Helen Fields Popular Books
Helen Fields Biography & Facts
Helen Fielding (born 19 February 1958) is British journalist, novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones. Fielding’s first novel was set in a refugee camp in East Africa and she started writing Bridget Jones in an anonymous column in London’s Independent newspaper. This turned into an unexpected hit, leading to four Bridget Jones novels, three movies, with a fourth movie announced in April 2024 for release in 2025. Fielding credits the success of Bridget Jones to tapping into the gap between how we all feel we are expected to be and how we really are. Fielding’s novel Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) became a surprise global bestseller, published in over 40 countries. Fielding continued to chronicle Bridget’s life in the novels Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999), Bridget Jones’s Baby: the Diaries (2017) and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2013) all of which became international bestsellers selling over twenty million copies worldwide. In a survey conducted by The Guardian newspaper, Bridget Jones's Diary was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century. In 2024 the New York Times named Bridget Jones’s Diary as one of the twenty two funniest novels since Catch 22. The movies chronicling these adventures: Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Bridget Jones’s Baby took over three quarters of a billion in box office, with the most recent opening, Bridget Jones’s Baby breaking UK box office records. Fielding’s novel, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2013), explored Bridget’s life as a widowed mother to two small children and her attempts to re-enter the dating scene. It occupied the number one spot on the Sunday Times bestseller list for six months. In her review for the New York Times, Sarah Lyall called the novel “sharp and humorous” and said that Fielding had “allowed her heroine to grow up into someone funnier and more interesting than she was before.” The movie “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” announced for release in 2025 will see Renee Zellweger reprising her role as Bridget Jones for the fourth time. The movie will be based on Fielding’s novel and original screenplay, further developed by a team including writers Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan. In a 2004 poll for the BBC, Fielding was named the 29th most influential person in British culture. In December 2016, the BBC's Woman's Hour included Bridget Jones as one of the seven women who had most influenced British female culture over the last seven decades.Bridget was the only woman included who was not actually a real-life person. Biography Fielding grew up in Morley, West Yorkshire, a textile town on the outskirts of Leeds in the north of England. Her father was managing director of a textile factory, next door to the family home, that produced cloth for miners' donkey jackets. He died in 1982 and her mother, Nellie, remained in Yorkshire, dying in 2021. Fielding attended Wakefield Girls' High School, one of the Grammar Schools in the Wakefield Grammar School Foundation. She has three siblings. Fielding studied English at St Anne's College, Oxford and was part of the Oxford revue at the 1978 Edinburgh Festival, forming a continuing friendship with a group of comic performers and writers including Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson. Fielding began work at the BBC in 1979 as a regional researcher on the news magazine Nationwide. She progressed to working as a production manager on various children's and light entertainment shows. In 1985 Fielding produced a live satellite broadcast from a refugee camp in Eastern Sudan for the launch of Comic Relief. She also wrote and produced documentaries in Africa for the first two Comic Relief fundraising broadcasts. In 1989 she was a researcher for an edition of the Thames TV This Week series "Where Hunger is a Weapon" about the Southern Sudan rebel war. These experiences formed the basis for her debut novel, Cause Celeb. From 1990 – 1999 she worked as a journalist and columnist on several national newspapers, including The Sunday Times, The Independent and The Telegraph. Her best-known work, Bridget Jones's Diary, began its life as an unattributed column in The Independent in 1995. The success of the column led to four novels and three film adaptations. Fielding was part of the scriptwriting team for all three. Bridget Jones Fielding's first novel, Cause Celeb was published in 1994 to great reviews but limited sales. She was struggling to make ends meet while working on her second novel, a satire about cultural divides in the Caribbean when she was approached by London's The Independent newspaper to write a column as herself about single life in London. Fielding rejected this idea as too embarrassing and exposing and offered instead to create an imaginary, exaggerated, comic character. Writing anonymously, she felt able to be honest about the preoccupations of single women in their thirties. The column quickly acquired a following, her identity was revealed and her publishers asked her to replace her novel about the Caribbean by a novel on Bridget Jones's Diary. The hardback was published in 1996 to good reviews but modest sales. The paperback, published in 1997, went straight to the top of the best-seller chart, stayed there for over six months and went on to become a worldwide best-seller. Fielding continued her columns in The Independent, and then The Daily Telegraph until 1997, publishing a second Bridget novel The Edge of Reason in November 1999. The film of Bridget Jones's Diary was released in 2001 and its sequel in 2004. Fielding contributed the further adventures of Bridget Jones for The Independent from 2005. Fielding announced in November 2012 that she was now writing a third instalment in the Bridget Jones series. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape and in the US by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2013. It debuted at number one on The Sunday Times bestseller list, and number seven on The New York Times bestseller list. By the time the UK paperback was published on 19 June 2014, sales had reached one million copies. The novel was shortlisted for the 15th Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, nominated in the Popular Fiction category of the National Book Award. and has been translated into 32 languages. Personal life Fielding lives in London and also spends time in Los Angeles. She and Kevin Curran, a writer/executive producer on The Simpsons, began a relationship in 2000 and had two children. Curran died from cancer complications on 26 October 2016. She is an Ambassador for the Yorkshire Chidren’s Charity and a longtime supporter of Save the Children. OxTales, her collection of short stories was published in aid of Oxfam in 2009 Honours In 2014, Fielding was one of twenty writers on The Sunday Times list of Britain's 500 Most Influential and was also featured on the London Evening Standard's 1,000 Most Influential Londoners li.... Discover the Helen Fields popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Helen Fields books.
Best Seller Helen Fields Books of 2024
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On Trails
Robert MoorNew York Times Bestseller Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award Winner of the Saroyan International Prize for Writing Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award “The best o...
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Dancing Through Fields of Color
Elizabeth Brown & Aimée SicuroThey said only men could paint powerful pictures, but Helen Frankenthaler (19282011) splashed her way through the modern art world. Channeling deep emotion, Helen poured paint onto...
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The Sign of the Devil
Oscar de MurielTHE FINAL FREY & McGRAY MYSTERYAll will be revealed... The Devil Has Come to Edinburgh...An illfated graverobbery unearths a corpse with a most disturbing symbol on it. When...
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Her Last Request
Mari Hannah'Terrific' Ian RankinSome victims leave clues to their killers...A Hidden ClueA victim leaves a note for the SIO who will investigate her death. This not what DCI Kate Daniels expe...
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The July Girls
Phoebe LockeEvery year, on the same night, another girl disappears without a trace.'A stunningly good crime novel tender and totally gripping' Sunday MirrorLex's wife is missing. She left for...
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Speaking of Siva
Penguin Books LtdSpeaking of Siva is a selection of vacanas or freeverse sayings from the Virasaiva religious movement, dedicated to Siva as the supreme god. Written by four major saints, the great...
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The Dark
Sharon BoltonONCE, SHE SAVED HIS LIFE...NOW, HE'LL TAKE HERS.When a baby is snatched from its pram and cast into the river Thames, offduty police officer Lacey Flint is there to prevent disaste...
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Dead Catch
T.F. MuirWhen Joe Christie's fishing boat is swept onto Tentsmuir beach during a fierce storm, a man's mutilated body is found in the hold. DCI Andy Gilchrist of St Andrews CID is called in...
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The Family Business
Hania AllenThe third gripping novel in the Polish detective series featuring DI Dania Gorska.In the north of Dundee, DI Dania Gorska is leading the search for a missing girl, with the police ...
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The Search
Howard LinskeyA missing child. A terrifying killer. A gripping serial killer thriller, perfect for fans of Cara Hunter's Close to Home.Susan Verity was only ten when she went missing. For years ...
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In Flanders Fields
Trevor RoyleThis anthology is the first ever acknowledgement of Scotland's unique contribution to the literature of the First World War. Here are gathered together wellknown writers like J...
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Out For Blood
Deborah MassonDI Eve Hunter is back in the edgeofyourseat new detective thriller from Deborah Masson, winning author of the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year 2020.A young man, the son of a...
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The Favourite
Ophelia Field'An incredible story crackling with royal passion, envy, ambition and betrayal ... Field's account of the psychological power play between Queen Anne and her confidante is surely d...
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A Gift for Dying
M. J. ArlidgeThe totally gripping psychological thriller, from the millioncopy bestselling author of the Helen Grace series. 'The perfect psychological thriller' 5 Reader Review Nothing surpri...
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The Murder List
T.F. Muir'Gripping and grisly, with plenty of twists and turns that race along with black humour.' Craig RobertsonSt. Andrews, Scotland: When an elderly woman's naked body is found in her h...
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Gone
Leona DeakinWOMAN & HOME'S BEST THRILLER OF 2019'If you like a proper, twisty nervewracking thriller, here's one for you!'Emma Curtis, author of One Little MistakeFour strangers are missin...
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The Manor House
Jane Holland'Had me right from the first line!' FIVE STARS'Totally Gripping!' FIVE STARS'Loved it' FIVE STARS1963. When Eleanor meets famous young poet, Lyndon Chance, he offers a way to flee ...
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In the Blood
Margaret KirkThe bloated remains of a man are discovered bound to a derelict pier in Orkney and newly promoted DCI Lukas Mahler dispatches a team to investigate. But when the body is identified...
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Shadow Man
Margaret Kirk'Shadow Man is a harrowing and horrific game of consequences.' Val McDermid THE FIRST COMPELLING SCOTTISH CRIME THRILLER IN THE GRIPPING DI LUKAS MAHLER SERIESTwo sistersJust befo...
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Pretty Little Things
T.M.E. WalshDon’t miss the new crime thriller that readers are calling: ‘addictive’; ‘chilling’; ‘nailbiting’;‘the best book I’ve read this year’!It’s bad when the girls go missing.It’s worse ...
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Walking Through Spring
Graham HoylandWalking Through Spring follows Graham Hoyland’s journey as he creates a new national trail, walking with the Spring from the south coast in March up to the border with Scotland, wh...
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The Insider
Mari Hannah'If you read only one police procedural this year, make it The Insider.' Daily MailThe thrilling second novel in the acclaimed Stone and Oliver series by awardwinning author, Mari ...
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Betrayal
Stewart Binns'Brilliant. An explosive thriller with true authenticity' Tom Marcus, bestselling author of Soldier Spy January, 1981. They're undercover in Belfast.Determined to put an end to a w...
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Lake Child
Isabel AshdownYou trust your family. They love you. Don't they?When 17yearold Eva Olsen awakes after a horrific accident that has left her bedbound, her parents are right by her side. Devoted, t...
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Dead Find
T.F. Muir'Tightly plotted with a real sense of place and characters with heart that will stay with me for some time. Recommended for all lovers of police procedurals' Lisa Ballantyne St. An...
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The Fake Wife
Sharon Bolton'One thing Sharon Bolton knows how to do is write a compulsive page turner, and The Fake Wife is just that' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'OMG this latest book by Sharon Bolton is so good, definitely worth...
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Fire on the Track
Roseanne MontilloThe inspiring and irresistible true story of the women who broke barriers and finishline ribbons in pursuit of Olympic GoldWhen Betty Robinson assumed the starting position at the ...
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The Other Couple
Sarah J. NaughtonTHE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER'I am sleep deprived having stayed awake desperate to find out what happened!' reader reviewFor fans of Clare Mackintosh's LET ME LIE, Cara Hunter's CLOSE...
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Dead Still
T.F. MuirSt. Andrews, Scotland: When a man's preserved body is discovered in a whisky ageing cask in the local Gleneden Distillery, DCI Andy Gilchrist and his partner, DS Jessie Janes, are ...
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The Polish Detective
Hania AllenSet in Dundee, this fastpaced crime novel is the first to feature Polish Detective Sergeant Dania Gorska.Volatile times in the city of discovery . . .DS Dania Gorska is a stranger ...
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Hold Your Tongue
Deborah MassonWINNER OF THE BLOODY SCOTLAND SCOTTISH CRIME DEBUT OF THE YEAR 2020'Gritty and close to the bone, Hold Your Tongue is a compelling, addictive read that I devoured in one sitting.' ...
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Shadow of a Doubt
Michelle Davies'Pure suspense, where past and present collide with chilling results' Erin Kelly'A hugely entertaining, fastpaced thriller' Caz Frear'It's a pitchperfect blend of ghostly terror an...
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A Lie For A Lie
Julie CorbinIt's your word against hers . . .As a school nurse, Anna Pierce is a wellrespected and trusted member of the community. So when she is accused of hitting a pupil, the reaction is o...
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Only a Mother
Elisabeth Carpenter'An addictive new talent' Helen FieldsONLY A MOTHER . . .Erica Wright hasn't needed to scrub 'MURDERER' off her house in over a year. Life is almost quiet again. Then her son, Crai...
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Slow Motion Ghosts
Jeff Noon'Noon's storytelling is assured and compelling ... it's a belter' Guardian‘Constantly surprising’ SpectatorA viciously occult murder.A curious clue left on the body.The soundtrack ...
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The Silent Listener
Lyn Yeowart'The Silent Listener is simply unforgettable.' Sydney Morning Herald'A tale of suspense and revenge, beautifully written.' The Age'A deftly wrought suspense novel from a remarkable...
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Homecoming
Isabel Ashdown'Dark, insidious, unsettling, fabulous' Sharon Bolton 'Couldn't stop reading this compelling novel of scandals and affairs at the heart of seemingly idyllic seaside community. Grea...
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Field Notes from the Edge
Paul Evans‘A profoundly satisfying read’ Financial TimesIn Field Notes from the Edge, the acclaimed writer of the Guardian's 'Country Diary', Paul Evans, takes us on a journey through the in...
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Her Last Breath
Alison BelshamA gripping new detective series set in Brighton for readers who enjoy Peter James' Roy Grace series.When a young woman is attacked and left fighting to survive in hospital, the pol...
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My Mysterious Son
Dick RussellWhat does a father do when hope is gone that his only son can ever lead anything close to a “normal” life? That’s the question that haunted Dick Russell in the fall of 2011, when h...
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The Reunion
M. J. Arlidge & Stephanie BroadribbTHERE ARE MORE THAN JUST SECRETS BURIED IN THESE WALLS It's the day of the demolition at White Cross Academy, and a crowd of former pupils and teachers have gathered to watch. But...
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The Long Field
Pamela PetroFor readers of H Is for Hawk, an intimate memoir of belonging and loss and a mesmerizing travelogue through the landscapes and language of WalesHiraeth is a Welsh word that's ...
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The Girls Inside
NJ MackayA gripping, compelling psychological thriller about a cult, a fire, and the dark secrets that four young girls have carried with them but can no longer keep buried...Blue grew up i...
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The Buried
Sharon BoltonAN OLD ENEMY IS LAID TO REST . . . AND A NEW CRIME IS DISCOVEREDFlorence Lovelady, the most senior serving policewoman in Britain, visits convicted serial killer Larry Glassbrook i...
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Down to the Woods
M. J. ArlidgeIf you go down to the woods today, you better not go alone . . .FROM THE MILLIONCOPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR M.J. ARLIDGEThe last thing Tom Campbell remembers is camping in the New Fore...