Paullina Simons was born in the former Soviet Union at the tail end of the post-WWII baby boom. With her parents, she immigrated to the United States in the mid-seventies.

She attended colleges on Long Island and in Colchester, England, before earning her degree in political science from Kansas University.

Before writing her first novel, Paullina worked as a financial journalist in the City of London and then as a financial TV producer on Wall Street.

Her debut novel, Tully, a coming-of-age story set in Topeka, Kansas, became an international success, published in twenty countries and translated into seventeen languages. She has since written 15 more novels, two children’s books, a cookbook, and a non-fiction memoir about her return to Russia with her father in 1998, called Six Days in Leningrad. Her novels span historical fiction, suspense thrillers, contemporary dramas, and mysteries—sometimes all at once. Three of her books blend all four genres, with a dash of time travel for good measure.

She has lived in Rome, London, Dallas, and New York but dreams of a future somewhere warm, ideally with swaying palms and ocean winds.

She is married. She has four children. She currently has one Golden retriever and a one-eyed Siberian cat named Teddy in honor of the also one-eyed President Roosevelt. She is at work on her next novel, which like all good stories remains a mystery until the last page is written.