Emilia Bernhard Books in Order

Emilia Bernhard was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Philadelphia. Her life has included plenty of moves, something she has spoken about with a fair amount of humor.

She has lived in Iowa City, Fayetteville, London, Cambridge, Bristol, and Paris. In 2011, she moved to the United Kingdom permanently, and she is based in Exeter, Devon, where she has two cats and a cozy flat.

Writing was never a late discovery for her.

Bernhard has said she always wrote in one form or another. As a child, she kept at it because people told her she was good, and one of her earliest remembered pieces was a composition written while she was in detention at age eleven. Later came journals, letters, school essays, and academic articles. Even during a difficult stretch of writer's block, writing remained part of how she made sense of the world.

Her day job has also kept her close to books. She earned a Ph.D. and has taught nineteenth-century British literature and writing at the University of Exeter. Her academic work includes The Development of Byron's Philosophy of Knowledge: Certain in Uncertainty, a study of Lord Byron's ideas and intellectual influences.

The step from writing privately to sending fiction into the world came with a nudge from a friend, who urged her to submit a novel to agents.

That novel became Death in Paris, published in 2018. It introduced Rachel Levis and Magda Stevens, two American friends in Paris who find themselves pulled into a murder investigation. Bernhard followed it with The Books of the Dead and Designs on the Dead, each placing the pair near another suspicious death and a new corner of city life.

Her mysteries are traditional, clue-focused stories with a light touch. Paris is more than a postcard backdrop, with cafés, libraries, wealthy households, fashion circles, and the everyday complications of making a home in another country. Rachel's eagerness to investigate, Magda's steady companionship, and the women's friendship give the books their center.

Away from the page, Bernhard has described herself as a devoted reader who prefers paper books, right down to noticing how they smell. She also enjoys films, ballet, tango, and long walks. It fits the picture of a writer and teacher whose work is built around curiosity, conversation, and a lifelong habit of putting words on the page.