Alessandra Ranelli

Alessandra Ranelli is an American author living abroad in Vienna, Austria. Her work focuses on love, lust, and loss. She’s been known to kiss and tell.

Alessandra’s crime writing is influenced by her love of old Hollywood glamour and golden age crime. Her style is a cocktail made from a generous pour of bourbon, an ounce of film noir, and a dash of bawdy humor — served in a rocks glass, with red lipstick staining the rim.

Her autobiographical work is marked by its raw honesty which is sometimes described as brutal. As a professional storyteller she is infamous for making audiences laugh and cry in equal measure. Alessandra is known for her New York Times Modern Love essay Two Kisses We Never Talked About.

Her debut novel, Murder at the Hotel Orient, is a contemporary “spicy whodunnit” with golden age style, perfect for 2026. It will be published in th UK by Baskerville (Hachette), and in the USA by Scout Press (Simon & Schuster), and has sold translations in France, Italy, and Ukraine. It’s a With sultry, golden age flair, set at an infamous Viennese love hotel where every guest checks in under an alias. Her extensive book research included becoming the Writer in Residence of the Hotel Orient, where the book is set, allowing her a chance to see every room, even the hidden ones.