Welcome
Hello and welcome to my website. After twelve years of dreaming, planning, researching, writing and editing, I’m delighted to be publishing the final novel in ‘The Joubert Family Chronicles’ in October. The Map of Bones is set in southern Africa in 1688 and 1862 – in Stellenbosch and Franschhoek – and is a love letter to the power of women writing, to the connections between generations, and the courage of those who were explorers into new, unknown, lands: to preorder, click here.
It was lovely to hear that The Ghost Ship – which so many of you took to your hearts – has been listed as one of Waterstone’s Top 100 books of 2024. Thank you to everyone who took my pirates to their hearts.
I’m also thrilled to reveal that I’ll be publishing my first book for young adults in 2025. Feminist History for Every Day of the Year will come out in October 2025 and shines a spotlight on the amazing women and girls of the past and present who are changing our world for the better: to preorder, click here.
Finally, 2025 is also the twentieth anniversary of the publication of my first historical novel, Labyrinth. I’ll be doing a one-woman theatre show sharing the history, the mystery and the real-life Grail legends that inspired the novel. There will be a new special edition. Labyrinth Live: Unlocking the Secrets of the Labyrinth tour begins in February and runs through to April. For venues and tickets, click here.
For information about all other interviews, bookshop & festivals events for Autumn 2024 and Spring 2025, click here.
September 2024
The Map of Bones (hardback)
'Mosse is a master storyteller' – Madeleine Miller, bestselling author of Circe
A sweeping story of love, adventure and adversity, The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse is an epic tale of courageous women battling to survive in a hostile land.
Olifantshoek, Southern Africa, 1688. When the violent Cape wind blows from the south-east, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, arrives in search of her cousin — the notorious she-captain and pirate commander Louise Reydon-Joubert — who landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years before, then disappeared without a trace . . .
Franschhoek, Southern Africa, 1862. Nearly one hundred and eighty years after Suzanne’s perilous journey, another intrepid and courageous woman of the Joubert family — Isabelle Lepard — has journeyed to the small frontier town once known as Oliftantshoek in search of her long-lost relations. Intent on putting the women of her family back into the history books, she quickly discovers that the crimes and tragedies still shadow the present. And now, Isabelle faces a race against time if she is to discover the truth, and escape with her life . . .
Painstakingly researched and beautifully told, The Map of Bones is the fourth – and final – novel of The Joubert Family Chronicles, following the bestselling The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears and The Ghost Ship.