Kate Griffin Books in Order

Catherine Webb was born in London in 1986 and grew up there, in a city that would later seep into all three of her writing identities, Catherine Webb, Kate Griffin, and Claire North. The names changed to mark different kinds of books, but the habits underneath them stayed pretty consistent. She likes big ideas, strange rules, and the point where ordinary life tips into something uncanny.

She started young.

As a child, she read fantasy constantly, was an only child, spent a lot of time in libraries, and started making up stories because the shelves alone were no longer enough. She has spoken about reading her way across whole stretches of the fantasy section and then turning to writing as the obvious next step. Her first novel, Mirror Dreams, was completed when she was fourteen and published in 2002, with Mirror Wakes following after it. Even that early, she was writing the kind of fiction she still gravitates toward, fast-moving, slightly off-center, and built on magical systems that feel bigger than any one character can fully control.

Under her own name, Webb wrote a run of young adult books that refused to stay in one lane. Waywalkers and Timekeepers mix mythology, apocalypse, and contemporary London through the story of Sam Linnifer, while the Horatio Lyle novels, beginning with The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle, move into Victorian mystery and adventure. Those books brought Carnegie nominations for Timekeepers and The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle. Readers who enjoy them tend to like the same things they later find in her adult work, quick intelligence, sharp humor, and the sense that the world is packed with hidden machinery.

While studying International History at the London School of Economics, she began writing the darker adult fantasy that would become the Kate Griffin books. The pseudonym was a practical one, meant to signal that these novels were for adults rather than the younger audience of the Catherine Webb titles. After LSE, she went on to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to study Technical Theatre and Stage Management, and kept writing through all of it. That mix of academic history, city life, and backstage craft fits her fiction surprisingly well.

Then London really took over.

As Kate Griffin, Webb turned the city into a magical ecosystem. A Madness of Angels, The Midnight Mayor, The Neon Court, The Minority Council, Stray Souls, and The Glass God imagine power flowing through buses, phone lines, old stones, traffic, alleyways, and the layered history of the streets themselves. She has said the spark for Matthew Swift came while riding a London night bus and looking out at the city after dark. That makes sense. These books read like someone who loves how cities buzz, fray, exhaust you, and give energy back at the same time.

Webb never fully left her other work behind. She has trained and worked in theatre tech and live lighting, and she has described that world as a useful counterweight to the solitude of writing. You can feel that practical side in her fiction. Even the wildest ideas tend to be anchored in systems, timing, and the physical reality of people moving through space.

Another pen name, Claire North, opened a third branch of her career with The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, followed by books such as Touch and The Sudden Appearance of Hope. Across all three names, the themes stay familiar. Cities matter. Identity is slippery. Power always costs something. Webb still lives in London, and alongside writing has worked as a live music lighting designer and taught women's self-defense. She has also described herself as a fan of big cities, long walks, Thai food, and graffiti-spotting, which feels very on brand for an author so alert to motion, risk, and the textures of urban life.