Karen Dukess Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Karen Dukess is a successful published author. She is known for writing her books The Last Book Party and Welcome to Murder Week.

Karen has worked in many different positions including as a magazine publisher in Russia, a newspaper reporter in Florida, and as a speechwriter on gender equality for the United Nations.

Karen holds a degree in Russian studies from Brown University and graduated with her master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She resides outside of New York City and on Cape Cod. There she interviews some of the most acclaimed authors of the day while serving as the host of the Castle Hill Author Talks for the Truro Center for the Arts.

The Last Book Party is a 2019 novel by Karen Dukess. This is a tale of ambition and romance that is set in the publishing world of eighties New York as well as the beaches of Cape Cod.

The year is 1987 and during this particular summer, Eve Rosen is 25 years old. She wants to be a writer who is currently working a low level assistant job while also finding that she cannot shake the shadow of her brilliant brother, which she stood in all the time while he was growing up.

With her professional ambitions starting to flounder, Eve gets a chance to go to an early summer gathering at the Cape Cod home of Henry Grey, a famous New Yorker writer, and his wife Tillie, who is a poet.

Eve is impressed by the guests and is even developing a crush on the artistic son of the hosts. She also gets a new job working as a research assistant for Henry Grey as well as an invitation to attend the pair’s famous Book Party, where people who are attending dress up as literary characters.

But when the night of the party arrives, Eve finds out uncomfortable truths about her summer entanglements. She also starts to find out that the literary world that she wanted to be a part of desperately is not what it seems at all.

Grab a copy of The Last Book Party to find out what happens in this coming of age story that is penned with a lyrical sense of place and has a heavy appreciation of books. This novel shows what can go down when experience and youth come together and what it might end up taking to find your voice. Check it out and see what you think!

Welcome to Murder Week is a 2025 novel from Karen Dukess. In this funny and heartfelt novel from this author, readers follow along with the story of an American woman who makes her way to the English countryside when she finds tickets that her late mother had gotten to attend a murder mystery simulation that is hosted in a small town in Britain.

When 34 year old Cath finds out that she has lost her mother, she is ambivalent as her mother has been mostly absent. With days of routine that is quiet and unassuming in Buffalo, New York, Cath chooses to avoid the thrill seeking lifestyle that she saw that her mother led.

When Cath has to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, she is surprised to find tickets in England’s Peak for an upcoming murder week. An entire town comes together to put on a fake murder mystery so that they can bring more tourism and income to their hamlet. Confused but intrigued by her mother’s purchase, Cath chooses to go on the trip personally, thus setting off a journey that she never could have seen coming.

Cath decides to team up with her two cottage-mates, who are both lovers of mystery. They are the forty year old Wyatt Green who is working unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, a divorced fifty-year-old woman and a divorced romance writer who is having a tough time with her novels.

Cath not only sets out to solve the crime but starts to get to the bottom of some more truths about her mother on the way. In the middle of a fling or something more with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her fellow sleuths may just discover that this week of false murder may end up helping them deal with extremely real crossroads in their own lives.

Escapist and wise, this novel is a fun take on the murder mystery genre as it shows one daughter attempting to deal with her grief and her past as well as her own beginning sense of adventure. Read this book to go along on the journey and see what happens!