Another meticulously researched and stunningly written novel by a much-loved and highly accomplished author. I adored it! - Santa Montefiore, bestselling author of An Italian Girl in Brooklyn The Ghost Ship is utterly absorbing. I couldn’t put it down and fell in love with her two main characters, and felt bereft when it ended - Louise Minchin, BBC journalist, host of the Her Spirit podcast and author of Fearless Fifty Shades of Feminism (essay – edited by Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Holmes & Susie Orbach, Virago, 2013) Similarly, with the caveat that she is not a historian, she believes that had Henry IV of France not been assassinated in 1610, there is a case to be made that the French Revolution might not have followed or, at least, not in the way it did. “Because what happened at that moment was that his toleration, his attempt to build a modern society, which is what he was doing, his understanding that Huguenots – you wouldn’t use this phrase, but it’s essentially what they were – were the working middle class. And the wealth was there – that wasn’t to do with aristocracy, or what would have been seen as the peasantry at the other end. He was building a modern state that could have stood against anyone. Mosse’s narrative lyricism, beautifully drawn female characters and deft journey from the past to the present day are a cut above - Scotland on Sunday on The Burning Chambers

Bringing 16th century Languedoc vividly to life, Kate Mosse's The Burning Chambers is a gripping story of love and betrayal, mysteries and secrets; of war and adventure, conspiracies and divided loyalties.... Wonderful, rip roaringly adventurous and full of indelible characters. Mosse is a conjurer - Irenosen Okojie, author of Nudibranch Writer Kate Mosse, founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction, and actor Stanley Tucci attend the 2023 winner's ceremony at Bedford Square Gardens, London on June 14th. Photograph: Ian West/PA Wire. Mosse has, for many years, been a full-throated advocate for the power of books and reading to provide fulfilment, entertainment and education. Perhaps her greatest achievement beyond her own fiction is her creation, in 1996, of what is now the Women’s Prize for Fiction; its winners have included the very first, the late Helen Dunmore, Carol Shields, Zadie Smith, Eimear McBride and the recently victorious – and two-time winner – Barbara Kingsolver. Now, with Mosse as founder director, it has just launched its inaugural nonfiction prize, as a response to research showing that women who write nonfiction are less likely to be reviewed, to be shortlisted or win prizes, than their male counterparts. The work of ensuring that women writers’ work is judged on a level playing field continues.Mosse includes all the ingredients you would expect from a historical epic – murder, treachery, lost children, stolen relics, buried secrets. - Stephanie Merritt, Observer

She is at pains, as we talk over Zoom, not to romanticise piracy, particularly in its “awful and violent and dangerous” modern-day manifestation, in which, as she notes, “the people who least can afford to suffer are suffering the most from it”. But it is undeniable that the past exercises a fascination, not least because “there is a justice within pirate society. It is very codified, but it’s also democratic. And it’s not what is going on on land, where people know their place, and you can’t rise out of your station; it’s incredibly unfair, and there’s a great deal of poverty. There, on the pirate ship, you follow the rules, you get the treasure, and everybody gets a share of the treasure.” An invitation has arrived for Minou Joubert and her family to attend this historic wedding in Paris in August. But what Minou does not know is that the Joubert family’s oldest enemy, Vidal, will also be there. Nor that, within days of the marriage, on the eve of the Feast Day of St Bartholomew, her family will be scattered to the four winds and one of her beloved children will have disappeared without trace . . . A sweeping and epic love story, ranging from France in 1610 to Amsterdam and the Canary Islands in the 1620s, The Ghost Ship is a thrilling novel of adventure and buccaneering, love and revenge, stolen fortunes and hidden secrets on the High Seas. Most of all, it is a tale of defiant women in a man's world.

The Joubert Family Chronicles in Order

Mosse does what good popular historical novelists do best – make the past enticingly otherworldly, while also claiming it as our own - Independent The Ghost Ship—which follows The Burning Chambers and The City of Tears—is described by the publisher as “an epic tale of courageous women battling to survive in a man’s world, of vengeance and breathtaking peril on the high seas, of long-buried family secrets and a love story spanning three generations”. Carcassonne, 1562: 19-year-old Minou Joubert receives an anonymous letter at her father’s bookshop. Sealed with a distinctive family crest, it contains just five words: "She Knows That You Live". But before Minou can decipher the mysterious message, a chance encounter with a young Huguenot convert, Piet Reydon, changes her destiny forever. For Piet has a dangerous mission of his own, and he will need Minou’s help if he is to get out of La Cité alive. Mosse’s narrative lyricism, beautifully drawn female characters and deft journey from the past to the present day are a cut above - Scotland on Sunday She is particularly interested in those moments when societies and countries have stood at crossroads. “All of my books are set at a turning point in history,” she explains, on cusps at which “if things had gone the other way, the whole of what happened would have been different. So in City of Tears, obviously, it’s the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. It looked like there would be peace. And because of that, there wasn’t, and it went on for another generation. In The Burning Chambers, the first one, it’s if the Duke of Guise had not opened fire on people praying in Vassy on the first of March 1562, the wars of religion would not have happened like that.”

A champion of women's creativity, Kate is the Founder Director of the Women's Prizes - the largest annual celebration of women's writing in the world - and is the Founder of the global campaign #WomanInHistory launched in January 2021 to honour, celebrate and promote women’s achievements throughout history. She was awarded an OBE in 2013 for services to literature and women, was named Woman of the Year for her service to the arts in the Everywoman Awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. A regular guest on book & arts shows on radio and television, shealso writes and presents documentaries. To celebrate her 60th birthday, she launched her own YouTube book channel – Kate-Mosse-on-Books – with a monthly show ‘Mosse on a Monday’. Gripping, thrilling, a spectacular work of scholarly reimagining, The Ghost Ship is a beautiful book about two women, about love, courage, suffering, and a world in which everything was on a knife edge. A stunning novel, a whole world recreated - Kate Williams, historian and author of Rival Queens

Piracy. Romance. Revenge. Across the seas of the seventeenth century, two seafarers are forced to fight for their love and their lives. The sequel to The City of Tears, The Ghost Ship is the third novel in The Joubert Family Chronicles from bestselling author Kate Mosse. Sweeping from Paris and Chartres to the City of Tears itself – the great refugee city of Amsterdam – this is a story of one family’s fight to stay together and survive against the devastating tides of history . . . Mosse’s fans will relish this tale of secrets, love and treachery - The Times on The Burning Chambers Mosse shows a deft command of character and narrative in this second volume of a planned sequence - Sunday Times

First-rate cloak and dagger excitement – who knew the religious wars between Catholics and Huguenots in sixteenth-century France could be so riveting to modern audiences? Kate Mosse captures the details of life in the Languedoc region of France, famed for its beauty, but hiding many secrets, in this masterful novel - Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of The Confessions of Young Nero Another of Mosse’s immersive dramas, which takes you to the heart of the past - Grazia on The Burning ChambersTransporting, intelligent, heartwarming and intriguing, this is historical fiction at its finest - Lucy Atkins, author of Magpie Lane