What is the title of your latest release?
ALL HER BEAUTIFUL DEATHS
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
ALL HER BEAUTIFUL DEATHS is about two women, connected in time through a mysterious, hauntingly beautiful album of Victorian death photographs. When the album is involved in an art world scandal and is suddenly thrust into the public eye, our present-day heroine must dig deep to uncover the truth of what happened to the young women pictured.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Most of my work is set in England and I knew I’d love to write yet another book set in London in Highgate Cemetery (this is the third book I’ve set there, though the other two are children’s books). There’s a particular modern house that adjoins the cemetery that I’ve always fancied, and I decided to take that house and turn it into a Victorian home that had been renovated. And then I made it sentient.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
I have two heroines in ALL HER BEAUTIFUL DEATHS – Minnie is 1865 and Hadley in the present day. They’re both delightful people and I miss them both very much – I would definitely hang out with them!
What are three words that describe your hero?
Bumbling, yearning, tired (he’s not getting much sleep due to something that happens at the start of the book).
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learnt a lot about the wet-collodion process (wet-plate photography) and Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. I also learnt a lot about modern large-scale installation art.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit as I draft, but I’m a massive plotter, so I begin with almost a skeleton draft of notes. It’s a complicated process not worth explaining as it would only ever work for me!
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I do love a cocktail and have managed to include a few in ALL HER BEAUTIFUL DEATHS, including the fabulously named Corpse Reviver No. 2.
Describe your writing space/office!
I’m very lucky to have my own study and just recently installed some amazing wallpaper as a feature wall that looks like shelves crammed full of vintage glass medicine bottles and skulls and stuffed ravens and all sorts of things. It’s meant to look like the shelves of an old apothecary.
Who is an author you admire?
I must always answer my mother, Pamela Rushby, who is also an author. The apple does not fall far from the tree!
Is there a book that changed your life?
I don’t have one particular book, but as I child I adored all the very classic English children’s books like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s THE SECRET GARDEN, all of Noel Streatfeild’s books (WHITE BOOTS especially) and Rumer Godden’s books. And I suppose all of them changed my life in a way, because without them I would not have become an author myself.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published).
It would have been twenty-seven years ago (ALL HER BEAUTIFUL DEATHS will be my 34th published book). The funniest bit about it was that the publisher who called left a message on my answering machine saying they’d love to make an offer on my book, but I didn’t notice there was a message waiting for me for many, many hours.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I don’t have a favorite genre and tend to read whatever takes my fancy. I’ve been loving weird girl fiction and also some Victorian romance novels lately.
What’s your favorite movie?
I really love the movie Arrival and often recommend it as I find many people haven’t seen it.
What is your favorite season?
I live in the sub-tropics (in Queensland, Australia) where we joke that we have only two seasons – hot and hotter. When I lived in England for a while I really enjoyed having actual seasons and a rhythm to the year.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
champagne high tea, please.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I’m currently tearing my way through season two of The Hardacres and am loving it. It’s about a down-on-their-luck Victorian family who find themselves suddenly wealthy.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Anything I don’t have to cook. I am not at all picky and adore other people cooking for me while I perch at the kitchen bench with a cocktail!
What do you do when you have free time?
I’m a member of a synchronized ice-skating team, which is so much fun. We fall over a lot, but we also laugh a lot.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m halfway through writing my next adult novel, which is a bit of a deep dive into the secret lives of characters.
A gothic tale in two timelines in which the lives of two women intersect through a series of mysterious, eerily beautiful photographs of the dead
London, 1865. Minnie has been sent to Culpepper House to work as a maid. She’s been told that the Culpepper twins are odd, and odd they are. Edmund and Edith seem to do as they please, with Edmund running a laboratory from the house and Edith running about with glass plates in order to create photographs. When Minnie spies what Edith is photographing—a young woman and swan, both dead—she is horrified. But with nowhere else to go, there is nothing to do but remain and try to unlock the mystery of Culpepper House’s secrets before she becomes the victim of such a photograph.
London, present day. When Sydney-based artist Hadley is involved in an art world scandal revolving around an album of exquisite Victorian death photographs, she’s met with a flurry of media attention and the offer to create an installation centering on a heartbreaking image of a young woman and a swan. Then comes a shocking offer from the enigmatic Kit Culpepper of the Culpepper Trust…an eye-watering sum of money, with the condition that Hadley sell him the album and never speak of its contents again. As Hadley digs deeper, she begins to suspect Kit Culpepper is guarding a deathly secret…and she’s not entirely sure how far he’ll go to keep it.
Suspense Gothic [ Berkley, On Sale: September 22, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780593954676 / eISBN: 9780593954683 ]
A. Rushby (also writing as Allison Rushby), was gifted the middle name of Jane, for Jane Austen. Wordsmithing was duly destined and, under several pseudonyms, she has published more than thirty books. She has long been a fan of cities steeped in history, wild, overgrown cemeteries, red brick Victorian museums, the curious and the uncanny. She prefers to write with a cup of French Earl Grey tea by her side and a cat curled up in her lap.
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