Karen Maitland is fascinated by the murder and magic of the Middle Ages. She has written eight dark historical thrillers – Company of Liars, The Owl Killers, The Gallows Curse, Falcons of Fire & Ice, The Vanishing Witch, The Raven’s Head and The Plague Charmer. Her most recent novel is A Gathering of Ghosts, set in 1316 in the wilds of Dartmoor during the Great Famine.
She is published by Penguin and Headline UK. Her novella, Liars & Thieves, in which the characters of Company of Liars face a deadly new threat was published by Headline as an e-book. The free e-book short The Dangerous Art of Alchemy, also published by Headline, tells more true stories about medieval alchemists and their mysterious work. Her new free e-short is Wicked Children: Murderous True Tales from History.
Karen is also one of six historical crime writers along with Philip Gooden, Susannah Gregory, Michael Jecks, Bernard Knight and Ian Morson who are together known as the Medieval Murderers. Karen has written five historical crime novels with the Medieval Murderers – The Sacred Stone, Hill of Bones, The First Murder, The False Virgin and The Deadliest Sin – all published by Simon & Schuster.
Her novel La Malediction du Norfolk (The Gallows Curse), French translation published by Sonatine, won the Prix du Balai d’or 2015. An international award for noir literature.
Karen lives in Devon, not far from Dartmoor where Sir Arthur Colon Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles. She is a member of the Crime Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, and the Society of Authors. She is also one of The History Girls bloggers and her history blog appears on their website on the 8th of each month.
