Nicola Cornick is a British historical novelist whose work combines romance, mystery and dual-time storytelling. She studied History at the University of London and at Ruskin College, Oxford, and worked in academia before becoming a full-time writer. Cornick has written more than thirty historical romances and historical mysteries, and her books have been published internationally in numerous languages. She is particularly interested in genealogy, local history and women whose lives have been overlooked or distorted in the historical record. She has also worked as a guide and researcher at the seventeenth-century Ashdown House in Oxfordshire, an interest that has fed directly into several of her novels.
Her earlier books are largely Regency and Georgian historical romances, while her later novels frequently combine a modern storyline with events several centuries earlier. House of Shadows moves between the present and the seventeenth century; The Phantom Tree involves Tudor England and the story of Mary Seymour; The Forgotten Sister reimagines the life and death of Amy Robsart; and The Winter Garden connects a modern mystery with Robert Catesby and the Gunpowder Plot. The Other Gwyn Girl focuses on Rose Gwyn, the less famous sister of Nell Gwyn, while The Secrets of the Rose again mixes historical investigation with a contemporary strand. Her 2026 novel The Fourth Queen centres its Tudor story on Anne of Cleves and a fictional former prioress serving as her lady-in-waiting. Across these books Cornick uses historical mysteries, real people and disputed episodes from the past to explore how women’s stories are remembered, concealed or rewritten.
