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Lauren Willig

Biography

Lauren Willig

Lauren Willig is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 20 works of historical fiction, including BAND OF SISTERS, THE SUMMER COUNTRY, THE ENGLISH WIFE, the RITA Award-winning Pink Carnation series, and three novels co-written with Beatriz Williams and Karen White. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association’s annual list of the best genre fiction. An alumna of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a JD from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City with her husband, two young children and vast quantities of coffee.

Books by Lauren Willig

by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White - Fiction, Mystery, Women's Fiction

There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand. Now it seems, the castle has done him in...or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists; Kat de Noir, a slinky erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book together, but the authors’ stories don’t quite line up. What really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death?

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

September 1896: An aspiring archaeologist, Smith College graduate Betsy Hayes travels to Athens, desperate to break into the male-dominated field of excavation. But when a simmering conflict between Greece and Turkey erupts into open warfare, Betsy throws herself into the conflict as a nurse, not knowing that the decision will change her life forever --- and cause a deep and painful rift with her oldest friend, Ava. June 1898: Betsy has sworn off war nursing --- but when she gets word that her estranged friend Ava is headed to Cuba with Clara Barton and the Red Cross to patch up the wounded in the Spanish-American War, Betsy determines to stop her the only way she knows how: by joining in her place.

by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

From the New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White comes a novel of money and secrets set among the famous summer mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, spanning over a century from the Gilded Age to the present day.

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

A scholarship girl from Brooklyn, Kate Moran thought she found a place among Smith College’s Mayflower descendants, only to have her illusions dashed the summer after graduation. When charismatic alumna Betsy Rutherford delivers a rousing speech at the Smith College Club in April of 1917, looking for volunteers to help French civilians decimated by the German war machine, Kate is too busy earning her living to even think of taking up the call. But when her former best friend, Emmeline Van Alden, reaches out and begs her to take the place of a girl who had to drop out, Kate reluctantly agrees to join the new Smith College Relief Unit. Four months later, Kate and 17 other Smithies set sail for France. The volunteers are armed with money, supplies and good intentions --- all of which immediately go astray.

by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White - Fiction, Historical Fiction

The New York Times bestselling authors of THE GLASS OCEAN and THE FORGOTTEN ROOM --- Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White --- return with a glorious historical adventure that moves from the dark days of two World Wars to the turbulent years of the 1960s, in which three women with bruised hearts find refuge at Paris's legendary Ritz hotel.

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Historical Fiction

When her grandfather dies, Emily Dawson --- the poor cousin in a prosperous English merchant clan --- receives an unexpected inheritance: Peverills, a sugar plantation in Barbados that her grandfather never told anyone he owned. When Emily accompanies her cousin and his new wife to Barbados, she finds Peverills a burnt-out shell, reduced to ruins in 1816, when a rising of enslaved people sent the island up in flames. Why would her practical-minded grandfather leave her a property in ruins? Why are the neighboring plantation owners, the Davenants, so eager to acquire Peverills? The answer lies in the past --- a tangled history of lies, greed, clandestine love, heartbreaking betrayal and a bold bid for freedom.

by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

From the New York Times bestselling authors of THE FORGOTTEN ROOM comes a captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century --- two deep in the past, one in the present --- to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania.

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, and Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned. Bay's sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?

written by Lauren Willig, read by Nicola Barber - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, and Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned. Bay's sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?

by Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig - Fiction, Historical Fiction

When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1945, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion. Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Raised in a poor yet genteel household, Rachel Woodley is working in France as a governess when she receives news that her mother has died suddenly. Grief-stricken, she returns to the small town in England where she was raised to clear out the cottage...and finds a cutting from a London society magazine, with a photograph of her supposedly deceased father dated all of three months before. He is an earl, and is standing with another daughter --- his legitimate daughter. Everything Rachel thought she knew about herself and her past --- even her very name --- is a lie.

by Heather Webb, Hazel Gaynor, Beatriz Williams, Jennifer Robson, Jessica Brockmole, Kate Kerrigan, Evangeline Holland, Lauren Willig, and Marci Jefferson - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Short Stories

November 11, 1918. In the aftermath of World War I, soldiers, loved ones and survivors await the years ahead with hope, even as their hearts are marked by all those who have been lost. As families come back together, lovers reunite and strangers take solace in each other, everyone has a story to tell.

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Women's Fiction

While Daisy Shoemaker tries to identify the root of her recent dissatisfaction --- maybe her distant husband, "handful" of a daughter or thriving but still trivial-feeling cooking business --- she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana is chairing meetings. While Daisy’s making dinner, Diana’s making plans to reorganize corporations. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental, and perhaps the slight punctuation mishap that kickstarted the emails wasn't a mistake after all. Who IS this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?

by Lauren Willig - Adventure, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Romance

Upon his return home from India, Colonel William Reid finds that one of his daughters has vanished, along with a classmate. Spy Gwendolyn Meadows also returns to England when the Pink Carnation’s little sister goes missing. Thrown together by circumstance, Gwen and William must cooperate to track down the young ladies before others with nefarious intent get their hands on them.

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

As a lawyer in a large Manhattan firm, just shy of making partner, Clementine Evans has finally achieved almost everything she’s been working towards --- but now she’s not sure it’s enough. Her long hours have led to a broken engagement, and she feels her messy life crumbling around her. But when the family gathers for her grandmother Addie’s 99th birthday, a relative lets slip hints about a long-buried family secret, leading Clemmie on a journey into the past that could change everything.

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In the ninth installment of Lauren Willig's bestselling Pink Carnation series, an atrocious poet teams up with an American widow to prevent Napoleon's invasion of England.