Kathleen Karr Books In Order

Publication Order of The Petticoat Party Books

Publication Order of Dear Mr. President Books

Publication Order of Destiny's Dreamers Books

Publication Order of Serenade Saga Books

Publication Order of Skullduggery Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Chapter Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Hyperion Chapters Books

Kathleen Karr is an award-winning historical romance and inspirational author that was born in Allentown Pennsylvania. While she was born in Pennsylvania, she was raised on a chicken farm in Dorothy New Jersey, which is where she spent much of her childhood and early teen years. During her mid-teen years, she went to Catholic University from where she graduated with a bachelor’s before she got her English literature master’s from Providence College. After graduating from college, she got a job at the American Film Institute in Washington DC which had only been recently established then. After working for several years and publishing several works in the film industry and teaching college and high school, she started writing on a dare from her husband. She made her debut as a women’s fiction author with “Light of My Heart” that she published in 1984. She would go on to write several novels and won the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Medallion. Karr started writing children’s fiction when her children told her to write something for them. The result of this was the 1990 published novel “It Ain’t Always Easy.” Kathleen’s novel “The Seventh Knot” was the winner of the Young adult/children’s mystery of the year. She is also the winner of the SCBWI Golden Kite Award. She currently has more than two dozen novels in “Destiny’s Dreamers,” and “Petticoat Party” alongside several single standing titles.

Karr has always loved reading and traveling and this is where she gets much of the inspiration for the novels that she writes. Together with her family, they have walked in the old city of Jerusalem, traveled through the rivers in the rain forest of Venezuela, sailed up the Nile, explored dark and dank caves in New Zealand, and investigated the many historic sites in Europe. She has trekked the rough terrain of the Yosemite country and traveled as part of a gypsy caravan across Ireland. In the United States, she has been a camper and trekked across the Oregon Trail and remembers that at one time she had water up to her chin. During her travels, she developed a taste for archeology and has dug for gold in several towns in upper Wisconsin and the gold rush towns of Montana before excavating in Utah for Anasazi pottery. Kathleen Karr gets some of her ideas from the many trips she undertakes every year. Other ideas also come from her involvement in sculpture and boxing. She also does a lot of research in the National Archives that she visits in Washington DC and the Library of Congress. Karr loves to root through some ancient letters and trying to make something about the authors and the subject from the handwriting. She loves to find real people and then constructs a life they lived from their journals and letters that provide bits and pieces about who they are. Sometimes, a thrown away phrase may be all she needs as inspiration for a full novel.

Kathleen Karr’s husband has always been her biggest fan having initially goaded her into becoming an author. Her children have also been huge supporters as they have been editing and reading her novels ever since they were able to read and edit. This has had a double advantage as it makes it easier for them to write their school essays and takes off the pressure from Karr thus providing her with more time to write her novels. Just like Kathleen grew up with books, she strives to provide her kids with all the books they need at home. Suzanne her daughter is about to start graduate school while Daniel is just about to start his undergraduate degree. While her children started with children’s fiction and then moved to adult literature, they never miss a chance to critique her writings whenever they can.

“Phoebe’s Folly” by Kathleen Karr is a thrilling story that tells of the life and times of Phoebe Brown. She is a twelve-year-old who is going on a trip across the country to Oregon in 1846. They are going to be traveling on a primarily female train. On the road, the only four men in the train are injured while hunting buffalo, and the women now have to learn to hunt if they are to survive the nearly 1500 mile journey to Oregon. Phoebe is not the best shot in the troop but in a moment of weakness boasts to an Indian that they have some of the best shooting skills around. The women are almost instantly asked to participate in a shooting match and against all odds they win.

Kathleen Karr’s novel “Oregon, Sweet Oregon” is set soon after the arrival of the Petticoat Party in Oregon City. The novel happens from 1846 and right through 1848 where Phoebe Brown has now become a fully-fledged teenager when her family makes their claim of land on the banks of the Willamette River. Her father clears the forest, builds a home, and finds paradise in working the land. But the young women in her family want more than the ordinary backbreaking work that living on the farm entails. Phoebe’s older sister Amelia writes a column for “The Oregon Intelligence” and is writing a novel by the light of a candle during the evenings. She has set her eyes on becoming the editor in chief of the small paper, even though she still aches for the freedom and adventure of the trail. At the end of the novel, she is a fifteen-year-old that runs away disguised as a boy. She has run away with Robbie her friend and they go looking for gold in California. Karr tackles thought-provoking themes and also makes intelligent characters in her novel.

“Gold Rush Phoebe” by Petticoat Party sees Phoebe Brown the fifteen-year-old now living as a boy and hoping to make his fortune in California. Together with Robbie Robson the eighteen-year-old boy, they left Oregon and stowing away on a boat finally get to the newly rich city of San Francisco. They make friends with an eccentric miner who has a habit of quoting Shakespeare and accompany him to his claim where they get paid to help search for some gold. They wait out the autumn wet season and fight off bandits until they finally decide to go back to the city, where they open a humble dining hall they call “Mother Phoebe’s.” The restaurant soon becomes a fine and thriving place and when Phoebe turns sixteen, Robbie proposes and she finally reveals that she had been a woman all along to the clientele and the new friends they have made over the years they have been in San Francisco. But before she can give her answer, she realizes that she misses her family and gets onto a ship heading to Oregon.