1--What is the title of your latest release?
THE MAP OF BONES
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A fast-paced adventure thriller, two pioneering women – separated by nearly two hundreds – go in search of the women in their own family, a quest that takes them from Europe to building a new life in South Africa. Quickly, they discover the past is far from dead and buried and they cannot escape the long-hidden secrets within their own family. It’s an adventure detective novel, a quest novel celebrating incredible heroines, a novel about the power of words and how they connect generations.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I was in the Huguenot graveyard in Franschhoek South Africa back in 2012, when I had a sudden vision of a young woman in 19th century dress rubbing the lichen from a headstone to discover who was buried there. I had to write The Map of Bones to find out who she was and what secrets were buried in the red earth of Africa. It was quite a ride writing the book!
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely! She’s brave, principled, never takes ‘no’ for an answer, and overcomes incredible trauma to achieve what she achieves. More than that, her goal is to find out what happened to all the women of her family before her and put their stories into the history books.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Smart, determined, badass
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That books matter, that women passing down their stories generation after generation is what puts the other half of history into history. And that secrets never remain buried …
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I’m a “pantser” not a “planner”, so my first draft (writing eight hours a day, seven days a week) is all about finding what the story’s actually about. I just keep going. Then, the real work – that’s to say, the editing – starts. I do two further drafts, editing all the time, until the story shines and the novel has the pace of a thriller.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Marmite on toast (a very English answer, sorry)
9--Describe your writing space/office!
Lots of windows, maps and prints on the wall, floor to ceiling bookcases with the books I’m using for research on a special shelf behind me, beloved treasures to remind me of those I love (my parents, much missed, my children, grandchildren and dear friends). Oh, and I still have the dog basket in the corner for my West Highland terrier Hamish, who passed away at the age of 18 in 2023 … somehow, I can’t quite bring myself to put the basket away.
10--Who is an author you admire?
As the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and now the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, I’ve been lucky enough to meet so many incredible authors during my career. High on the list would be the extraordinary Barbara Kingsolver – Demon Copperhead, her homage to Charles Dickens, is a work of genius. I’m also a big fan of traditional crime fiction, so the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, would be higher still. I re-read all her novels and short stories every year … I’m also a big fan of Michael Connolly.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I read it as a teenager and go back to it time and time again. More than just the story of obsession and the hardness of Victorian life in England, straight away I realized how landscape could be the central character in a novel. A sense of place inspires all my fiction – from the High Seas in my queer pirate novel The Ghost Ship to the birth of southern Africa in The Map of Bones. It’s thanks to EB that I’m the novelist I am.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
This happened a while back, for my novel Labyrinth in 2005. Having sold the novel in Europe, my agent and I came to New York for the auction for American rights and met with many great American editors including the legendary Leona Nevler. We sat in his office, waiting for the calls to come in. As the figure went higher and higher, I couldn’t believe that a girl from Sussex in southern England was sitting in New York with publishers fighting over my book. It was a dream come true. Leona Nevler was one of the most exceptional publishers of the 20th and 21st centuries and I was so fortunate to be published by her. PS Thanks to her, and her amazing team, Labyrinth went straight into the New York Times bestseller list, another crazy dream come true. Since then, I’ve had another thirteen international bestsellers and it never grows old, knowing that readers are waiting for your stories and have taken your characters to their hearts. I am so grateful.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love crime (though not violent, anti-women stuff) and literary fiction. I also read a lot of history and biography.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
The Fifth Element
15--What is your favorite season?
Answer: Autumn (or, for my readers across the pond), Fall. It’s the colors, the sense of something beautiful coming to an end, the memory of going back to school, the smell of bonfires and the quality of light at dusk … and, also, my birthday is in October.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I LOVE birthdays. When it’s a “big” one, I throw a huge party for family and friends to say thank you and with gratitude that we’re all still around. Smaller ones, probably a trip to the theatre or a kitchen supper with children and grandchildren. I’m already planning my 70th, though it’s seven years away – it’s going to have to be really something to top my 60th, which lasted a whole weekend and was held in an old, ruined Priory in my hometown of Chichester in West Sussex, southern England.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I’m always late catching up with things, so this is only recent for me! But the series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – about the rise of a female stand-up comic in New York in the 1950s and 1960s – is beyond fantastic. Rachel Brosnahan in the lead role is outstanding and Alex Borstein, as her agent (and based on legendary Hollywood talent agent Sue Mengers), sets the screen alight. Sharp scripts, brilliant costumes, jam-packed full of superb characters, everyone smoking, drinking and cursing. My husband and I binge watched three episodes a night all last Autumn and learnt everything about both the comedy scene in NY in those years and Upper West Side Jewish life. Midge Maisel bears more than a passing resemblance to the comedienne Lotus Weinstock, and her relationship with Lenny Bruce is touching as well as funny. Television writing at its best.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Mediterranean – we have a house in Carcassonne, southwest France, a region that’s inspired most of my historical adventure fiction. So, fresh baguette, olives, cheese bought from the market that day, tomatoes the size of your hands, white asparagus and honey with figs. All washed down with a chilled local rosé from Languedoc.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
It’s all about family and books. So, being with my husband, our grown -up children and grandchildren, walking, reading, theatre, travel (both around the British Isles and further afield), swimming in the summer and going on long hikes in the woods in Autumn. Nothing fancy.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
After all these years, I’m finally turning to crime. My next series will be historic detective fiction inspired by real-life cold cases (that’s to say, cases that were never solved). I’m starting in the 19th century with a murder in my own family.
The Joubert Family Chronicles #4
A sweeping story of love, adventure and adversity, The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse is an epic tale of courageous women battling to survive in a hostile land.
No word, no story, no grave . . .
Olifantshoek, Southern Africa, 1688. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, journeys to the Cape of Good Hope in search of her notorious cousin, Louise Reydon-Joubert – who vanished without trace half a century ago.
Franschhoek, Southern Africa, 1862. Nearly six generations later, Isabelle Joubert Lepard follows in her footsteps, determined to investigate the lives of her ancestors – and to honour their memory – only to discover that the evils of the past, though hidden, are far from buried.
And that her life, too, is under threat . . .
Painstakingly researched and beautifully told, The Map of Bones is the fourth – and final – novel of The Joubert Family Chronicles, following the bestselling The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears and The Ghost Ship.
Women's Fiction Historical | Fiction Adventure [Mantle, On Sale: January 7, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book , ISBN: 9781035042159 / ]
KATE MOSSE is a multiple New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author with sales of more than seven million copies in thirty-eight languages. Her previous novels include Labyrinth, Sepulchre, The Winter Ghosts, Citadel, and The Taxidermist's Daughter. Kate is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, a Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester and in June 2013, was awarded an OBE for services to literature. She divides her time between the UK and France.
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