Katherine Cecil Thurston (née Kathleen Annie Josephine Madden) was an Irish novelist best known for two political thrillers. Kathleen Annie Josephine Madden was born at 14 Bridge Street in Cork, Ireland, the only daughter of banker Paul J. Madden (mayor of Cork from 1885 to 1886 and a friend of Charles Stuart Parnell) and Eliza Madden. She received her education privately at her family's home, Wood's Gift on Blackrock Road. By the end of the nineteenth century, she was writing short stories for several British and American journals, including Pall Mall Magazine, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Windsor Magazine, and others. On February 16, 1901, five weeks following her father's death, she married novelist Ernest Temple Thurston (1879-1933). They separated in 1907 and divorced in 1910 because of his adultery and desertion. The lawsuit went undefended. Thurston, on the other hand, "complained that she was making more money by her books than he was, that her personality dominated his, and had said that he wanted to leave her." Katherine Thurston's novels were successful in both Britain and the United States. Her best-known work was a political thriller titled John Chilcote, M.P. (also known as The Masquerader in the United States), which was released in 1904 and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years, placing third in 1904 and seventh in 1905.