About Elizabeth Heider

 Elizabeth Heider writes literary crime and speculative fiction at the intersection of psychological thriller and political noir. Her novels draw on her background in physics, and decades of work across military, government, academia, international organizations, and the private sector.

Her debut novel, May the Wolf Die (Penguin, 2024), was named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Best Thriller Books, and CriminOlly. Her next book, Children of the Savage City (Penguin, February 2026), was named a Financial Times Best New Thriller. The Nikki Serafino series has been optioned and is currently in development for a Television Series by a major studio.  

Elizabeth is a PhD physicist. She conducted research in High Energy Particle Physics at Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratories, and studied pharmaceutical biomolecules using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. She is the sole author on the patent, NMR Crystallography Methods for Three-Dimensional Structure Determination. 

Following her education, Elizabeth served for eight years as a civilian research analyst for the US government and military - deploying aboard several US and European naval ships - including an Aircraft Carrier, an amphibious transport dock ship, a Landing Platform Dock ship, and frigates. She also embedded with the Navy in Naples, Italy, as an assessments program manager for the APS mission. In 2009, aboard the USS Nashville during its Africa Partnership Station mission, she met Doug High - a friendship that lasts to this day. 

From 2016 to 2023, Elizabeth worked as a scientist in the European Space Agency’s Human Spaceflight program, supporting operations aboard the International Space Station. There, she co-authored an Acta Astronautica article with ESA astronaut, Thomas Pesquet, The Thomas Pesquet PROXIMA mission: An overview of accomplishments and science results.

Most recently, Elizabeth was a Senior Technical Program Manager for Microsoft's AI4Science program where she co-authored the 2025 Nature Magazine article, A Foundation Model for Earth Systems. 

Elizabeth founded her own consultancy, Cap-Geo, whose clients have included the US Navy, INTERPOL, and Northrop Grumman.

Elizabeth brings a creative vision, an analytical mind, and a lifetime of experience to Savage city - ensuring the characters, procedure and institutional texture of our productions are as real as they can be.