is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author, an award-winning editor, and a specialist in organizational history and memoir.

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Her work has been published by Simon & Schuster, Chronicle Books, Time-Life, HarperCollins, Viking, Running Press, Pegasus Books, the New York Post, Time.com, The Independent (UK), Stanford Magazine, Parenting Magazine, Diablo Magazine, and numerous other publications.

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​Her work has been praised by The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, People Magazine, the Smithsonian, Publishers Weekly, the New York Post, Booklist, Library Journal, the New York Journal of Books, the Daily Express (UK), Elle magazine (Italy), the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner, and the San Jose Mercury-News.

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Her new nonfiction, historical true-crime book—"AN ASSASSIN IN UTOPIA: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder," a New York Times Editors Choice—was published in February 2023.

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A graduate of Stanford University in English literature and

journalism, she has a master's degree in history from San Francisco State University.​

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