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Kate Flora

Goodreads Author

Born

in The United States

Website

http://www.kateclarkflora.com/

Twitter

kateflora

Genre

Mystery, Crime, Nonfiction

Member Since

March 2010

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Kate Flora grew up on a chicken farm in Maine where the Friday afternoon trip to the library was the high point of her week. She dreamed of being able to create the kind of compelling, enchanting worlds of the books she disappeared into every week, but growing up in the era when “help wanted” ads were still sex-segregated, she felt her calling was to go to law school and get the job they told her she couldn’t have.

After law school, Kate worked in the Maine attorney general’s office, protecting battered kids, chasing deadbeat dads, and representing the Human Rights Commission. Those years taught her all a crime writer needs to know about the human propensity to commit horrible acts. After some years in private practice, she decided to give w Kate Flora grew up on a chicken farm in Maine where the Friday afternoon trip to the library was the high point of her week. She dreamed of being able to create the kind of compelling, enchanting worlds of the books she disappeared into every week, but growing up in the era when “help wanted” ads were still sex-segregated, she felt her calling was to go to law school and get the job they told her she couldn’t have.

After law school, Kate worked in the Maine attorney general’s office, protecting battered kids, chasing deadbeat dads, and representing the Human Rights Commission. Those years taught her all a crime writer needs to know about the human propensity to commit horrible acts. After some years in private practice, she decided to give writing a serious try when she quit the law to stay at home for a few years with her young sons. That ‘serious try’ led to ten tenacious and hellacious years in the unpublished writer’s corner, followed, finally, by the sale of her Thea Kozak series.

Kate’s eighteen books will include eight Thea Kozak mysteries, five gritty Joe Burgess police procedurals, a suspense thriller (written under the name Katharine Clark), two true crime books, Death Dealer and Finding Amy (co-written with Joseph Loughlin, a Portland, Maine Deputy Police Chief), a Maine game warden's memoir, A Good Man with a Dog, co-written with Roger Guay, and a book about police shootings from the police point of view, Shots Fired: The misunderstandings, misconceptions, and myths about police shootings, co-written with Joseph K. Loughlin. Finding Amy was a 2007 Edgar nominee as well as a Maine Literary Award finalist, and has been optioned for a movie. Kate’s award-winning short stories have been widely anthologized and Redemption and And Grant You Peace, her third and fourth Joe Burgess mysteries, won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction.

Flora's fiction, nonfiction, and short fiction have been finalists for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer Awards.

She is a founding member of the New England Crime Bake, the region's annual mystery conference, and the Maine Crime Wave. With two other crime writers, she started founded Level Best Books, where she worked as an editor and publisher for seven years. She served a term as international president of Sisters in Crime, an organization founded to promote awareness of women writers’ contributions to the mystery field. Currently, she teaches writing and does manuscript critiques for Grub Street in Boston.

She has two sons (one into film and the other into photovoltaics) two lovely daughters-in-law, an adorable eight-year-old grandson and five granddogs, Frances, Otis, Harvey, Oscar, and Daisy. When not conducting research for her novels and nonfiction—research that includes riding an ATV through the Canadian woods or hiding in a tick-infested field waiting to be found by search and rescue dogs—Kate can often be found in her garden, waging war against the woodchucks and her husband’s lawnmower, or in the kitchen, devising clever and devious ways to get the men in her life to eat their vegetables.
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Kate Flora's Blog

Forging New Traditions

This is an update of a post I wrote a few years ago. I think it has resonance for all of us as the cast of characters around the family changes:

There can be no writing about food on Thanksgiving night. No recipes, no cute ideas about yummy things to make the holiday brighter or suggestions for clever décor that sets off a stunning table for an afternoon and for which storage space must be found th Read more of this blog post »

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Published on November 24, 2017 08:16

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Kate Flora’s books

Average rating: 4.15 · 6,684 ratings · 776 reviews · 55 distinct works • Similar authors

	Playing God (Joe Burgess, #1) 4.03 avg rating — 853 ratings — published 2006 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chosen for Death (Thea Kozak #1) 3.92 avg rating — 578 ratings — published 1994 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Angel of Knowlton Park (Joe Burgess, #2) 4.32 avg rating — 414 ratings — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Redemption (Joe Burgess, #3) 4.28 avg rating — 345 ratings — published 2012 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Led Astray (Joe Burgess, #5) 4.52 avg rating — 323 ratings — published 2016 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Educated Death (Thea Kozak #4) 4.19 avg rating — 329 ratings — published 1997 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Death in a Funhouse Mirror (Thea Kozak #2) 4.08 avg rating — 335 ratings — published 1995 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	And Grant You Peace (Joe Burgess, #4) 4.40 avg rating — 303 ratings — published 2014 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Death at the Wheel (Thea Kozak #3) 4.21 avg rating — 287 ratings — published 1996 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Death in Paradise (Thea Kozak #5) 4.26 avg rating — 282 ratings — published 1998 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Series by Kate Flora

Thea Kozak (11 books)
by

Kate Flora (Goodreads Author)

4.17 avg rating — 2,927 ratings

Joe Burgess (9 books)
by

Kate Flora (Goodreads Author)

4.28 avg rating — 2,605 ratings

Kate is Currently Reading

Kate Flora rated a book it was amazing

Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook

by Alice Waters

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Jan 03, 2026 01:22PM

Kate’s Recent Updates

Kate Flora rated a book it was amazing Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Kate Flora is now following Madeleine Eskedahl Author of Blood On Vines (The Matakana Series Book 1)
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Kate Flora wants to read Angels of Clay : The Matakana Series by Madeleine Eskedahl	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jan 03, 2026 01:21PM · 1 like · like
Kate Flora wants to read A Dark Shadow's Kill (Jim West Series Book 11) by Bob Doerr (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Kate Flora is now following Steven L Ditmars Author of Big Dogs (Big Dogs #1)
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Kate Flora wants to read GASPING FOR AIR: Book Two In The ‘Big Dogs Series’ by Steven L Ditmars (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Kate Flora wants to read Child Last Seen: The Search for Patty Desmond by Maureen Boyle	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Kate Flora wants to read No God West of Fort Smith by David C. Boyd SR	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Kate Flora wants to read Assassins of Mexico: A Mystery Detective Thriller Series (Luke Ryder Book 6) by John G. Bluck	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Kate Flora wants to read Devil's Fancy (Trackdown 2) by Michael A. Black	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jan 03, 2026 01:17PM · like

More of Kate's books…

Quotes by Kate Flora (?)

“If Kara Allison did it, she did it. You start editing, you start picking and choosing because you don't like what the facts tell you, and you stop being a detective, become something else. If you want to become a private dick, find facts for money, then go there. But resign first. Because that's not what we do. We find, or we try to find, facts for truth. We don't always succeed or like what we find. And we don't always win. But it's an honorable calling. What you're thinking about doing is not." It was the longest speech he'd ever heard Kyle make. He got up. "Thanks, Terry." "I hope that helped." "Actually, it hurt. But it's what my mother would have called 'good pain.' That woman, rest her soul, believed in”
― Kate Flora, Playing God

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“That friend”
― Kate Flora, Playing God

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“one big, happy family. That Dr. Pleasant was a brilliant, hard-working practitioner and jovial, well-liked colleague who had a lovely wife and family in Cape Elizabeth. That being said, he wanted me to go home without learning a damned thing about the victim. How, exactly, was that supposed to help our investigation?" "You stepped on his toes, Joe." "I didn't put my weight down. And only after he'd rebuffed a couple of polite questions. I didn't go there to make nice. I went to learn about a murder victim." "You know what I'm saying. You can't go in there and strong arm these people. You have to be tactful." Cote paused for effect, but what effect Burgess didn't know. Waiting for the words to sink in? Did Cote think he was some impermeable soil, thick with clay and slow to percolate? Finally, Cote sighed and said, "Report to me daily. I want to know everything that's happening. I'll handle the press.”
― Kate Flora, Playing God

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