Kathryn Harkup is a chemist and author. Her first book was the international best-seller, A is for Arsenic. She has also written about the science of Frankenstein in Making the Monster, all the ways to die in a Shakespeare play in Death By Shakespeare and investigated the scientific background to horror's most famous fiend in Vampirology. The Secret Lives of Molecules follows the success of The Secret Lives of the Elements, also by Harkup, published in 2022.