Catriona Ward was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Her gothic thriller The Last House on Needless Street, published in March 2021, was Times Book of the Month, Observer Book of the Month, March Editor’s Pick on Open Book, a Between the Covers BBC2 book club selection, a Times bestseller, and is being developed for film by Andy Serkis’s production company, The Imaginarium. It will be published in the US by Tor Nightfire in September 2021. 

Ward’s second novel Little Eve won the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award, the August Derleth Prize at the British Fantasy Awards and was a Guardian best book of 2018. Her debut Rawblood also won the 2016 August Derleth, making her the only woman to have won the prize twice. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and shortlisted for various prizes. She lives in London and Devon.

‘It’s a true nerve-shredder that keeps its mind-blowing secrets to the very end. Haven’t read anything this exciting since Gone Girl’

― Stephen King

‘A truly captivating Gothic-thriller novel – a champion of the genre, it hooks you in from the very first page… a rare work of fiction that explores the human will to endure’

― Independent

‘Ward’s superlative novel – part psychological thriller, part Gothic horror – plays countless tricks on the reader and rewards close attention’

― Financial Times