Before becoming an author, Kim van Alkemade was a professor at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania where she taught creative writing. Her debut novel, Orphan #8, about a woman who confronts the doctor who conducted medical experiments on her at a Jewish orphanage in the 1920s, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into eleven languages. Inspired by true events, her second novel, Bachelor Girl, is about a Jazz Age actress in New York City who receives a surprise inheritance from the millionaire owner of the Yankees baseball team. Her third historical novel, Counting Lost Stars, about an unwed college student who has given up her baby for adoption helping a Holocaust survivor search for his lost mother, was inspired in part by her father’s experiences in Nazi occupied Holland. Kim was born in New York City and now makes her home in Saratoga Springs, New York, with her partner, their two rescue dogs, and a couple of feisty backyard chickens.