The novel was named one of the “summer’s best horror books” by the Toronto Star where it was noted for 'Structuring a novel around a traditional Christian pilgrimage' despite 'the overwhelmingly secular, even atheist tone of our times.' Petra's Ghost was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for Horror in 2019. O’Cinneide’s debut novel, Petra's Ghost was promoted as literary fiction despite appearing on multiple horror genre book lists, possibly due to a haunting that takes place as part of the story. This experience, as well as the disappearance of a female pilgrim at the time, inspired her first novel, Petra's Ghost. She studied at the University of Toronto in the 1990s while a single parent of two children, graduating With Distinction in Sociology.Īfter working as an IT analyst for decades, in 2015 O’Cinneide walked the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage in northern Spain. O’Cinneide was born in Toronto, Ontario and attended high schools both in Canada and the United States.

Her second novel in the Candace Starr Crime series, Starr Sign, was nominated for an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Paperback Original by the Mystery Writers of America in 2022. Her debut novel, Petra's Ghost, was a semi-finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards for 2019. O'Cinneide is a Canadian writer of crime fiction and literary horror, as well as the writer of a blog featuring women authors.

Petra's Ghost by C.S. O’Cinneide