not knowing that the man she comes to love is her father’s bitterest enemy.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2015 edition
Bookish heiress Eliza Thoroughgood takes her young cousin to the misty island of Madeira to recuperate — and the pair are taken captive aboard the ship of rogue captain Cyprian Dare. A historical romance set partly on Madeira and at sea.
Fiction & Literature
English · original edition 1927
A Jazz-Age romantic spy thriller set in the glittering waters off Madeira, by the creator of Fu Manchu — passion, deception and intrigue as a hunt unfolds for documents that could topple a royal house.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2011 edition
Nurse Phyllida Cresswell is stranded on Madeira when a job abroad goes wrong, and the dashing Dutchman Pieter van Sittardt comes to her rescue. A classic Harlequin/Mills & Boon romance set on the island.
Fiction & Literature
English · 1978 edition
Diane travels to Madeira to meet her pen friend for the first time and unexpectedly meets her friend’s imperious brother, the Duque de Valmardi. A vintage Mills & Boon romance set entirely on the island.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2002 edition
Newly widowed Ellen de Torre visits Madeira and finds her brother-in-law, Brazilian millionaire Addan de Torre, in her bed — he blames her for his brother’s death, but offers instead to show her the island. A Harlequin Presents romance.
Fiction & Literature
English · 1981 edition
Katherine Matthews marries Luis de Freitas believing he needs her money, only to discover — once living in his home on Madeira — that he had been deceiving her. A vintage Mills & Boon romance set on the island.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2006 edition
Fleeing scandal, Lady Tamina Braithwaite sails toward Madeira under an assumed name as secretary to the Earl of Daventry, and on the voyage the two grow attached as her deception unravels.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2018 edition
A romantic thriller set on Madeira, in which a woman in crisis visits her step-mother on the island seeking answers and becomes entangled with intriguing characters — written by Marjorie Eccles as Jennifer Hyde.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2014 edition
On Madeira, Alec Methven is found dead, his last meal apparently shared with someone anxious to conceal the fact — and a second death follows. A classic mystery by an author who loved the island.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2014 edition
A Superintendent Ditteridge mystery whose trail leads to Madeira, where a man living comfortably as Gavin Chilmark hopes to remain free from any breath of suspicion. Reissued by The Murder Room.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2009 edition
A gothic sequel to The Meaning of Night, in which orphan Esperanza Gorst goes undercover as a lady’s maid — and her own origins trace back to Funchal, Madeira, where part of the narrative is set.
Fiction & Literature
English · 1980 edition
An elegant satirical fable following Johnny de Paria and his entourage as they flee Trinidad by ocean liner for England — docking at Madeira, where a richly comic set piece unfolds among the island’s society.
Fiction & Literature
Portuguese · 1994 edition
Helena Marques’s second novel (in Portuguese), continuing the search-for-roots theme of O Último Cais as two cousins travel in search of their family’s identity.
Fiction & Literature
Portuguese · 2015 edition
A hybrid prose-and-verse work in which the Funchal-born poet Herberto Helder speaks of his native island of Madeira and his European wanderings.
Fiction & Literature
Portuguese · 2015 edition
Herberto Helder’s principal book of prose fiction (first published 1963) — short narratives tracing a man’s steps around his own existence in poetically transcendent fragments.
Fiction & Literature
Portuguese · 2004 edition
A prize-winning poetry collection by Funchal-born poet José Agostinho Baptista, awarded the Portuguese PEN Club and APE poetry prizes in 2004.
Fiction & Literature
Portuguese · 2000 edition
A volume gathering much of the verse of Funchal-born poet José Agostinho Baptista, including earlier collections such as Morrer no Sul.
Fiction & Literature
Portuguese · 2016 edition
A novel by Funchal-born writer Ana Teresa Pereira on identity, memory and marriage — winner of the 2017 Oceanos Prize for Portuguese-language literature.
Fiction & Literature
English · 2022 edition
The English translation of the first Comissário Avila “Madeira-Krimi” — a young woman is found dead at the island’s elite golf club, and a detective hunts a killer among Madeira’s high society.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2021 edition
The first in the atmospheric German “Madeira-Krimi” series — melancholy Comissário Torres and a German crime writer investigate when a hiker is murdered with poisoned Madeira honey-cake.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2022 edition
The second Comissário Torres “Madeira-Krimi” — crime writer Laura Flemming returns to the island to write and is again drawn into a murder.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2025 edition
A German crime-series opener: Rodrigo “Figo” Figueira, once a celebrated detective in Germany, returns broken to his native Madeira and must solve his first case there.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2017 edition
The German original of the Comissário Avila series — the Funchal homicide chief’s first case (translated into English as “Madeira Grave”).
Fiction & Literature
German · 2019 edition
Comissário Avila’s second case: as an Atlantic storm bears down, the body of a tourist washes up in Funchal harbour.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2020 edition
The third Comissário Avila “Madeira-Krimi”, set again in Funchal and across the flower island.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2016 edition
A cosy “Madeira-Krimi”: Hamburg café owner Pauline Boysen plans a walking-and-snorkelling holiday on Madeira and stumbles into a murder along the levadas.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2013 edition
A young woman flees to her family’s lighthouse house on Madeira and, among old letters, uncovers the story of two sisters who loved the same man between the wars.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2022 edition
A historical saga: in 1914 a Bremen lung specialist takes up a post helping build a German hospital on Madeira, the “floating garden of the Atlantic”.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2015 edition
After a devastating loss, a Berlin journalist escapes to the flower island of Madeira, where a blind painter and a conservationist open new perspectives on life.
Fiction & Literature
German · 1997 edition
The German edition of Helena Marques’s prize-winning “O Último Cais” — a saga of bold women in 19th-century Madeira, based on her great-grandfather’s logbook.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2024 edition
A romance: after a painful break-up, sommelière Charlie starts over on her dream island of Madeira and clashes with her charming new boss at a vineyard.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2017 edition
A short German romance: successful writer Manuel returns to his native Madeira after fourteen years and reunites with Isabel, now an orchid gardener rooted in the island.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2016 edition
A German seaside romance set in Brighton, England. Claire leaves Manchester and starts again near Brighton’s pier, where she meets architect Finn Sanders. Madeira Drive in the title is a street in Brighton.
Fiction & Literature
German · 2016 edition
A German novella: in an airport lounge the narrator notices a woman whose movements stir memories — and on Madeira, in the same hotel, a gripping story unfolds.
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