The City of Tears

Kate Mosse CBE FRSL is an award-winning novelist, playwright, performer, campaigner, interviewer and non-fiction writer. The author of ten novels and short-story collections, her books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and published in more than forty countries. Fiction includes the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre, Citadel), The Joubert Family Chronicles (The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears, The Ghost Ship, The Map of Bones) and No 1 bestselling Gothic fiction including The Taxidermist's Daughter and The Winter Ghosts. Her highly-acclaimed non-fiction includes An Extra Pair of Hands: A Story of Caring & Everyday Acts of Love and Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World, which inspired her one-woman theatre touring show.

A regular guest on radio and television for literature, Kate hosts the pre-show interview series at Chichester Festival Theatre and is a regular interviewer for literary and arts festivals including Letters Live, the Hay Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the British Library and the Royal National Theatre. Her new podcast, The Matilda Effect, will be launched in summer 2024.

The Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction - the world's largest annual literary awards celebrating writing by woman - she is the founder of the global #WomanInHistory campaign and has her own monthly YouTube book show, Mosse on a Monday. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Kate is also an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Authors, a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and President of the Festival of Chichester. In the broader arts, Kate is President of the Festival of Chichester, Patron of the Chichester Cathedral Festival of Flowers 2024, Vice-Patron of the Chichester Cathedral Platinum Music Trust and Patron of the Chichester Festival of Music, Dance and Speech. She is also an Ambassador for Parkinsons UK.

A Sunday Times Best Paperbacks of the Year Pick

'Mosse is a master storyteller' - Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe

Sweeping from Carcassonne to Paris and Amsterdam, The City of Tears by Kate Mosse is a thrilling story of one family's fight to survive against the devastating tides of history . . .

May, 1572. For ten violent years the Wars of Religion have raged across France. But now, peace has been brokered and a royal wedding has been negotiated. It is a marriage that could see France reunited at last.

An invitation has arrived for Minou Joubert and her family to attend this historic wedding in Paris. What Minou doesn't know is that her family's oldest enemy will also be there, that the Jouberts will soon be scattered to the winds after tragedy strikes, and that a beloved child will disappear without trace . . .

The City of Tears is the second volume in Kate Mosse's No. 1 bestselling series, The Joubert Family Chronicles. It is followed by the third instalment in the series, The Ghost Ship.

Praise for The Joubert Family Chronicles:

'Historical fiction to devour' - Anthony Horowitz, bestselling author of The Twist of the Knife, on The Burning Chambers

'An utterly absorbing epic' - Lucy Foley, bestselling author of The Paris Apartment, on The City of Tears

'Meticulously researched and stunningly written' - Santa Montefiore, bestselling author of Wait for Me, on The Ghost Ship