Karleen Koen

Literary career To help pass the dull hours at home, Koen began writing a historical fiction novel on her favorite time period, the eighteenth-century. The book centered on teenage noblewoman Barbara Alderley and her trials and travails as she navigates English and French society. To gain a publisher for her work, now called Through a Glass Darkly, Koen sent the manuscript to Jean Naggar, whose name she found in Writer's Digest. Naggar encouraged Koen to continue finishing the book; believing it to be "the launching of a major author," Naggar mailed the manuscript to five major publishing companies; Random House purchased it for a "whopping" $350,000 in August 1985, which was at the time a record for a new novelist. Koen and her husband used some of this money to purchase a three-bedroom house in Houston.

Works Through a Glass Darkly (1986) Now Face to Face (1995) Dark Angels (2006) Before Versailles (2011)