

Unbridled Books published all three novels. Mandel's first three novels are Last Night in Montreal (2009), The Singer's Gun (2009), and The Lola Quartet (2012). One of her findings was that the girl of the title is "significantly more likely to end up dead" if the author of the book is male. In 2016, she wrote a subsequent article, analyzing statistics relating to novels that included the word "girl" in the title.

In 2012, she used the Goodreads database to write an article for The Millions, analyzing statistics relating to novels with titles in "The _'s Daughter" pattern. She is a staff writer for The Millions, an online magazine. In 2002, Mandel began writing her first novel, Last Night in Montreal, while living in Montreal. She was also administrative assistant at a Manhattan law firm and helped with grants at the Anderson Center for Cancer Research at Rockefeller University. She worked with independent choreographers. She left high school when she was eighteen to study contemporary dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She was home-schooled there until the age of fifteen, during which time she began keeping a daily diary.

When she was ten years old, she moved with her parents and four siblings to Denman Island, which is 20 miles (32 km) south of Merville near Union Bay. John, her grandmother’s surname, is her middle name. Her Canadian mother is a social worker and her American father is a plumber.

Mandel was born in spring 1979 in Merville, British Columbia, Canada. Sea of Tranquility was published in April 2022 and debuted at number three on The New York Times Best Seller list. The Glass Hotel was translated into twenty languages and was selected by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020. Station Eleven, which has been translated into 33 languages, has been adapted into a limited series on HBO Max. She has written six novels, including Station Eleven (2014), The Glass Hotel (2020), and Sea of Tranquility (2022). John Mandel ( / s eɪ n t ˈ dʒ ɒ n m æ n ˈ d ɛ l/ born 1979) is a Canadian novelist and essayist.
