Katie Williams Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Katie Williams is a bestselling young adult and science fiction author that is best known for the novel “Tell the Machine Goodnight.”

She has said that she always loved reading and this is the reason she majored in English in college. All along, her family encouraged her to apply to law school, but she had never liked the legal profession.
Williams spent most of her time applying to creative writing classes and very nearly graduated late since she had failed to take enough classes for her English major.

When she was in graduate school, her classmates and teachers kept suggesting that she would one day become a young adult fiction. This is probably because she loves to cast her lead protagonists as teenagers.

For Katie, she has never found young adult fiction to be much different from adult fiction. She believes young adult fiction has coming-of-age storylines, a vibrant voice, and immediacy some of which are aspects that may also be found in adult fiction.
For the author, writing fiction that people enjoy is what gives her the greatest joy and motivation.

Unlike many authors, Katie Williams never dreamed of becoming an author when she was growing up. All she wanted was to become a veterinarian since she loved and still loves animals.

It was in high school that she started getting all manner of ideas and started writing short fiction. She still gets a lot of ideas from other authors’ stories and novels, past experiences things she overhears, and purely from her imagination.
She still makes use of the useful tip that Charlie Baxter her teacher gave her for story ideas. She will usually close her eyes and allow the formation of images in her mind.

These are usually anything from a dog running from other dogs or just footprints in the snow. She will then ask herself cryptic questions about the image such as to whom do they belong and where could they be headed.
It is from the answers she comes up with that she then crafts her story. This is the same technique she has used for many of her novels including “Absent.”

As for her schedule, Katie Williams has said that she will usually work on her novels every day of the week except for Sundays.

For the most part, she does her writing in the morning before her mind becomes too cluttered with the happenings of the day. She can usually spend three hours penning new material and bout four hours when she is doing editing.
She will usually pen her drafts in chronological order and in very rare instances, she uses a rough outline.

Katie Williams’ novel “Tell the Machine Goodnight” is the story of Pearl whose job is to make people happy. All she does is provide personalized recommendations to customers and she is very good at her job according to the manager.
Pearl is the mother to Rhet, a teenage boy and very sensitive kid who has not had a very ordinary adolescence. He prefers to be unhappy and finds that by rejecting any kind of joy he finds satisfaction.

Pearl wants nothing more than to help her son but is unsure if she is doing it for herself or for him.

Nonetheless, it does seem that Rhett is the one person that she cannot put into the parameters of needing her help as either mother or a happiness technician.

The story is told from the different perspectives of the characters in Rhett and Pearl’s worlds. Over the course of the story, it delivers an entertaining and smartly moving narrative about how relationships can surprise and shape us.
Along the way, the author brilliantly illuminates the American obsession with technology, quick fixes, and positive psychology.

“Absent” by Katie Williams opens with a tragic incident as a seventeen-year-old girl named Paige falls from the roof of her high school building and dies. Paige’s ghost alongside those of Evan and Brooke ends up being confined to the school grounds.
She often drops into classes and listens to conversations hoping to hear that someone apart from Usha her best friend is missing her. But what she hears is that she committed suicide and only has herself to blame.

It is not long before she learns that she can possess almost anyone who thinks about her. Moreover, the school has been painting a memorial at the entrance which means a lot more people are going to remember her.

This means she has a lot of people she can possess and she makes use of her newfound powers to stop negative rumors and make up new ones to ensure everyone gets what is coming to them.

At her core, she is not a bad person even though she often deluded herself in life before death opened her eyes.

The subtle message of the novel is that it is impossible to right all wrongs and sometimes it is better to accept the cards dealt and move on even if it hurts.

Katie Williams’ novel “The Space Between Trees” opens with the discovery of the body of a girl named Elizabeth McCabe. She had been killed in the woods surrounding Evie’s paper route and had been found on Sunday.
Evie was present as the body was taken away only to discover that the victim was a girl near her age whom she once knew.

At the funeral, Evie seeks out the girl’s father and tells him a terrible lie. She asserts that she had been a very close friend to the dead girl and the distraught man tries to use that to connect with his slain daughter.
What he does not know is that all the stories Evie is telling are made up. The only person who knows the truth is Zabet’s real best friend Hadley.

However, Hadley is a very compassionate girl and prefers to confront Evie out of the father’s presence rather than reveal the whole truth to him.

Thereafter, the two girls form an uneasy truce charged with fear, grief, and regret as they both come to terms with Zabet’s death.

It makes for an emotionally charged and hauntingly beautiful story.