Katie Alender Books in Order

If you want the full paranormal trilogy: Bad Girls Don't Die → From Bad to Cursed → As Dead As It Gets
If you want a gothic standalone: The Companion
If you want a haunted-house story: The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
If you want Hollywood suspense: Famous Last Words
If you want spooky historical mystery: Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer

Katie Alender was born in Florida and grew up in South Florida. She attended Palm Beach County School of the Arts for Communication Arts, studied film at Florida State University, and then moved to Los Angeles, where she spent several years working in TV development and production.

Writing showed up early and never really left.

She has said that in third grade she filled a spiral notebook with long, strange stories, and in seventh grade she even did a school project called Do I Want to Be a Writer? Her first published piece came in high school, when an article she wrote called So You Want to Live On Mars? appeared in Sassy magazine. She has also said the arts-school environment gave her room to be herself, which later feels close to the outsider energy in some of her fiction.

Her path to novels was not especially tidy. After college she worked in entertainment, with jobs that included development work, producing infomercials, and years as a writer-producer on televised dog shows for Animal Planet. Even then, she has said, the part she loved most was creating characters and worlds.

Then one ghost story changed the plan.

Alender started an early manuscript and gave it up after about a hundred pages, but the idea for Bad Girls Don't Die stuck with her. On a trip, she picked up Stephen King's On Writing, and that helped push her to finish the book that would become her debut. She revised it on and off around a demanding job, then got serious about publication in 2006, working mornings, nights, and weekends to polish it before the book sold.

When Bad Girls Don't Die arrived in 2009, it set the tone for much of what followed. The book, and its sequels From Bad to Cursed and As Dead As It Gets, mix ghost story scares with sister drama, school pressure, and the very real panic of not knowing whom to trust. The books care as much about loyalty and family tension as they do about the haunting itself.

She has also been good at moving that eerie feeling into new settings. Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer takes a class trip to Paris and folds history into a murder mystery. Famous Last Words brings ghostly suspense to Los Angeles and old movie glamour. The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall leans into a haunted institution and buried secrets, while The Companion turns a remote estate and a supposedly lucky rescue into a gothic trap. Each book takes a familiar teen world and makes it feel unsafe.

A lot of Alender's stories begin with ordinary teenage worries, fitting in, family tension, friendship trouble, then let something uncanny seep in. That balance is a big part of why readers connect with her work. People come for the creepy houses, strange visions, and restless ghosts, but they stay for the sister bonds, hidden histories, and steady, relatable heroines.

There is a funny contradiction at the center of all this. Alender has said she doesn't really like scary books or movies, even though many readers know her for YA horror and suspense. These days she has described herself as a full-time author and mom, and she has shared that she's married, has two daughters, and one spoiled dog. She also likes gardening, sewing, cooking, playing board games, and spending time with her family. In 2021, The Companion won the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel, a neat milestone for someone who built a career out of making everyday life feel just a little haunted.