Short Stories/Novellas
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Regeneration of Stella Yin | 2022 | Buy |
Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Porcelain Doll / The Last Russian Doll | 2022 | Buy |
| The Hong Kong Widow | 2025 | Buy |
Kristen Loesch grew up in San Francisco and studied history as an undergraduate before completing a Master’s degree in Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. That focus proved formative: her debut novel The Last Russian Doll is built around Russian history from the 1917 Revolution through the Stalinist purges and the siege of Leningrad, and the research shows in the specificity of its period detail. She now lives in Switzerland with her family.
The Last Russian Doll — published as The Porcelain Doll in the UK — was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel and sold to publishers in twelve countries. Critics praised what they described as hauntingly beautiful prose and an ability to hold together a century-spanning historical canvas within a tightly paced narrative. The novel uses a dual timeline: a young noblewoman’s story in early twentieth-century Russia weaves alongside a contemporary Oxford student named Rosie, whose search for the truth about her family leads her back across the century. One reviewer described it as reading “like a detective story, feels like a fairy tale, and strikes readers like an enduring classic Russian masterpiece.”
Her second novel, The Hong Kong Widow (2025), moves to 1953 Hong Kong and centers on a young Shanghai refugee who enters a competition among six spirit mediums in a notorious haunted house — six seances, six consecutive nights, one survivor. Reviewers noted its meticulous period research alongside gothic supernatural atmosphere, and the same interest in women navigating violent historical upheaval that drives her debut.