Petra Hartlieb was born in Munich in 1967 and grew up in Austria, where she studied Psychology and History. Later he worked as a journalist and literary critic in Vienna and Hamburg. In 2004 she recovered with her husband an old (and today mythical) Viennese bookstore, which she renamed with her own name. Together with Claus-Ulrich Bielefeld, he has written a series of detective novels published by the prestigious Swiss publisher Diogenes.