Kit lands a summer job writing a children's column for her local newspaper. She decides to look for story ideas at the Cincinnati Zoo, where her friend Stirling works as a guide and her old friend Will, the hobo, has a job cleaning cages. As Kit noses around the zoo, she stumbles into some strange doings in the monkey house. Her reporter's instincts tell her that she's onto something worth investigating--and she's determined to get the story.
Kathleen Ernst is a novelist, social historian, and educator. Her seventeenth book is "The Heirloom Murders: A Chloe Ellefson Mystery," the second in a series of novels for adult readers that are set at historic sites. The first Chloe book, "Old World Murder," was published in 2010 and is available from Amazon as a trade paperback and for the Kindle.
Kathleen's historical fiction for children and young adults include eight American Girl mysteries set between 1732 and 1945, and five novels for young readers set during the American Civil War. These titles have earned four Arthur Tofte Juvenile Fiction Awards, the Flora MacDonald Award, a WILLA Finalist Award, an Edgar Award nomination, and three Agatha Award nominations.
Kathleen has also authored a nonfiction adult book about the Civil War, "Too Afraid to Cry: Maryland Civilians in the Antietam Campaign," which was an alternate selection of the History Book Club. It tells the stories of non-combatants who found themselves caught up in the bloodiest day in American history.
For ten years Kathleen wrote instructional video scripts for public television; honors for those include a regional Emmy Award, Platinum Best of Show Aurora Award, and a Wilbur Schramm Award of Excellence.
Kathleen has a Masters Degree in History Education and Writing from Antioch University, where her self-designed program focused on nontraditional methods of teaching and learning history--with a special emphasis on historical fiction. She spent over a decade as a Curator of Interpretation and Collections with the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Historic Sites Division, which provided great material for her novels.
She lives near Madison, Wisconsin with her husband Scott and Sophie the cat. Some of her greatest pleasures include gardening, learning folk crafts, traveling to research new books, and hearing from readers.
Kathleen has a blog, Sites and Stories, writes poetry and essays, and is working on her third Chloe Ellefson mystery and new books for American Girl.
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
