“Readers should expect to give up weekend plans once they start any of Kate’s novels.” – Library Journal

Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. She has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga, and two books in the Italian Renaissance, before turning to the 20th century with New York Times bestsellers The Alice Network and The Huntress. With authors Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, E. Knight, Sophie Perinto and Heather Webb, Quinn contributed to an epic collaborative novel on the French Revolution, Ribbons of Scarlet.

In the summer of 2017, Reese Witherspoon selected The Alice Network for her book club, and it was also selected as an Amazon Best Book of the Month, a GoodReads Best Books of the Month, and an NPR Best Book of the Year. The Huntress has earned similar accolades, and was recognized as a February Library Reads pick, a March Indie Next Pick, and one of Marie Claire’s Best Women’s Fiction Books of the Year. The Rose Code, was published in March 2021. Her latest novel, The Diamond Eye, was released in March 2022.

Kate has always been a history lover, and seeks to show the life, laughter and humanity that runs through our common past. She’s a native of Southern California, and attended Boston University, where she earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in classical voice. Today she lives in San Diego with her husband and three rescue dogs, and enjoys opera, action movies, and the Boston Red Sox.

Kate's Featured Titles

The Briar Club

William Morrow |
Historical Fiction

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

The Phoenix Crown

William Morrow Paperbacks |
Historical Fiction

From bestselling authors Janie Chang and Kate Quinn, a thrilling and unforgettable narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles.

San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.

His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . . until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.

The Diamond Eye

William Morrow |
Historical Fiction

New York Times Bestseller

The bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history’s deadliest female sniper. Based on a true story.

In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kiev (now known as Kyiv), wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son—but Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper—a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour.

Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC—until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness. But when an old enemy from Mila’s past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.

Based on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.

The Rose Code

William Morrow |
Historical Fiction

“The reigning queen of historical fiction” —  Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue 

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter–the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger–and their true enemy–closer…

The Huntress

William Morrow Paperbacks |
Historical Fiction

Instant New York Times Bestseller!

“…compulsively readable historical fiction…[a] powerful novel about unusual women facing sometimes insurmountable odds with grace, grit, love and tenacity.” – Kristin Hannah, The Washington Post 

One of Marie Claire‘s Best Women’s Fiction Books of the Year

One of BookBub’s Biggest Books of the Year

If you enjoyed “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” read “The Huntress,” by Kate Quinn.” The Washington Post

From the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling novel, THE ALICE NETWORK, comes another fascinating historical novel about a battle-haunted English journalist and a Russian female bomber pilot who join forces to track the Huntress, a Nazi war criminal gone to ground in America.

In the aftermath of war, the hunter becomes the hunted…

Bold and fearless, Nina Markova always dreamed of flying. When the Nazis attack the Soviet Union, she risks everything to join the legendary Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on the invading Germans. When she is stranded behind enemy lines, Nina becomes the prey of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, and only Nina’s bravery and cunning will keep her alive.

Transformed by the horrors he witnessed from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials, British war correspondent Ian Graham has become a Nazi hunter. Yet one target eludes him: a vicious predator known as the Huntress. To find her, the fierce, disciplined investigator joins forces with the only witness to escape the Huntress alive: the brazen, cocksure Nina. But a shared secret could derail their mission unless Ian and Nina force themselves to confront it.

Growing up in post-war Boston, seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride is determined to become a photographer. When her long-widowed father unexpectedly comes homes with a new fiancée, Jordan is thrilled. But there is something disconcerting about the soft-spoken German widow. Certain that danger is lurking, Jordan begins to delve into her new stepmother’s past—only to discover that there are mysteries buried deep in her family . . . secrets that may threaten all Jordan holds dear.

In this immersive, heart-wrenching story, Kate Quinn illuminates the consequences of war on individual lives, and the price we pay to seek justice and truth.

The Alice Network

William Morrow Paperbacks |
Historical Fiction

New York Times and USA Today Bestseller

An NPR’s Best Book of the Year 

A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick!

The 2017 Girly Book Club Book of the Year!

A Summer Book Pick from Good Housekeeping, Parade, Library Journal, Goodreads, Liz and Lisa, and BookBub

In this enthralling novel from New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn, two women—a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947—are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.

1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She’s also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie’s parents banish her to Europe to have her “little problem” taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.

1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she’s recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she’s trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the “Queen of Spies”, who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy’s nose.

Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn’t heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth…no matter where it leads.

“Both funny and heartbreaking, this epic journey of two courageous women is an unforgettable tale of little-known wartime glory and sacrifice. Quinn knocks it out of the park with this spectacular book!”—Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling author of America’s First Daughter.

Authors-Unbound_icon-web-link.png

Wings, Women and War Criminals: The History Behind The Huntress

Authors-Unbound_icon-web-link.png

The Alice Network and the Queen of Spies: The Forgotten Female Agents of World War I

Authors-Unbound_icon-web-link.png

The Original Women's March: Celebrating The Women of the French Revolution (Ribbons of Scarlet talk)

Authors-Unbound_icon-web-link.png

Unsung Heroines: Bringing Brave Women of the Past to Life

Authors-Unbound_icon-web-link.png

Shopgirls, Students, and Debutantes: The Female Codebreakers Who Brought Down Hitler

Authors-Unbound_icon-web-link.png

The Diamond Eye

Never Underestimate Librarians: How a Library Researcher Became History’s Most Effective Female Sniper

Kate’s Blog

For Book Clubs

Kate’s Upcoming Events

Kate’s Newsletter

Honors, Awards & Recognition

New York Times Bestseller
IndieNext Pick
Reese’s Witherspoons Book Club Pick
USA Bestseller

Media Kit

By clicking the link below you will be directed to a Google Docs Folder
where you can download author photos and cover images.

Similar Authors

Marie
Bestselling Historical Novelist
Sarah
Bestselling Historical Novelist
Christina
Bestselling & Award Winning Novelist
Martha
Bestselling Historical Novelist
Janie
Bestselling Historical Novelist

We’ve received your Message!

An AU Representative will connect with you as soon as possible.