You’ve probably seen the long, slightly ridiculous title on a bookstore shelf or a Netflix thumbnail: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It’s a mouthful. Honestly, it sounds like something dreamed up by a committee trying to hit every "cozy" buzzword at once. But behind that quirky name is a story about Mary Ann Shaffer books that is actually pretty heartbreaking and, in a weird way, incredibly inspiring.
If you go looking for a long list of Mary Ann Shaffer books, you’re going to be disappointed. There isn't a back catalog. No lost trilogies. No early experimental novellas hidden in a drawer.
Basically, there is just the one.
But that one book became a global juggernaut. It spent over 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It was translated into dozens of languages. It turned the tiny island of Guernsey into a major tourist destination for literary nerds. Most people don’t realize that the woman who wrote it didn’t even live to see a single copy of it in a bookstore.
The 20-Year Research Project That Almost Wasn't
Mary Ann Shaffer wasn't some young prodigy. She was a librarian and an editor who had spent her whole life around books but hadn't actually written one. The spark for her famous novel didn't even come from a planned trip.
Back in 1980, she went to London to research a biography of Kathleen Scott. She hated the subject. Seriously. She realized halfway through that she didn't want to spend years of her life writing about this person. So, on a total whim, she hopped a plane to Guernsey.
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Then the fog rolled in.
A massive, thick Channel Island fog trapped her at the airport for 36 hours. To stay warm and occupied, she started reading every local history pamphlet and book she could find in the airport gift shop. She became obsessed with the German occupation of the islands during WWII.
She went home and researched that history for twenty years. Twenty. Years.
Her book club eventually had to stage an intervention. They basically told her to stop researching and start writing. She was in her 70s by the time she finally sat down to draft the story of Juliet Ashton and the eccentric islanders who survived the war through "potato peel pie" and secret reading groups.
Why There is Only One Mary Ann Shaffer Book
Here’s the part that usually gets left out of the glossy movie promos. After Shaffer finally finished her manuscript and it was snapped up by publishers, she got hit with two things at once: a massive request for edits and a terminal cancer diagnosis.
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She physically couldn't finish the rewrite.
She called her niece, Annie Barrows—who is a successful author herself, known for the Ivy and Bean kids' series—and asked her to step in. Barrows took her aunt's research and the existing draft and brought it across the finish line.
Mary Ann Shaffer died in February 2008. The book came out later that year. She never saw the Lily James movie. She never knew that her "little" story about a pig dinner and a book club would become a staple for book clubs across the planet.
What People Get Wrong About the Story
- The Society wasn't real: People visit Guernsey all the time looking for the actual meeting spot of the Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It’s fictional. While the occupation was very real and very brutal, this specific club was Shaffer's invention to show how people used literature as a "rind of decency" against the horror around them.
- It’s not just a romance: The 2018 movie leans hard into the love story between Juliet and Dawsey. In the book, the "letters" (it's an epistolary novel) spend way more time on the grit of the occupation—the starvation, the forced laborers, and the way the islanders protected each other.
- The Title: A lot of people search for "The Guernsey Potato Peel Society." You're missing the "Literary" and the "Pie." The title is long because the lie the characters told the Germans had to be complicated enough to sound official.
The Legacy of a Single Volume
There is something sort of beautiful about a writer who only leaves one mark, but makes it that deep. Mary Ann Shaffer books (or rather, book) prove that you don't need a 40-year career to change the literary landscape. You just need one story that you’ve lived with long enough for it to feel like truth.
If you’re looking to dive deeper into her world, your options are limited, but here is how to get the most out of the "Shaffer-verse":
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- Read the Book First: Seriously. The epistolary format (letters and telegrams) gives you a sense of the characters' voices that the movie just can't capture.
- Watch the 2018 Film: It’s on Netflix. It’s gorgeous, even if it simplifies the plot. It’s a great visual companion to the rugged Guernsey landscape Shaffer described.
- Check out Annie Barrows: If you like the wit in the writing, Barrows has several adult novels like The Truth According to Us that carry a similar DNA.
The Actionable Insight: Don't wait twenty years to start your "Guernsey." If you have a story you've been researching or thinking about forever, the lesson of Mary Ann Shaffer is that the world wants the story, but time isn't always a guarantee. Start writing the "letters" today.