Sue Taylor Grafton (born April 24, 1940 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA) is a contemporary American author of detective novels.

Her best known works are a chronological series of mystery novels. Known as "the alphabet novels," the stories are set in and around the fictional town of Santa Teresa, which is based on the author's primary city of residence, Santa Barbara, California (Grafton chose to use the name Santa Teresa as a tribute to the author Ross Macdonald, who had previously used this as an alternative name for Santa Barbara in his own novels). All novels of the series are written from the perspective of a female private investigator named Kinsey Millhone. Grafton's first book of this series is "A" is for Alibi, written and set in 1982. The series continues with "B" is for Burglar, "C" is for Corpse, and so on through the alphabet. The timeline of the series is slower than real-time - "Q" is for Quarry, for example, is set in 1987, even though it was written in 2002. Her latest book, "S" is for Silence, was published in December 2005.