Helen Grant was born in London. She read Classics at St Hugh's College, Oxford, and then worked in marketing for ten years in order to fund her love of travelling. In 2001 she and her family moved to Bad Munstereifel in Germany, and it was exploring the legends of this beautiful town that inspired her to write her first novel. She now lives in Brussels with her husband, her two children and a small German cat.
Both a wonderful first novel, and a strange, haunting modern fairytale, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is that rare beast: a book that reawakens in adults the childhood terror of the bogeyman, and confirms for children that the world is an infinitely stranger place than adults might like to pretend . . . --John Connolly, <i>New York Times</i> author of <i>The Reapers</i> The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is a stunning debut with a richly evoked setting, a smart sympathetic heroine, and the best opening line for a novel I've ever read. Helen Grant conjures a tale of evil in rural Germany that would make the Brothers Grimm jealous!' --Rick Riordan, <i>New York Times</i> author of the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series Dark and deadly as the original Grimm's German folktales, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden hides its menace behind the exquisitely charming narrator, Pia, an unforgettable child of the first order. --Keith Donohue, author of <i>The Stolen Child</i> and <i>Angels of Destruction </i>