Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.

While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel, Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was published. She went on to write eight more romantic suspense novels and a screenplay, "Adrift", which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.

Tess's first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996 and marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels since then include Life Support, Gravity, The Surgeon, Vanish, The Bone Garden, and The Spy Coast. Her books have been translated into 40 languages, and more than 40 million copies have been sold worldwide.

She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publishers Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”, and Time Magazine named her novel The Surgeon one of the best mystery/thriller novels ever written.

Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the hit TNT television series "Rizzoli & Isles," starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.

In addition to her writing, she is also a filmmaker. She and her son Josh produced a feature-length documentary, “Magnificent Beast”, about the ancient origins of the pig taboo, which aired on PBS channels around the country. Their previous film, “Island Zero”, was a feature-length horror movie released in 2018.

She resides in Maine.