Katherine Webb was born in 1977 and grew up in rural Hampshire, in the south of England. She studied History at Durham University, and started to write her first novel soon after graduating in 1998. During the subsequent decade she wrote seven novels, whilst living in Italy and the UK and working in a variety of day jobs from au pair to library assistant, housekeeper to seller of fairy costumes, until her debut, The Legacy, was published by Orion in 2010. It featured on the TV Book Club, where it was voted Best Summer Read and went on to be a bestseller, published in twenty-seven countries around the world and shortlisted for Best New Writer at the Galaxy British Book Awards. Of her seven subsequent novels, all historical mysteries published by Orion, three have been Sunday Times Top Ten Bestsellers, and all have also been published overseas. She lives in a village near Bath, UK.