Emily trained as an actor, spending years touring across the UK and Ireland with the set in a horse box. (She once died three times in the same show). Since then she’s appeared as a Georgian princess at Hampton Court Palace and worked for the National Trust at Cliveden Estate and Ham House, devising trails, events and exhibitions. When not writing or child wrangling, she can be found searching for hag stones and sea glass or eating cake. Often at the same time.

 

Emily writes haunting middle-grade mysteries, and her book The Witch Stone Ghosts won the Mslexia Childrens & YA Novel Competition and the Times/Chicken House Prize. It was published by Chicken House in October 2023 and was long-listed for the Branford Boase Award in 2024, as well being shortlisted for several library awards. It's the story of Autumn, a lonely girl who speaks to the dead, and includes everything Emily loves - Cornish legend, the sea, sea shanties, Gothic tropes and cockney chimney sweeps. 'Quick and punchy, with plot twists a-plenty, this is an ideal read for young, independent readers' Times Children's Book of the Week

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Her second book The Scream of the Whistle, published in June '25, follows Ruby and her doomed adventure on a ghostly steam train. It features old English folklore, steam-filled carriages, ghostly folk tunes and a mysterious Conductor known as Cribbins. (If you get that reference, Emily will be very pleased indeed). '**** 'Any child who has raced through Roald Dahl's The Witches... will tell you that young readers have a healthy appetite for the macabre. And Emily Randall-Jones will not disappoint them.' The Telegraph, Best New Children's Books.