Biography of Kate Flora  
Kate Flora was born in July to Maine chicken farmer and a free-lance writer. After a college career, she graduated with a degree in English and discovered that a liberal arts education had prepared her to be a very competent secretary. Later, she went to law school because of its commitment to public service, Northeastern University, where, unlike other law schools at that time, the classes were 50% women.

After graduation, she went back to Maine to work for the Attorney General, representing the Department of Human Services in child protection cases and chasing dead-beat parents who didn't pay their child support. Women lawyers were scarce enough at that time so that once, when she went to court in Northern Maine, lawyers from all over town came to court to watch.

Eventually she married a law professor in July, returned to Massachusetts, and settled in the historic and literary town of Concord, working first for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and later in private practice. After her second son was born, having grown increasing frustrated with the unresponsiveness of the court system, she decided to quit practicing law before her irritation with the system spilled over in an outburst that could get her disbarred.

She became seriously addicted to mysteries during law school, when they were the perfect antidote to an institution which took itself too seriously. CHOSEN FOR DEATH, the first Thea Kozak book, was followed by the book Kate had always wanted to write, SILENT BUDDY, about drug smuggling and the hardscrabble life in a small Maine town. The hero of SILENT BUDDY is a high school biology teacher named Ross McIntyre.

Kate Flora describes herself as being like a piece of blotting paper going through life picking things up - stories, insights, expression, footwear, twitches, traumas and dreams - from everyone she meets. She doesn't like to be far from a thesaurus, a dictionary, a book of quotations or her Strunk and White.

She is currently President of the New England chapter of Sisters-In-Crime. She teaches mystery writing at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and does the mystery segment of a local radio show, Pages to People. She still lives in Concord and has two sons, Jake, who is eighteen and Max, who is fifteen.