Raised in Europe and the U.S., Ursula Steck has spent most of her adult life in Cologne, Germany, until she met her partner, a resident of San Francisco, in 2001. For a few years she traveled between the continents and finally moved to Northern California in 2005. Ursula has published three mystery novels in German (In a State of Flux (1999), Fire Signals (2000) and Attack! (2004) all with Grafit, Dortmund) and various short stories in German and English. She is already well known in Germany as a lesbian mystery writer. After "The Next World" she is proud to present "Laura's War", her second American novel.