Kathleen Winsor books

Standalone Novels

Kathleen Winsor (1915-2003) was an American novelist best known for Forever Amber, the bestselling American novel of the 1940s. Born in Olivia, Minnesota, and raised in Berkeley, California, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1938. While her husband served in the Pacific during World War II, Winsor spent years studying the English Restoration period, reportedly reading 356 books on the subject. That research became the foundation for her debut novel.

Forever Amber appeared in 1944 and told the story of Amber St. Clare, a beautiful orphan who climbs through the ranks of 17th-century English society to become the mistress of King Charles II. The nearly thousand-page novel was banned in fourteen states for its sexual content, but the controversy only fueled its popularity. It sold over three million copies, was translated into sixteen languages, and was adapted into a 1947 film by Otto Preminger.

Winsor went on to write seven more novels over the next four decades, including Star Money (1950), a semi-autobiographical story about a beautiful author who writes a bestselling historical novel, and Wanderers Eastward, Wanderers West (1965), a sprawling tale of families in Montana Territory and New York City during the Civil War era. Her later books, including Calais (1979) and Robert and Arabella (1986), continued to feature strong-willed heroines navigating worlds that tried to constrain them.