"If you open it, you must follow where it leads…"

Interred With Their Bones

Kate Stanley Thrillers

“High-class fun”

—Newsweek

“A brainy romp”

—The New York Times

“Utterly ingenious”

—The Guardian

 

What I’m Working on Now

“They will say it is a picture of a wedding, but in truth it is the portrait of a lie.”

My new novel weaves a tale of love, betrayal and magic about the great Renaissance painter and spy Jan Van Eyck, told by the woman he loved and loved to paint: a woman with the face of an angel.

 

The Speckled Monster

“For those take their medicine with an air of mayhem.”

—Kirkus Reviews

Two unlikely heroes battle to save their children from smallpox: epidemic history that reads like a novel.

Multi Media Bar

Previous Next
A Door to Another World

I have loved Jan Van Eyck’s riddling Arnolfini Wedding Portrait — beautiful and disturbing in equal measure — since I first laid eyes on it…

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Where are you, Jan Van Eyck? In the mirror’s reflection, you can see beyond the bride and groom, into an open doorway…

That Untraveled World

Occasional musings about stories, history, art, ideas, and journeys of the imagination: everything that makes me want to write…

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

“More like a mermaid than a queen”: The last time I saw John Singer Sargent’s great painting of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth…

Serendipity: Adventures in Writing

“I don’t know.” Three simple words. One potent and seductive phrase that led to a remote loch in the Scottish Highlands as I researched Haunt Me Still…

Haunt Me Still Trailer

Watch the trailer to Haunt Me Still

Ophelia by Millais

Whenever I’m in London, I go to see Ophelia floating in her brilliant green brook…

Hilliard’s Burning Man

“The flames seemed to flicker and hiss”: who is burning in Nicholas Hilliard’s miniature, and why?

Trailer: Interred With Their Bones (The Shakespeare Secret)

“Glorious fun” in more than 25 languages: see a trailer featuring some of the book’s most beautiful covers from around the world…

Reduced Shakespeare Podcast: The Shakespeare Secret

Jennifer talks with Austin Tichenor about writing “Interred With Their Bones”…

Kate Stanley & Elizabeth I

“Same red hair and black Boleyn eyes”: in my mind, Kate looks like the young Queen Elizabeth I…

“Her Writing Journey”

“She timed escape routes on two continents, planned arson, and scouted the perfect place to commit murder…”

Spanish Trailer for Sepultado con sus Huesos

Brilliantly eerie: the Spanish take on Interred With Their Bones (The Shakespeare Secret). A Kate Stanley thriller by Jennifer Lee Carrell

German Trailer for Die Shakespeare Morde

Burning Down the House: The German trailer for Interred With Their Bones (The Shakespeare Secret). A Kate Stanley thriller by Jennifer Lee Carrell

Polish Trailer for Szyfr Szekspira

Sexy Slavic Shakespeare: Polish trailer for Interred With Their Bones (The Shakespeare Secret). A Kate Stanley thriller by Jennifer Lee Carrell

Zabdiel Boylston, in my dreams

No portrait of Zabdiel Boylston survives, but this is how I like to imagine him…

Lady Mary: Beauty and Brutality

Richardson’s 1726 portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in her Turkish robes hides her smallpox scars but paints in slavery…

Smallpox: the “Speckled Monster”

Smallpox was a hideous disease that made its victims unrecognizably monstrous, and many died in agony. The terror it fueled was intense…