CJ Cooke wrote her first book aged seven. A few decades later, her work is published in 23 languages, has won numerous awards, and has been optioned for film and television. She writes about motherhood, mental illness, memory, and trauma. Her fiction is often classed as feminist gothic and/or psychological suspense.

CJ’s previous works include The Boy Who Could See Demons (2012), about a psychiatrist and her 10-year-old charge in post-Troubles Belfast, which was critically appraised by The New York Times, The Guardian, Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, and The New York Review of Books, and I Know My Name, which was a No. 1 iBooks bestseller and optioned for TV.

Her novel 2021, The Lighthouse Witches, was nominated for an Edgar Award and an ITW Thriller Award, and is an international bestseller. It is soon to be a major TV series produced by StudioCanal and The Picture Company. Her 2022 novel The Ghost Woods was a Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month, and her 2023 novel A Haunting in the Arctic was longlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.

Her 2024 novel is The Book of Witching.