About CJ

C.J. McGroarty grew up in an old town outside of Philadelphia, PA. As a kid, she loved writing stories. Later, as a reporter at a metropolitan daily, she wrote thousands of them and learned something new every day. After leaving journalism she completed her MFA in creative writing and turned to writing fiction. Her short work has been published in a variety of journals and magazines and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has also taught English and writing to college students and adult learners.

While in grad school, she dusted off the pages of a novel she’d shoved into a drawer years earlier and got to work finishing it. That novel became Clara in a Time of War, the story of a woman who finds something unexpected while trying to survive on her farm outside Philadelphia during the American Revolution. 

She turned again to history for her next novel, The House on Chambers Road: A Ghost Story, a supernatural mystery told in dual timelines and also set outside Philadelphia. 

C.J. is currently at work on a historical mystery set in Philadelphia five years after the end of the American Revolution.

When she’s not writing, she is either digging in her garden or giving tours at Historic Waynesborough, the 18th-century home of celebrated Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne. She always looks forward to a visit from her daughter and grandson, who never seem to live close enough.

C.J. resides in the Philadelphia suburbs with her wonderful husband, Jim, a writer and retired English professor.