Sara Winokur

SARA WINOKUR is a geneticist, researcher, and author. Her historical fiction and cultural thrillers embody elements of DNA and forensic science, as she has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics. Her research helped identify mutations underlying muscular dystrophy and Huntington’s disease. In her Nordic noir novel “Double Blind: The Icelandic Manuscript Murders,” a young boy disappears from a fjord in Iceland. Years later, his twin sister Brynja, a DNA scientist, searches for him but lands in a world of trouble. Her second novel, the historical thriller “Ivory Bones: The Lewis Chessmen Murders,” finds Brynja racing against time to find the valuable medieval chess pieces before she herself becomes the target. Sara is a direct descendent of two of the main historical characters: the ruthless Barbary pirate Jans Janszoon and his son Anthony, the largest landowner 1600's Brooklyn and Coney Island. As an ovarian cancer thriver, Sara has a sense of gratitude, strength, and perspective that she extends to family, friends, work, and her writing. A mother of three, Sara Winokur resides with her husband and writes in Southern California. That is, when she is not traveling the world in search of unique stories.