Kathleen Ernst

Bestselling writer Kathleen Ernst is the award-winning author of twenty-five published mystery, historical fiction, and non-fiction books for adults and young readers. Her latest include "The Light Keeper's Legacy," the third Chloe Ellefson Historic Sites mystery for adults from Midnight Ink, and "Traitor In The Shipyard," her seventh Caroline Abbott book from American Girl.

Over the years Kathleen's work has earned numerous honors, including multiple Edgar and Agatha mystery award nominations, and an Emmy for educational programming. To date, readers have purchased well over 750,000 audio, electronic, and printed copies of her books.

Kathleen is the author of a nonfiction history book about the American Civil War, "Too Afraid to Cry: Maryland Civilians in the Antietam Campaign," an alternate selection of the History Book Club. It tells the stories of non-combatants who, 150 years ago, 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 an Emmy, 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. To that end, she maintains an extensive website, an author's page on Facebook, and a blog called Sites and Stories on WordPress.