Elizabeth Kostova Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Elizabeth Kostova

Elizabeth Kostova was born in New London, Connecticut on December 26, 1964, and is an American writer who is best known for her novel, “The Historian”. It was the first novel in U.S. publishing history to debut at number one on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Elizabeth grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and graduated from the Webb School of Knoxville. She has an MFA from the University of Michigan and graduated from Yale.

Elizabeth is also the co-founder of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing in Bulgaria. She has even taught programs at places such as the University of Michigan, University of the Arts in Philadelphia, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Drexel University, and Penn State. Additionally, she has taught at Bear River Writers’ Conference in Northern Michigan and the Sozopol Seminars on the Bulgarian Black Sea.

While writing a first book, she finds that you write it in just about total privacy, without much expectation of getting published. A first novel is just for the writer, she finds. There is a feeling though, while she wrote her second one, however, of having an audience.

Each time, however, she is able to get lost in the process, finding that she just forgets about everything else. She forgets that there are any readers. She is only with those characters, and finds writing fiction is a lot like a benign form of insanity.

She says that while writing “The Swan Thieves”, she wrote the scenes by imagining scenes just about like you would if standing in front of a painting. She felt that it was a rather moving experience, to not know quite how things would turn out in the end.

Her poetry, essays, and short fiction has appeared in different anthologies and periodicals like Poets & Writers Magazine, The Mississippi Review, The Michigan Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, and The Best American Poetry.

“The Historian” was nominated for Waterstone’s Necomer of the Year for Best Novel in the year 2006. It also won Independent Bookseller and Quill Awards. She won a Hopwood Award for Novel-in-Progress in the year 2003 while at the University of Michigan.

She writes mystery and historical novels. All of her work has been translated into at least 28 languages.

“The Historian” is the first stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2005. A young woman is exploring her dad’s library late one night, and finds an old book as well as a stash of yellowing letters addressed to someone called ‘My dear and unfortunate successor’. This discovery pulls her into a world that she never once before dreamed of: it is a labyrinth where her mom’s mysterious fate and the secret’s from her dad’s past are linked to an evil that is hidden within the depths of history.

In these short moments she is going to unknowingly take on a quest she later finds out is her birthright. It is a hunt to find out the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the Middle Ages ruler whose barbarous reign is what formed the bedrock for the Dracula myth. Figuring out hidden texts and obscure signs, evading some horrifying foes, reading codes that were worked into the very fabric of medieval monastic traditions. These things and more while she comes that much closer to the secret from her past as well as a confrontation with the definition of evil.

This is a great mix of Dracula lore and history, and it gets readers completely engrossed in the entire story. This is a full speed ahead rich and historical thriller that has enough cultural folklore, gothic images, creaking stairs, and ancient crypts that will be sure to make your hair stand on end.

“The Swan Thieves” is the second stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2010. Andrew Marlowe is devoted to his profession as a psychiatrist, as well as the painting hobby he loves, has a ordered and solitary life. Robert Oliver, a renowned painter, vandalizes a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and winds up as his patient, Marlowe sees that order has been destroyed. Since Andrew is desperate to comprehend the secret that torments this genius, he goes off on a journey that takes him into the lives of those women that are closest to him as well as a tragedy that is at the center of French Impressionism.

This book is written in a seductive way that gets you immersed into the art world that was you wanting more, makes you want to go to a museum to look at art. Elizabeth Kostova wrote a book that is driven by the gradual development of each one of the characters, each are fascinating and vivid. Readers enjoyed each and every word of this one, and the whole thing went by far too quickly.

“The Shadow Land” is the third stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2017. Alexandra Boyd, a young American woman, has journeyed to Sofia, Bulgaria, in the hopes that life abroad is going to help heal the wounds left by the loss her beloved brother. Just after she shows up in this elegant East European, she helps an elderly couple get into a taxi, and realizes only too late that she has kept one of their bags by accident. In it, she finds an ornately carved wooden box that has been engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising up the hinged lid, she finds out that she is holding an urn that is filled with human ashes.

While Alexandra tries to find the family and return their precious item, she is first going to have to reveal the secrets of a talented musician shattered by political oppression. She will find out too soon that this knowledge is fraught with danger all its own.

Readers found that they enjoyed this one, the characters have depth and Elizabeth Kostova teaches quite a bit about the country of Bulgaria. It is not like a typical mystery novel, as you do not know where it will take you right off the bat.