Katherine Howell Books In Order

Publication Order of Detective Ella Marconi Books

Katherine Howell is one of the highly popular authors from Australia, who is famous for writing mystery, thriller, and suspense books. She is particularly well known for writing the Detective Ella Marconi novel series. Prior to the start of her writing career, Howell used to work as a paramedic. She was involved in this profession for a period of 15 years. During this period, author Howell also obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in the field of creative writing. Eventually, she started her writing career in the year 2007 and wrote her debut book under the title of Frantic. The Pan Macmillan publication released it in the same year. The novel introduced the title character of Ella Marconi as a detective working in the Sydney police department. It went on to become a huge success and was labeled by the Sydney Morning Herald as a thriller with an adrenaline rush. The success of the book as well as author Howell increased even more after winning the Davitt award in 2008 for being the best crime fiction book. Following this success, Howell wrote her second book which continued to show the same pattern with Ella Marconi and another paramedic in the lead roles. Author Howell’s third book went on to appear in the list of Australian bestselling books of the year. It also allowed author Howell to travel on a ‘P&O’ cruise as a guest author. New York Times bestselling novelist named Tess Gerritsen labeled the book as one of her favorite books. This novel also received the Davitt award in 2011. With this award, author Howell became the only author who has won it two times. The books that came later in her career also became highly successful and allowed author Howell to become even more popular. All the books that she has written in her career so far have been translated into multiple foreign languages and published all across the globe. Her works have been appreciated by one and all and have been compared with the likes of authors Patricia Cornwell and Karin Slaughter. In addition to writing, author Howell also works as a teacher, teaching the art of editing and creative writing to her students. As of today, she lives in Queensland along with a partner, who is the owner of a bookshop.

Author Howell was born and brought up in Sydney. Immediately after the completion of her school studies, she got engaged in doing various types of job such as being a sales assistant in a bookshop, animal handler, etc. Along with working, she studied science at the university for a period of 1 year. Author Howell was keen to do something different in her life, therefore she joined the ambulance service. For the next 15 years, she worked in various parts of New South Wales as a paramedic. During the time of her graduation, Howell completed the manuscripts of 4 novels. She says that the first 3 of them are still kept in her cupboard as she was not able to get them published. However, they taught her a lot of things, which helped her to write the 4th book. And with that, she never looked back. When author Howell sent the book to her agent for the first time for publication, it came back with a reply that the story was not fit for a suspense book. Therefore, she used all the concepts that she studied in her Masters and rewrote the book. This worked out well for her as she was not only to sell the book, but also received a 2 book deal from Pan Macmillan. Since 2007, the book has been published in more than 11 countries in over 6 languages. Now, author Howell has made it a practice to read her thesis before starting to write each of her novels. By doing so, she reminds herself the techniques to develop a good suspense book.

The Detective Ella Marconi series written by Katherine Howell is comprised of 8 books in total, which were released between the years 2007 and 2015. All the books of this series feature Ella Marconi as the chief protagonist, who is shown as a detective in Sydney police. The first novel of the series is entitled ‘Frantic’. It depicts the lead characters in the role of Ella Marconi, Chris, Sophie Phillips, Lachan, and Angus Arendson. The start of the novel shows that the life of Sophie Phillips gets ripped apart in a single terrible moment. Her husband named Chris, who is a police officer, gets shot on the doorstep of their house, while her 10 month son named Lachan gets kidnapped. Sophie Phillips, a paramedic, is not able to think what she should do next. Her suspicion arises when she learns that her husband was tainted with the allegations of corruption. However, she thinks that the attack was more of a personal nature. While Chris lies in the hospital and the police is mobilized to find her child, she decides to go on the search of Lachan on her own. She is joined by Ella Marconi and the partner Chirs named Angus Arendson. Angus and Sophie had a relationship in the past, which seems to prove harmful to her ability in completing the mission.

The next book in the series was released in 2008 under the title of ‘The Darkest Hour’. This book shows the lead characters in the form of paramedic Lauren Yates and Ella Marconi. At the beginning of the novel, Lauren is shown stumbling upon a dead body in an alley, because of which she thinks that she has landed herself in a great trouble. When the killer comes to know that she knows about the killing, he threatens Lauren to not talk about it. It turns out that the killer is Miles Werner, the ex-boyfriend of her sister and the father of her niece. Lauren knows him to be a very dangerous man. Soon, she comes across another dying man who tells her that he too was attacked by Miles Werner. When Ella finds about this, she urges Lauren to turn in as a witness so that she could catch the murderer. Ella also looks to solve the cases as soon as possible as she will be able to cement her position as a homicide detective. But, when she sees that Lauren is reluctant to become the witness, Ella realizes that she is hiding something very big and dangerous. Ella decides to start investigating on her own to find what the matter is. As she tries to dig into the past of Lauren Yates, she tends to resist. With this, the threat from Miles Werner keeps getting worse. Now, it comes to Lauren to help save Ella’s career and ensure the safety of her family by telling the truth about Werner and helping Ella Marconi catch him for his deadly crimes.