Katherine Howe is a bestselling and award-winning historian and novelist who is a direct descendant of a nineteenth-century sailor who battled pirates on the high seas as well as three women who were tried for witchcraft in Salem. She is the editor of The Penguin Book of Pirates and The Penguin Book of Witches; the author of the novels A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself and The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs, the New York Times bestselling novels The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and The House of Velvet and Glass, and the young adult novels Conversion and The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen; and the coauthor with Anderson Cooper of the New York Times bestsellers Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty and Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune. A native Houstonian, she lives and sails with her family in New England.