Catherine Webb Books in Order

Catherine Webb was born in Britain in 1986 and grew up in London. They started writing early, very early, and finished Mirror Dreams when they were just fourteen. When the book was published in 2002, Webb became one of those rare writers whose origin story sounds almost made up, but isn't.

Books were already close at hand. Webb's father, Nick Webb, was an author and publisher, and he suggested sending the manuscript to an agent he knew. Even so, the speed of it still matters. What many writers spend years circling toward, Webb reached while still on school holidays.

They were a published novelist before most people have finished figuring out their GCSE options.

Webb went to the Godolphin and Latymer School in London, then studied history at the London School of Economics. After that came training in technical theatre and stage management at RADA. That mix of interests, books, history, cities, and practical stagecraft, helps explain why their fiction often feels so built, so placed, and so alert to movement.

Under their own name, Webb wrote smart, energetic fantasy for younger readers. Mirror Dreams and Mirror Wakes play in the Kingdoms of the Void, where dreams, nightmares, and power struggles spill toward Earth. Waywalkers and Timekeepers go bigger still, mixing gods, apocalypse, and modern London through the story of Sam Linnifer. Readers who find these books young often remember the speed, the humor, and the sense that the story is always opening another door.

Then there is Horatio Lyle. In The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle and its sequels, Webb shifts into Victorian mystery-adventure mode, with inventions, conspiracies, weird clues, and a hero who would rather be in his lab than in the middle of a case. These books show another thing Webb does well: pairing big ideas with very readable characters, and keeping a strong sense of place without slowing the pace.

London, in one form or another, keeps coming back.

As Kate Griffin, Webb moved into adult urban fantasy and built one of their best-loved settings. A Madness of Angels, The Midnight Mayor, Stray Souls, and The Glass God imagine a city where magic lives in bus routes, old stones, back alleys, and electric lines. People who love these books tend to love the same things Webb clearly loves too: crowded streets, hidden systems, strange folklore, dry jokes, and the idea that cities are alive if you look at them sideways.

As Claire North, they widened the lens again. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August became a word-of-mouth success, and the Claire North books have since picked up major recognition, including the World Fantasy Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. What links the different names is not genre so much as temperament: Webb likes pressure, hidden structures, moral complications, and protagonists who are clever enough to know they may still be in trouble.

Webb still lives in London. Alongside writing, they have worked in lighting design for theatre and live music, and they have also taught women's self-defense. It feels like a very Catherine Webb detail, practical, restless, city-based, and just a little unexpected.