Hello!
My name is Katharine, and some of the people I know call me that. (People named Katharine tend to collect nicknames.)
Though I started my career in political consulting and stage performance, I’ve been writing stories for as long as I can remember. My debut historical mystery, The Body in the Garden, a whodunnit set in Regency England featuring amateur sleuth Lily Adler, was named a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2020. Lily’s adventures continue in the Lily Adler Mysteries, the fourth installment of which is coming in September 2023. You can meet her anytime in my free Lily Adler short mystery, Pistols at Dawn.
My second series, the Nightingale Mysteries, is a Jazz Age drama full of grit, glamour, and a whole lot of grey area. The first book, Last Call at the Nightingale, was a New York Times editors’ pick in June 2022, a Library Journal Best Crime Fiction of 2022, and named one of the best mysteries of the summer by Publisher’s Weekly, Goodreads, Bustle, and more. The Nightingale Mysteries will continue in June 2023 with The Last Drop of Hemlock.
I graduated with a BA from the College of William & Mary in Virginia, moved to Philadelphia and the DC area, and now live and write in the mountains of Virginia. In my debut year, I was named one of BookPage’s 16 Women to Watch in 2020, which I found out about on Instagram (that’s often how these things happen).
I read more genres than I know what to do with, drink far more tea than any one person should, have kept a journal since I was five years old, am occasionally a morning person, and firmly believe in the Oxford comma.
For inquiries regarding media or rights, please contact Whitney Ross at Irene Goodman Literary Agency.
(Glimpses of my past life as a performer here, for the curious. And a little theatre + writing, of the academic variety.)
The Official Bio
Katharine Schellman is a former actor and one-time political consultant. These days, she writes the Lily Adler Mysteries (Crooked Lane Books) and the Nightingale Mysteries (Minotaur/St. Martin’s Press). Her books, which reviewers have praised as “worthy of Agatha Christie or Rex Stout” (Library Journal, starred review), have received multiple accolades, including being named a Library Journal Best Crime Fiction of 2022, a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2020, and a New York Times editor’s pick in June 2022. Katharine lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia in the company of her husband, children, and the many houseplants she keeps accidentally murdering.