Amanda Cross is the pseudonym of Carolyn G. Heilbrun, the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities Emerita at Columbia University.

Amanda Cross is the pseudonymous author of the bestselling Kate Fansler mysteries, of which The Puzzled Heart is the twelfth.

As Carolyn G. Heilbrun, she is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities Emerita at Columbia University. She has served as president of the Modern Language Association as well as vice president of the Authors Guild. Dr. Heilbrun is also the author of Writing a Woman's Life, Hamlet's Mother and Other Women, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem, and, most recently, The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty.