K.J. Howe

K.J. Howe is an award-winning Canadian thriller novelist and prominent literary executive whose high-octane speculative fiction has earned widespread critical acclaim for reviving the female-driven action-adventure subgenre. Born in Toronto, she cultivated a global, nomadic worldview during her youth by living across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. Before writing full-time, she spent years embedding herself within the shadow world of elite military contractors, conducting exhaustive interviews with tactical special forces operatives, hostage negotiators, and international kidnap-and-ransom (K&R) insurance executives to bring authentic procedural grit to her prose. Howe vaulted into national literary prominence with her blockbuster 2017 debut novel, The Freedom Broker, which introduced the world to elite K&R specialist Thea Paris and won the prestigious International Thriller Writers (ITW) Thriller Award for Best First Novel. She solidified her reputation as a master of relentless pacing with her critically adored 2018 sequel, Skyjack. The pulse-pounding hijacking thriller follows Thea Paris trapped aboard a compromised Boeing Business Jet as she fights to save two orphan refugees from a deadly conspiracy linking postwar history to a modern Sicilian mob syndicate. Beyond her own publishing career, Howe is an influential institutional anchor within the international mystery community, serving as the long-time Executive Director of ThrillerFest, the massive annual conference held in New York City that unites the world's premier suspense and action authors.