Kate Mosse’s readers may first know her through historical adventures, but her writing also embraces memoir, nature and women’s history. A festival visit can follow that curiosity into a new subject. Her autumn conversations turned to a season and a landscape, giving familiar readers another side of the writer to hear.
Quick facts
Best known for
Labyrinth and the Languedoc novels
Genre or subject
Historical fiction, non-fiction, nature and literary advocacy
Mosse is a novelist, non-fiction writer and playwright. She is also Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, supporting other writers alongside her own work. Her professional life includes teaching contemporary fiction and creative writing.
The Languedoc books are a central strand of her fiction. The story linking medieval France and a modern conspiracy has also been adapted for television. Her novels invite readers to move through places carrying traces of earlier lives, from French cities to landscapes where family and political histories collide.
Autumn: The Story of a Season, published by Hodder in September 2026, turns to Sussex through nature, folklore, memory and history. Its non-fiction form makes a change of pace from a historical adventure, while the interest in place remains. For a reader who pauses over the landscape in a novel, this is a way to spend more time with that part of Mosse’s work.
Where to start with their books
Labyrinth
A book entrusted to Alais in medieval Carcassonne and a discovery made by Alice in the modern Pyrenees connect two periods through a mystery. This begins the Languedoc trilogy and is the choice for a reader drawn to a story moving between past and present.
The Burning Chambers
Minou Joubert receives an unsettling anonymous message in Carcassonne and meets a young Huguenot with a dangerous mission. This opens the Joubert Family Chronicles during the French religious wars, making it the place to begin if you want the family story from its first generation.
The Ghost Ship
Louise Reydon-Joubert and her crew hunt pirates and free people taken into slavery before finding their own vessel under attack. The third family-chronicle novel takes the story to the Barbary Coast. It is a later adventure to look forward to if you choose to follow that sequence.
Festival appearances
For tickets, use the host festival’s official box office. Confirm the date, venue and access details before paying.
For readers used to the historical fiction, Sussex, folklore and the turning year offered a different subject to follow. The link is the pleasure of seeing a place through a writer’s attention: what is remembered there, what stories have gathered around it, and what changes as the season moves on.
Where to see them next
No 2027 appearances announced yet. Check the festival guides for programme dates.
Plan your trip
An autumn book event could make a good day out with someone who enjoys nature writing as much as fiction. Leave daylight in your plans if you want a walk before the session, and choose a meal or a place to talk afterwards. You do not have to fit another event around it to make the visit worthwhile.
Will I enjoy seeing Kate Mosse if I only know the novels?
The seasonal writing shares an interest in place with her fiction, but it gives nature and memory more space. You can enjoy meeting the writer through a new subject and return to the novels with another perspective.
Is a Mosse appearance a creative-writing class?
Use the festival links on Kate Mosse’s profile for the event’s own ticket and audience guidance.
How do I book to hear Kate Mosse?
Use the official box office for the festival hosting her. Decide whether you want a conversation about fiction, nature or women’s history, then plan your day around that ticket and the venue shown on it.
Which fiction should I start with?
The reading choices below offer two different series and a later point in a family saga. Choose the period or setting that interests you most, or begin at the start of a sequence if you like following characters over several books.
