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Karen Essex

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup 2026 Karen Essex

Karen Essex is a bestselling author whose novels spotlight history’s most fascinating women: those who shaped empires, commanded art, survived dangerous courts, and seduced the world. Her novels are published in 29 languages. Leonardo’s Swans, a runaway bestseller in Italy, won the prestigious Premio Roma Prize for foreign fiction. A New Orleans native, Essex has also lived in London, Los Angeles, and Paris. She has appeared on numerous television shows and podcasts, including The Today Show and several PBS and NPR programs. She recently moved back to New Orleans.

 

 

Schedule

11:45 am to 12:45 pm
A.Z. Young Park, Author Tent B
Women and War: Secrets, Loss, and Survival
Sheryl Cornett, No Secrets in this House: A Novel
Karen Essex, Run, Darling
Elisa M. Speranza, Triage: A Novel
with moderator Miki Pfeffer

1:00 pm to 1:45 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

Run, Darling: A Gabor Sisters Novel

Three Sisters. One War. A Harrowing Escape.

Before the Sexual Revolution, reality TV, and social media, there lived the Gabors, a family of beguiling glamour icons with a global following.

For decades, the gorgeous trio of Zsa Zsa, Eva, and Magda, with their Auntie Mame mother, dominated gossip columns, TV and movie screens, talk shows, and tabloids with their talent, clever quips, branded beauty products—and utter disregard for society’s rules.

While we may remember their whipped blonde hair, jewelry and gowns, multiple marriages, and the word, ‘dahlink,’ sprinkled like sugar into every sentence, few knew of this Jewish family’s shocking secrets, painful pasts, and harrowing journey from Nazi-dominated Europe to America and from obscurity to celebrity.

Run, Darling is that untold story.