Samantha Lee Howe Books in Order

Samantha Lee Howe was born in Manchester, England, and has built a career that moves easily between novels, short fiction, screenwriting, and editorial work. Her published work ranges from horror and fantasy to crime, psychological suspense, science fiction, and steampunk. That genre-hopping is part of the point: she follows the kind of story that interests her, whether it needs a haunted past, a secret identity, or a tightly wound domestic lie.

Before her current thriller work, Howe studied English and Writing for Performance, trained as a teacher, and completed a master's degree in Creative Writing. She later taught English and drama at secondary-school level. Her first novel grew out of her master's dissertation, turning an academic project into the beginning of a working writing life.

She began her professional writing career in 2007.

Early on, she wrote under the names Paigan Stone and Sam Stone. As Sam Stone, she developed the Vampire Gene books, beginning with Killing Kiss, along with the Kat Lightfoot Mysteries, which blend mystery, fantasy, and steampunk touches. Those books show an interest in women pushed into strange, dangerous situations and in worlds where ordinary rules do not quite hold.

Her early horror work also earned recognition, including a 2007 silver award for Gabriele Caccini, a novel later reworked as Killing Kiss. The period taught her how to keep revising and reshape a story for new readers. It also set up the mix of dark fiction and practical writing experience that runs through her later work.

Howe also works in screenwriting. Her credits include The White Witch of Devil's End, and she adapted The Stranger in Our Bed for the screen. She has worked as a freelance writer with publishers of different sizes, building a backlist that includes novels, novellas, short stories, collections, and edited anthologies.

A major change came with The Stranger in Our Bed, her psychological thriller released in 2020. It follows a married woman whose affair with a stranger turns into a nightmare when he disappears. The novel became a USA Today bestseller and was later made into a film, with Howe serving as screenwriter and executive producer.

She followed it with the three-book House of Killers series: The House of Killers, Kill or Die, and Kill a Spy. These are faster, more outward-looking thrillers, built around a conditioned assassin, an MI5 agent, and the shadowy Network tying their pasts together. Readers who like pursuit stories, shifting loyalties, and pressure that keeps rising will find a different side of her work here.

Her later fiction has continued to circle back to the dark material that first drew her to writing. The Soul Thief, published as S. L. Howe, returns to supernatural horror through a Victorian Manchester setting. Across the pen names, the common thread is suspense: characters are often trying to work out what has been hidden from them, and whether they can trust the person standing closest.

Howe lives in South Yorkshire with her husband, historian, writer, and publisher David J. Howe, and their cat, Skye. She is also the mother of a daughter, Linzi, and supports several charitable causes, including work connected with domestic-abuse services.