Sarah Smith--books and beyond
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  • Books and DVD extras
    • The Other Side of Dark >
      • A bit of The Other Side of Dark
      • Where stories come from: Pinebank
      • Book Club Questions
    • Chasing Shakespeares: Shakespearean authorship novel >
      • Why is there an authorship controversy?
      • What's real, what's not?
      • Shakespeare's Travels
      • Shakespeare's Library >
        • Books printed by the Vautrolliers
      • Dating Shakespeare's Plays
      • When Did Shakespeare Die?
      • The Theory of Ca(t)sual References
      • Shakespeare's Experience
      • Cast of Characters >
        • Queen Elizabeth's and Oxford's family trees
      • Chasing Shakespeares: The Play
    • Alexander Reisden and Perdita Halley series >
      • Crimes and Survivors >
        • A Conversation with Sarah Smith
        • Book Club Questions
        • A Titanic Playlist
        • Fragments of Titanic: museums, places, and things
      • A Citizen of the Country >
        • A bit of A Citizen of the Country
        • A Conversation with Sarah Smith
        • Book Club Questions
        • Summary: A Citizen of the Country
        • Where stories come from: witches, magic, and film
      • The Knowledge of Water >
        • A Conversation with Sarah Smith
        • Book Club Questions
        • Summary: The Knowledge of Water
        • A bit of The Knowledge of Water
        • Where stories come from: The Great Paris Flood
      • The Vanished Child >
        • A bit of The Vanished Child
        • Summary: The Vanished Child
  • Read eBooks
  • Goodies for Writers
    • Outlining a Big Fat Fantasy in Airtable
    • Creating an eBook with Scrivener
    • How to Plot when You Can't
  • NoBlogHere
  • About Sarah
    • Sarah bio

Sarah Smith bio

Sarah Smith started telling stories as a child in Japan. Her sitter would tell her ghost stories at night, and the next morning she’d act them out on the school bus for an audience of terrified five-year-olds. Back in America, she lived in an unrestored Victorian house, where every morning she would help her grandmother haul coal and break sticks into kindling to light the household stove. She’s loved storytelling and history ever since.

She studied English at Harvard, where she spent Saturdays in the library reading mysteries, and film in London and Paris, where she sat next to Peter Cushing at a film show and got to pet Francis Bacon’s cat. While teaching English, she got interested in personal computers (she and two friends bought 3 of the first 5 PCs sold in Boston). She realized that software could help her plot bigger stories, and she’s never looked back.

Her bestselling series of Edwardian mysteries, starring Alexander von Reisden and Perdita Halley, has been published in 14 languages. Two of the books have been named New York Times Notable Books. The Vanished Child, the first book in the series, is being made into a musical in Canada. The fourth book in the Reisden-Perdita series, about the Titanic, will be published April 15, 2020. Crimes and Survivors. You can preorder it now from your favorite bookstore.

Sarah’s young adult ghost thriller, The Other Side of Dark, won both the Agatha (for best YA mystery of the year) and the Massachusetts Book Award for best YA book of the year. Her Chasing Shakespeares, a novel about the Shakespeare authorship, has been called “the best novel about the Bard since Nothing like the Sun” (Samuel R. Delany) and has been turned into a play. 

Sarah lives in Boston with her family and not enough cats.
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