Kate Mosse publishes Autumn, a Sussex story in seasonal series

Kate Mosse's Autumn: The Story of a Season went on sale in the United Kingdom on 10 September 2026. Hodder lists the hardback at £24.99 under ISBN-13 9781399747004, the 13-digit number booksellers use to track a title. The Guardian published a review on 22 September 2026 titled 'Autumn by Kate Mosse review – tender reflections on time and place'. The Guardian

The book is described as a love-song to West Sussex. It sits in a series built around writers and the home landscapes they know best. Michael Morpurgo contributed spring in Devon, where he has lived for more than 50 years on the farm linked to War Horse. Val McDermid contributed winter in Scotland, where she grew up and still lives, while Bernardine Evaristo is set to explore summer.

Mosse stayed close to home. She grew up in the village of Fishbourne and now lives in Chichester. She has spent nearly all of her 65 years in Sussex.

That county has run through her earlier work. Its folklore and countryside fed into her novel The Taxidermist's Daughter. Sussex also provided the setting for her memoir An Extra Pair of Hands, about caring for family members.

Mosse said writing Autumn meant reliving all her autumns and putting the folklore of her home county on the page. Kate Mosse official site A launch event is scheduled at The Assembly Rooms in Chichester. The publisher for the book is Hodder, the company that produces and sells the title.

Another Sussex story is already in motion. Mosse is working on a novel called Borderlands, due in summer 2027. It is described as a medieval/modern time-slip adventure thriller, meaning a fast-moving story that shifts between the present and the past. The setting is split between Le Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy and Sussex on the eve of the Norman Conquest.

It is her first book of that kind since Labyrinth twenty years earlier. The new novel draws on Mosse family history and local Chichester history. Mosse is also listed as an ambassador for the 2026 National Year of Reading.

For readers keeping track, this means two connected releases in two years. Autumn places Mosse in a four-season, four-author sequence. Borderlands returns her to the dual-period storytelling she last published two decades ago.