The Satsuma Complex
Author
ISBN
9781398523647
Publisher
Book Number (in series)
1
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm
1979
Author
ISBN
9780751583083
Publisher
Book Number (in series)
1
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm
The Thursday Murder Club
Author
ISBN
9780241425442
Publisher
Book Number (in series)
1
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm

Felix Francis

Author
Body

For over forty years, the London University grad helped father Dick Francis (31 Oct 1920 – 14 Feb 2010), ex-jockey known for horse-racing mysteries. In 2007, after 17 years teaching physics, he took on the job full-time. Experience also as international marksman aided research for Shattered, Under Orders, and Twice Shy. Co-author of NY Times bestsellers Dead Heat, Silks, Even Money and Crossfire.

Country of Origin

Morgan Cry

Author
Body

Morgan Cry is the ex-pat alias of Gordon Brown, a Scottish crime writer with 9 novels to his name. Leaving the dark alleyways of tartan noir and heading for the Spanish sunshine, Morgan Cry debuted with a cracking tale of murder, intrigue, and a daughter flung right in at the deep end with her mother's secrets in 'Thirty-One Bones' and Daniella returns in a 'whodunnit' in the sun - 'Six Wounds' - 'It's Murder When You are Innocent.'

Pseudonym Of
Country of Origin

William McIlvanney

Author
Body

William McIlvanney was a Scottish writer of novels, short stories, and poetry. He was a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s. He is regarded as "the father of 'Tartan Noir’" and has been described as "Scotland's Camus".

Country of Origin

Catriona Ward

Author
Body

CATRIONA WARD was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia.

Country of Origin

Sarah Sultoon

Author
Body

Sarah Sultoon is a journalist and writer, whose work as an international news executive at CNN has taken her all over the world, from the seats of power in both Westminster and Washington to the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. She has extensive experience in conflict zones, winning three Peabody awards for her work on the war in Syria, an Emmy for her contribution to the coverage of Europe's migrant crisis in 2015, and a number of Royal Television Society gongs. As passionate about fiction as nonfiction, she recently completed a Masters of Studies in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, adding to an undergraduate language degree in French and Spanish, and Masters of Philosophy in History, Film and Television. When not reading or writing she can usually be found somewhere outside, either running, swimming or throwing a ball for her three children and dog while she imagines what might happen if ...

Country of Origin

Chris Gill

Author
Body

Chris was born in Eastbourne in the UK to a British mother and New Zealander father. He moved to New Zealand with his family at age two where he spent over six years growing up in Auckland. It was during this time that Chris’ love for reading and writing began, spending his early years penning hundreds of short stories his mother still has tucked away.

Upon returning to the UK, Chris lived in a small town in Sussex. These years went on to inspire many of the themes in his novels, such as coming of age, small-town homophobia and isolation. Chris moved to Hampshire at age nineteen to study journalism at university.

Upon graduating, Chris moved to London and began a career in copywriting. In 2011, he published his debut book of poetry through his co-founded publishing company, PRNTD.

Chris relocated to Australia in 2014 and released his LGBTQ+ coming-of-age novel The Nowhere in 2019. His New Zealand mystery novel Boy Fallen is coming out 22 March 2022.

Chris lives in Sydney with his husband.

Amy McCulloch

Author
Body

Amy McCulloch is a Chinese-White author, born in the UK, raised in Ottawa, Canada, now based in London, UK. She has written several novels for children and young adults, and been published in over fifteen different languages. 

Country of Origin

Minette Walters

Author
Body

Minette Walters (born 26 September 1949) is a British mystery writer. After studying at Trevelyan College, University of Durham, she began writing in 1987 with The Ice House, which was published in 1992. She followed this with The Sculptress (1993), which received the 1994 Edgar Award for Best Novel. She has been published in 35 countries and won many awards.

Country of Origin
I Wanna Be Yours
ISBN
9781509896103
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm

John Cooper Clarke

Author
Body

John Cooper Clarke (born 25 January 1949) is an English performance poet who first became famous during the punk rock era of the late 1970s when he became known as a "punk poet". He released several albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and continues to perform regularly.

Country of Origin
The Halifax Slasher
Publisher
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm
Hopjoy Was Here
Author
ISBN
9781788420143
Publisher
Book Number (in series)
3
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm

Kate Summerscale

Author
Body

Kate Summerscale (born in 1965) is an English writer and journalist.

She won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction in 2008 with The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House and won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1998 (and was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Awards for biography) for the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, about Joe Carstairs, 'fastest woman on water'.

As a journalist, she worked for The Independent and The Daily Telegraph and her articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. She stumbled on the story for The Suspicions of Mr Whicher in an 1890s anthology of unsolved crime stories and became so fascinated that she left her post as literary editor of The Daily Telegraph to pursue her investigations. She spent a year researching the book and another year writing it.

She has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker Prize in 2001. 

Country of Origin

Holly Watt

Author
Body

An award-winning investigative journalist, Holly Watt was part of the team who broke the MPs expenses scandal and has also worked on the Panama Papers. She has written for the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian.

Country of Origin

Tony Kent

Author
Body

Tony Kent grew up in a close-knit Irish family in London and studied law in Scotland.

A top-ranking barrister, Tony’s case history includes prosecuting and defending many high-profile, nationally reported trials.

Before his legal career, Tony boxed internationally as a heavyweight and won a host of national amateur titles.

Country of Origin
Coffin, Scarcely Used
Author
ISBN
B079JHF82B
Publisher
Book Number (in series)
1
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm

Jenny Quintana

Author
Body

Jenny Quintana grew up in Essex and Berkshire, before studying English Literature in London. She has taught in London, Seville and Athens and has also written books for teaching English as a foreign language. She is a graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative writing course. She now lives with her family in Berkshire. 

Country of Origin

Stephanie Wrobel

Author
Body

Stephanie Wrobel grew up in Chicago but has been living in the UK for the last three years with her husband and dog, Moose Barkwinkle. She has an MFA from Emerson College and has had short fiction published in Bellevue Literary Review. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a creative copywriter at various advertising agencies.

Country of Origin

Sandi Toksvig

Author
Body

Danish/British writer, presenter, comedian, actress and producer on British radio and television. She currently presents The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4 and 1001 Things You Should Know on Channel 4. In October 2012 she succeeded Sheila Hancock as Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth.

Country of Origin
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam
Author
ISBN
9781504614757
Book Number (in series)
10
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm
Those People
ISBN
9781785176098
Publisher
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm

Gary Bell

Author
Body

Born into a coal mining family, Gary Bell QC left school without any qualifications and was an apprentice mechanic, fork lift truck driver, production line worker, builder, fireman and door-to-door salesman, as well as a notorious football hooligan, before being arrested for fraud aged 18. After a brief stint in prison, he set off to seek fame and fortune abroad and, after two years drifting around Europe ended up penniless and homeless.

He next enrolled in a FE College to study his O and A levels, and then went on to study law as a mature student at Bristol University where he 'became' an Old Etonian. After graduating he spent a year as a litigation lawyer in Beverly Hills before coming back to England to become a barrister. He has spent over thirty years at the Bar, specialising in defending in major fraud and murder trials, becoming a QC in 2012.

Country of Origin

Tony Faber

Author
Body

Tony Faber was an investment banker and management consultant before spending five years at the publishing company founded by his grandfather, Faber and Faber. He remains on Faber's Board and is Chairman of its sister company, Faber Music and a director of Liverpool University Press, but spends most of his time writing and lecturing.

Country of Origin
The Blood Road
ISBN
9780008208219
Publisher
Book Number (in series)
11
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm
Made in Scotland
ISBN
9781785943737
Publisher
Review Written By
Karen Chisholm

Billy Connolly

Author
Body

William "Billy" Connolly, Jr., CBE is a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname The Big Yin (The Big One). His first trade, in the early 1960s, was as a welder (specifically a boilermaker) in the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer in the Humblebums and subsequently as a soloist. In the early 1970s he made the transition from folk-singer with a comedic persona to fully-fledged comedian, a role in which he continues. He also became an actor, and has appeared in such films as Mrs. Brown (1997), for which he was nominated for a BAFTA; The Boondock Saints (1999); The Last Samurai (2003); Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004); and The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008). 

Country of Origin

Claire Askew

Author
Body

Claire Askew is a poet, novelist and the current Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh. Her debut novel was the winner of the 2016 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, and longlisted for the 2014 Peggy Chapman-Andrews (Bridport) Novel Award. 

Country of Origin

D.A. Meyrick

Author
Body

Denzil Meyrick was educated in Argyll, then after studying politics, joined Strathclyde Police, serving in Glasgow. After being injured and developing back problems, he entered the business world, and has operated in many diverse roles, including director of a large engineering company and distillery manager, as well as owning a number of his own companies, such as a public bar and sales and marketing company. D. A. Meyrick has also worked as a freelance journalist in both print and on radio. His first novel, Whisky from Small Glasses, was published by Ringwood in 2012.

 

Country of Origin

Michael Walters

Author
Body

Michael Walters has worked in the oil industry, broadcasting and banking. Over the last decade, he has worked as a management consultant across the world, in environments ranging from parliaments to prisons. When not travelling, he lives in Manchester with his wife and three children.

Country of Origin

Caro Ramsay

Author
Body

Caro Ramsay was born and educated in Glasgow. She has been writing stories since she was five years old, developing a keen interest in crime fiction and a passion for the genre that lead her to write Absolution, her first novel.

Country of Origin

Ed O'Connor

Author
Body

ED O'CONNOR studied History at Cambridge University before moving over to Oxford University to take an MPhil in International Relations. He then worked in London and New York as an investment banker but left to concentrate on his writing. 

Country of Origin

Scarlett Thomas

Author
Body

Scarlett Thomas was born in London in 1972. Her widely-acclaimed novels include PopCo, The End of Mr Y and The Seed Collectors. As well as writing literary fiction for adults, she has also written a literary fantasy series for children and a book about writing called Monkeys with Typewriters. Her work has been translated into more than 25 languages. 

Country of Origin

Ian Rankin

Author
Body

Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982 and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel was published in 1987; the Rebus books are now translated into 22 languages and are bestsellers on several continents.

Country of Origin

Lin Anderson

Author
Body

Lin Anderson was born in Greenock of Scottish and Irish parents. A graduate of both Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, she has lived in many different parts of Scotland and also spent five years working in the African bush. A teacher of Mathematics and Computing, she began her writing career four years ago. Her first film, Small Love, which was broadcast on STV, was nominated for TAPS writer of the year award 2001. Her African short stories have been published in the 10th Anniversary Macallan collection and broadcast on BBC Radio Four.

Country of Origin

Alexander McCall Smith

Author
Body

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie Series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland Street series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana. He lives in Scotland. 

Country of Origin

R.D. Wingfield

Author
Body

Rodney David Wingfield was a prolific writer of radio crime plays and comedy scripts, some for the late Kenneth Williams, star of the Carry On films. His crime novels featuring DI Jack Frost have been successfully adapted for television as A Touch of Frost starring David Jason. Wingfield was a modest man, shunning the London publicity scene in favour of a quite life in Basildon, Essex, with his wife of 52 years (died 2004) and only son.

Country of Origin

Natasha Cooper

Author
Body

Natasha Cooper was Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association in 2000/2001. She reviews books in THE TIMES, THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT and the NEW LAW JOURNAL. She is the author of, among others, FAULT LINES and PREY TO ALL.

Country of Origin

Louise Welsh

Author
Body

After studying history at Glasgow University, Louise Welsh established a second-hand bookshop, where she worked for many years. Her first novel, The Cutting Room, won several awards, including the 2002 Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger, and was jointly awarded the 2002 Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award. Louise was granted a Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award in 2003, a Scotland on Sunday/Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award in 2004, and a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2005. 

Country of Origin

R.J. Ellory

Author
Body

Roger began his first novel on November 4th, 1987 and did not stop, except for three days when he was going through a divorce from his first wife, until July of 1993. During this time he completed twenty-two novels, most of them in longhand, and accumulated several hundred polite and complimentary rejection letters from many different and varied publishers. 

Country of Origin

Stuart MacBride

Author
Body

Aka Stuart B. MacBride 

The life and times of a bearded write-ist.

Stuart MacBride (that's me) was born in Dumbarton -- which is Glasgow as far as I'm concerned -- moving up to Aberdeen at the tender age of two, when fashions were questionable. Nothing much happened for years and years and years: learned to play the recorder, then forgot how when they changed from little coloured dots to proper musical notes (why the hell couldn't they have taught us the notes in the first bloody place? I could have been performing my earth-shattering rendition of 'Three Blind Mice' at the Albert Hall by now!); appeared in some bizarre World War Two musical production; did my best to avoid eating haggis and generally ran about the place a lot.

Country of Origin

Val McDermid

Author
Body

Val McDermid is a No. 1 bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold over eleven million copies. 

She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009 and was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for 2010. In 2011 she received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award. 

She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

2nd in the Lewis Trilogy, I've pretty much started this one straight after the first, The Blackhouse.

From the Blurb:

A body is recovered from a peat bog on the Isle of Lewis. The male Caucasian corpse is initially believed by its finders to be over 2000 years old, until they spot the Elvis tattoo on his right arm. The body, it transpires, is not evidence of an ancient ritual killing, but of a murder committed during the latter half of the 20th century.

Karen Chisholm

Latest from the audio pile.

From the Blurb:

Peter May has crafted a page-turning murder mystery that explores the darkness in our souls, and just how difficult it is to escape the past. Winner of Prix Ancres Noires 2010. The Blackhouse was published in French as L'Ile des Chasseurs D'Oiseaux before publication in English, and won the prestigious 'Prix des Lecteurs' (readers' prize) at the Le Havre festival of crime writing.

Caroline England

Author
Body

Born Yorkshire lass, Caroline studied Law at the University of Manchester and stayed over the border. Caroline became a partner in a Solicitors' practice and started writing when she deserted the law to bring up her three lovely daughters. In addition to the publication of her short story collection, Watching Horsepats Feed the Roses by ACHUKAbooks, Caroline has had short stories and poems published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. 

Country of Origin

Louise Candlish

Author
Body

Louise Candlish studied English at University College London and worked as an editor and copywriter before writing fiction. OUR HOUSE, published in the US by Berkley and by Simon & Schuster in the UK, has been picked as a Book of the Year by the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Real Simple, Red and Heat.

Country of Origin

Clare Mackintosh

Author
Body

Clare Mackintosh spent twelve years in the police force, including time on CID, and as a public order commander. She left the police in 2011 to work as a freelance journalist and social media consultant now writes full time. She lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children.
 

Country of Origin

Ted Lewis

Author
Body

Ted Lewis (1940 – 1982) was a British writer born in Manchester, an only child. After World War II the family moved to Barton-upon-Humber in 1947. He had a strict upbringing and his parents did not want their son to go to art school, but Ted's English teacher Henry Treece, recognising his creative talents in writing and art, persuaded them not to stand in his way.

Country of Origin

Tony Strong

Author
Body

Tony Strong was born in 1962 in Uganda, though his parents came back to the UK when he was six weeks old. He read English at Oxford under the playwright and poet Francis Warner and then went on to work as an advertising copywriter at Ogilvy and Mather, an agency which had already bred writers such as Salman Rushdie and Fay Weldon. 

Country of Origin

Sarah Vaughan

Author
Body

Sarah Vaughan read English at Oxford and went on to be a journalist. After training with the Press Association, she worked for The Guardian for 11 years as a news reporter, health correspondent and political correspondent before leaving to freelance. She started writing fiction the week she turned forty. Anatomy of a Scandal is her third novel and will be published in January 2018 by S&S in the UK, US and Canada, plus other commonwealth countries. It will also be translated into 16 languages.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

The bonus about being laid low by illness has definitely been the excellent books to read - this was one of them.

From the Blurb:

When eighteen-year-old Chloe Emery returns to her West London home she finds her mother missing, the house covered in blood. Everything points to murder, except for one thing: there’s no sign of the body.

Linda Green

Author
Body

I was born in North London in 1970 and brought up in Hertfordshire. I wrote my first novella, the Time Machine, aged eight, shortly after which I declared that my ambition was to have a novel published (I could have been easy on myself and just said ‘to write a novel’ but no, I had to consign myself to years of torture and rejections). I was frequently asked to copy out my stories for the classroom wall (probably because my handwriting was so awful no one could read my first draft), and received lots of encouragement from my teachers Mr Roberts, Mrs Chandler (who added yet more pressure by writing in my autograph book when I left primary school that she looked forward to reading my first published novel!) and Mr Bird.

Country of Origin

Kate Murray-Browne

Author
Body

Kate Murray-Browne was born and lives in London. She studied English at Cambridge University and worked in publishing for ten years before becoming a freelance editor. She is also a visual artist and has exhibited work in a number of different galleries. House Clearance is her first novel.

Country of Origin

Laura Marshall

Author
Body

Laura Marshall grew up in Wiltshire and studied English at the University of Sussex.

After almost twenty years working in conference production, in 2015 Laura decided it was time to fulfil a lifetime's ambition to write a novel, and enrolled on the Curtis Brown Creative three month novel writing course.

Country of Origin

Alison Weir

Author
Body

Alison Weir (born 1951) is a British writer of history books for the general public, mostly in the form of biographies about British kings and queens. She currently lives in Surrey, England, with her two children.

Country of Origin

Marion Chesney

Author
Body

Marion Chesney was born on 1936 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and started her first job as a bookseller in charge of the fiction department in John Smith & Sons Ltd. While bookselling, by chance, she got an offer from the Scottish Daily Mail to review variety shows and quickly rose to be their theatre critic. She left Smith’s to join Scottish Field magazine as a secretary in the advertising department, without any shorthand or typing, but quickly got the job of fashion editor instead. She then moved to the Scottish Daily Express where she reported mostly on crime. This was followed by a move to Fleet Street to the Daily Express where she became chief woman reporter. After marrying Harry Scott Gibbons and having a son, Charles, Marion went to the United States where Harry had been offered the job of editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian. When that didn’t work out, they went to Virginia and Marion worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon on the Jefferson Davies in Alexandria while Harry washed the dishes. Both then got jobs on Rupert Murdoch’s new tabloid, The Star, and moved to New York.

M.C. Beaton

Author
Body

 

 

Pseudonym Of

Marion Chesney

Author
Body

Marion Chesney was born on 1936 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and started her first job as a bookseller in charge of the fiction department in John Smith & Sons Ltd. While bookselling, by chance, she got an offer from the Scottish Daily Mail to review variety shows and quickly rose to be their theatre critic. She left Smith’s to join Scottish Field magazine as a secretary in the advertising department, without any shorthand or typing, but quickly got the job of fashion editor instead. She then moved to the Scottish Daily Express where she reported mostly on crime. This was followed by a move to Fleet Street to the Daily Express where she became chief woman reporter. After marrying Harry Scott Gibbons and having a son, Charles, Marion went to the United States where Harry had been offered the job of editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian. When that didn’t work out, they went to Virginia and Marion worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon on the Jefferson Davies in Alexandria while Harry washed the dishes. Both then got jobs on Rupert Murdoch’s new tabloid, The Star, and moved to New York.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

Sometimes life is very unreasonable. I've been reading Ragdoll now for a few days and having to put it down to ... work, eat, sleep, do stuff is really start to become very bloody annoying.

From the Blurb:

A body is discovered with the dismembered parts of six victims stitched together like a puppet, nicknamed by the press as the 'ragdoll'.

Assigned to the shocking case are Detective William 'Wolf' Fawkes, recently reinstated to the London Met, and his former partner Detective Emily Baxter.

Sarah J Naughton

Author
Body

Sarah worked as an advertising copywriter for ten years before her first book was published in 2013. A supernatural thriller for teens, The Hanged Man Rises (Simon and Schuster) was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards. A second thriller for teens, The Blood List (Simon and Schuster) came out in 2014. Her first adult thriller, Tattletale (Trapeze) is due out in March 2017.

Country of Origin

Elka Ray

Author
Body

Born in the UK and raised in Canada and Africa, Elka writes for children and adults. Elka divides her time between Central Vietnam and Canada's Vancouver Island - and sets her fiction in both locales.

When she's not writing, drawing or reading Elka is in the ocean.

Country of Origin

Daniel Cole

Author
Body

At 33 years old, Daniel Cole has worked as a paramedic, an RSPCA officer and most recently for the RNLI, driven by an intrinsic need to save people or perhaps just a guilty conscience about the number of characters he kills off in his writing.

He has received a three-book publishing and television deal for his debut crime series which publishers and producers describe as “pulse-racing” and “exceptional”. 

Country of Origin

Molly Lefebure

Author
Body

Molly Lefebure was born in Hackney on 6 October 1919 into a family descended from prominent arms manufacturers in 18th-century Paris. Her father, Charles Lefebure (OBE 1941 Birthday Honours), was a senior civil servant who worked with Sir William Beveridge on the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS), applying some of the revolutionary ideas of Robespierre, the Parisian Lefebures having professed Jacobin sympathies. Her mother was Elizabeth Cox.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

Another that's been lingering on the reading piles way too long.

From the Blurb:

Everyone keeps telling me I have to move on. And so here I am, walking down the road where he died, trying to remember him the right way.

A year after her husband Zach's death, Lizzie goes to lay flowers where his fatal accident took place.

As she makes her way along the motorway, she thinks about their life together. She wonders whether she has changed since Zach died. She wonders if she will ever feel whole again.

J.K. Rowling

Author
Body

As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.

Country of Origin

Robert Galbraith

Author
Pseudonym Of

J.K. Rowling

Author
Body

As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.

Country of Origin
Country of Origin

Belinda Bauer

Author
Body

Belinda Bauer grew up in England and South Africa. She has worked as a journalist and screenwriter, and her script THE LOCKER ROOM earned her the Carl Foreman/Bafta Award for Young British Screenwriters, an award that was presented to her by Sidney Poitier. She was a runner-up in the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition for "Mysterious Ways," about a girl stranded on a desert island with 30,000 Bibles. Belinda now lives in Wales.

Country of Origin

Denise Mina

Author
Body

Denise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Because of her father's job as an Engineer, the family followed the north sea oil boom of the seventies around Europe

She left school at sixteen and did a number of poorly paid jobs, including working in a meat factory, as a bar maid, kitchen porter and cook.
Eventually she settled in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

I will not for a moment pretend that this isn't a treat read, a reward for getting to the end of the holiday and pretty much avoiding everything that we were supposed to do.

From the Blurb:

Sergeant Logan McRae is in trouble…

Ross Armstrong

Author
Body

Ross Armstrong is an actor and writer based in North London. He studied English Literature at Warwick University and acting at RADA. He's performed on stage with the RSC in shows such as Oppenheimer in the West End and with the Donmar in Hamlet on Broadway, as well as numerous TV appearances including Foyles War, Jonathan Creek, Mr Selfridge, DCI Banks and the upcoming series of Ripper Street.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

From earlier in this week - something I've wanted to read for a while, so one of my "just because" reads for this month.

From the Blurb:

Called to a woman's refuge to take a routine witness statement, DI Marnie Rome instead walks in on an attempted murder.

Trying to uncover the truth from layers of secrets, Marnie finds herself confronting her own demons.  Because she, of all people, knows that it can be those closest to us we should fear the most . . .

Kelly Vero

Author
Body

Kelly Vero was born in Nottingham in 1973, and has worked in the music and television industries more recently writing storylines for Hasbro’s Transformers series of games for young people ages 13+.

 

Country of Origin

Sarah Hilary

Author
Body

Sarah’s debut, Someone Else's Skin, won Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year and was a World Book Night selection. The Observer's Book of the Month ("superbly disturbing”) and a Richard & Judy Book Club bestseller, it was a Silver Falchion and Macavity Award finalist in the US. No Other Darkness, the second in the series was shortlisted for a Barry Award. Her DI Marnie Rome series continued with Tastes Like Fear (longlisted for Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year 2017) and Quieter Than Killing (Observer’s Thriller of the Month). Come and Find Me was published in 2018, with Never Be Broken to come in 2019.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

The 4th book in the excellent Cate Austin series, because I'm an absolute idiot, I've missed the 3rd. Now will have to restack the teetering stacks!

From the Blurb:

When Ellie goes missing on the first day of Schueberfouer, the police are dismissive, keen not to attract negative attention on one of Luxembourg’s most important events. 

Anne Zouroudi

Author
Body

Born in rural Lincolnshire in 1959, Anne moved to South Yorkshire at the age of two. Following her education at Sheffield High School for Girls, she went into the IT industry, a career which took her to both New York’s Wall Street and Denver, Colorado. In America she began to take seriously her ambition to write fiction, and bought a typewriter for her first short stories.

Country of Origin

Denzil Meyrick

Author
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Pseudonym Of

D.A. Meyrick

Author
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Denzil Meyrick was educated in Argyll, then after studying politics, joined Strathclyde Police, serving in Glasgow. After being injured and developing back problems, he entered the business world, and has operated in many diverse roles, including director of a large engineering company and distillery manager, as well as owning a number of his own companies, such as a public bar and sales and marketing company. D. A. Meyrick has also worked as a freelance journalist in both print and on radio. His first novel, Whisky from Small Glasses, was published by Ringwood in 2012.

 

Country of Origin
Country of Origin

Catriona McPherson

Author
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Catriona McPherson was born in South Queensferry. After finishing school, she worked in a bank for a short time, before going to university. She studied for an MA in English Language and Linguistics at Edinburgh University, and then gained a job in the local studies department at Edinburgh City Libraries. She left this post after a couple of years, and went back to university to study for a PhD in semantics. During her final year she applied for an academic job, but left to begin a writing career.

Country of Origin

Martin Walker

Author
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Martin Walker is the U.S. bureau chief for The Guardian (London), a regular commentator for CNN, and a columnist for newspapers in the United States, Europe, and Moscow. A published novelist and poet, he lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, the novelist Julia Watson, and their two daughters.

Country of Origin

Chris Brookmyre

Author
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Christopher Brookmyre is a Scottish novelist whose novels mix politics, social comment and action with a strong narrative. He has been referred to as a Tartan Noir author. 

Pseudonym Of
Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

Set in Australia, written by an English author, from the world of international diplomacy.

From the Blurb:

Diplomat Jess Turner is the British Consul in Canberra. When a British businesswoman is brutally murdered in a Queensland resort, Jess travels to Brisbane to liaise with the police, and help the victim’s next of kin, her journalist sister, Susan. 

Karen Chisholm

One of those books that I could have sworn I'd read, but then couldn't find a note of it anywhere. Got into it and realised, nope, hadn't read it. 

From the Blurb:

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

Jane Woodham

Author
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Jane Woodham moved in 1998 from London to Dunedin, New Zealand, where she has been writing for the past nine years. Jane’s work has twice been shortlisted for the BNZ Literary Awards and has been published in New Zealand and the UK. A New Zealand Society of Authors mentorship in 2014 allowed Jane to work with crime writer Paddy Richardson on the final draft of Twister, her first novel. Some events in Twister occur around the Dunedin Hot Salt Water Pool, where Jane is a regular swimmer. She is also a keen gardener, cook and fair-weather surfer.

Country of Origin

Jane Harper

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Jane Harper has worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK. She lives in Melbourne and writes for the Herald Sun, among other publications. Winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, The Dry is her first novel with rights sold to over twenty territories.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

Second from this weekend, this author says his influences are John Mortimer, PG Wodehouse and William Boyd and you can definitely see that :)

From the Blurb:

Karen Chisholm

Nothing more annoying than knowing you've loved the first book in a series, and despite promises, haven't read the 2nd until there's now 3 and 4 out. Sheesh.

From the Blurb:

DI Helen Grace returns in Pop Goes the Weasel, the electrifying new thriller from M. J. Arlidge.

The body of a middle-aged man is discovered in Southampton's red-light district - horrifically mutilated, with his heart removed.

Hours later - and barely cold - the heart arrives with his wife and children by courier.

Karen Chisholm

The third in the DS Allie Shenton series this the second for me.

From the Blurb:

When one of the notorious Johnson brothers is murdered and a bag of money goes missing, a deadly game of cat and mouse is set in motion.

DS Allie Shenton and her team are called in to catch the killer, but the suspects are double-crossing each other and Allie has little time to untangle the web of lies.

Karen Chisholm

Weekend reading - very very good weekend reading - the 2nd in the brilliant new DS Ferreira and DI Zigic series/

From the Blurb:

The car that ploughs into the bus stop early one morning leaves a trail of death and destruction behind it.

Karen Chisholm

Sometimes I get to sneak in a book or two from the other hemisphere :) although for some reason I got the second book before this one, so now I've sorted that mess out and will start what's a very highly acclaimed series in order. For once.

From the Blurb:

A man is burnt alive in a suburban garden shed.

Emma Healey

Author
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Emma Healey grew up in London where she studied for her first degree in bookbinding. She then worked for two libraries, two bookshops, two art galleries and two universities, before completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University East Anglia. 

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

Given the 45% reference I've definitely decided to mention that this short story is from Scotland (and not just the UK :) )

From the Blurb:

It’s the night of the big Referendum, and all Acting Detective Inspector Logan McRae has to do is find a missing ‘No’ campaigner. Should be easy enough…

But, as usual, DCI Steel has plans of her own. As the votes are counted there’s trouble brewing in the pubs and on the streets of Aberdeen.

Karen Chisholm

Loved the short story collection "Cars and Girls" so was very pleased to receive a copy of Riding in Cars with Girls. Could only be made better with Alpacas and chocolate worked in there somewhere ... although I'm still waiting for a ute story ;)

From the Blurb:

FIREBIRD -- A small town cocktail waitress. A glamorous stranger behind the wheel of a stolen muscle car. A raging forest fire. What could possibly go wrong?

Simon Beckett

Author
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After an MA in English, Simon Beckett spent several years as a property repairer before a stint teaching in Spain. Back in the UK, he played percussion in several bands. He has been a freelance journalist since 1992, writing for The Times, The Independent on Sunday Review, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer and other major British publications. In 2002, as part of an article on the National Forensic Academy, he visited the Body Farm in Tennessee. This last commission was the inspiration behind the internationally bestselling The Chemistry of Death, which was shortlisted for the CWA's Duncan Lawrie Dagger and has been translated into 21 languages. Simon Beckett is married and lives in Sheffield. The author of six novels, his second David Hunter thriller, Written in Bone, is published as a Bantam paperback in April 2008.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

Did I mention it was a good weekend for getting some reading done? Didn't quite finish this one, but certainly got started on the 2nd book in this series.

From the Blurb:

A man’s body is found on a canal towpath. In his pocket, a plastic magnet in the shape of an E.

Days later, a second victim is found, this time with the letter V tucked into her clothing.

As the body count rises, the eerie, childlike clues point to a pattern that sends DS Allie Shenton and her colleagues into full alert.

Ian Simpson

Author
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After doing criminal defence work at the Scottish bar, I spent eighteen years on the bench, latterly sitting part-time as a temporary High Court judge. When I retired due to ill-health I turned from crime fact to crime fiction. 

Country of Origin

Colette McBeth

Author
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Colette McBeth had been a BBC News reporter for 10 years when she won a place on the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course and started her first book, Precious Thing. She lives in London with her husband and three children but dreams of being beside the seaside.

Country of Origin

Stella Rimington

Author
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Dame Stella Whitehouse Rimington joined the Security Service (MI5) in 1968. During her career she worked in all the main fields of the Service: counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. She was appointed Director General in 1992, the first woman to hold the post. She has written her autobiography and nine Liz Carlyle novels. She lives in London and Norfolk. 
 

Country of Origin

Michael Dodds

Author
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Michael Dobbs was born on the same day, in the same hour as Prince Charles in 1948.

He is the son of nurseryman Eric and his wife Eileen Dobbs and was educated at Hertford Grammar School and Christ Church, Oxford University. After graduating in 1971 he moved to the United States. 

 

Country of Origin

Jason Webster

Author
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Jason Webster is a highly acclaimed Anglo-American author and authority on Spain whose work ranges from biography to travel, crime fiction and history. His books have sold in over a dozen countries, including the US, the UK and China, and have been nominated both for the Guardian First Book Award and the Crime Writers’ Association New Blood Dagger Award. He has been favourably compared with writers such as Bruce Chatwin (The Daily Mail), Gerald Brenan (El País) and Ernest Hemingway (Sunday Telegraph).

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

Catching up on the over the weekend reading.

From the Blurb:

Blood makes you related. Loyalty makes you family.

In the underbelly of Soho's organized crime ring, everyone knows that retired boxer Harry Woods is not one to mess with. And that goes double for his family.

Liam McIlvanney

Author
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Professor Liam McIlvanney, the son of novelist William McIlvanney, was born in Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, and studied at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After ten years lecturing in Scottish and Irish literature at the University of Aberdeen, he moved to Dunedin in New Zealand to teach at the University of Otago. He lectures in Scottish literature, culture and history, and on Irish-Scottish literary connections, and holds the Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies chair at the University. He won a Saltire Award for his first book, Burns the Radical, in 2002. A chance meeting with an editor for Faber and Faber persuaded him to turn to fiction, and his first novel, All the Colours of the Town, was published in 2009. He is currently working on a second novel featuring journalist Gerry Conway. He has also written reviews and criticism for the London Review of Books, The Guardian, and others. He lives in Dunedin with his wife and children.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

Holiday reading thriller which was badly overdue, and a pleasure to finally get to.

From the Blurb:

The terror cells have been activated and elite bombers from ETA and the Real IRA are already making their move, intent on using a device that will cause carnage on an unimaginable scale…

Karen Chisholm

Sometimes you can only put off the inevitable for so long. In one way I've dreading reading this book. Even knowing there's a spinoff series which I ABSOLUTELY MUST GET TO, it's still the end of an era and I've loved the Faraday / Winter books so much.

From the Blurb:

As ex-drug baron Bazza Mackenzie runs for parliament, ex-cop Paul Winter knows that his time with Bazza must, at whatever cost, come to an end, in the 12th in this highly acclaimed series of police procedurals

Karen Chisholm

Spent the weekend in exotic places - firstly with the great characters in the first Mason & Dixie thriller set in Bangkok.

From the Blurb:

In Bangkok anything – or anyone – can be had for a price.

Karen Chisholm

New series, set in Amsterdam featuring, allegedly, the Dutch version of Rebus.

From the Blurb:

Introducing Inspector Jaap Rykel in a crime debut that does for Amsterdam what Rankin did for Edinburgh

A murdered policeman, a dead businessman hanging from a hook, a building burnt to the ground in an arson attack and a missing girl - identity unknown.

Karen Chisholm

Book 2 in the Frank Merlin series, the first seems to have passed me by completely. Hopefully it's as good as this one is, a sort of crime fiction, police procedural, historical, not quite spy but nonetheless sneaky goings on story.

From the Blurb:

December 1938. Moscow. Josef Stalin has lost some gold. He is not a happy man. He asks his henchman Beria to track it down.

Karen Chisholm

Doing a serious amount of reading catching up over the weekend. Well around moving pigs, moving chicks, cleaning out brooders, chasing the guinea fowl over the fence and carting around a very elderly dog....

From the Blurb:

Two hostages. One bullet. One lives. One dies.

Karen Chisholm

Debut British Police Procedural - due for release 1st April.

From the Blurb:

Eva is horrified when she witnesses an attack on her best friend. She calls an ambulance and forces herself to flee Hampton, fearing for her own safety. DCI Helen Lavery leads the investigation into the murder. With no leads, no further witnesses and no sign of forced entry, the murder enquiry begins.

Slowly, the pieces of the puzzle start to come together. But as Helen inches towards solving the case, her past becomes caught up in her present.

Karen Chisholm

The second book featuring DC Nat Kershaw and PI Janusz Kiszka, I've been looking very forward to this one. Following the pattern as well, I'm listening to Chopin (predictable I know but I couldn't think of another Polish composer in a hurry).

From the Blurb:

When masked men brutally stab one of his closest friends to death, Janusz Kiszka – fixer to East London’s Poles – must dig deep into London’s criminal underbelly to track down the killers and deliver justice.

Karen Chisholm

Another one of those why, what style books - no obvious crime up front - interesting.

From the Blurb:

An apparently happy marriage. A beautiful son. A lovely home. So what makes Emily Coleman get up one morning and walk right out of her life to start all over again? Has she had a breakdown? Was it to escape her dysfunctional family - especially her flawed twin sister Caroline who always seemed to hate her? And what is the date that looms, threatening to force her to confront her past? No-one has ever guessed her secret. Will you?

Mark Ellis

Author
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Former barrister and businessman from Swansea. His first crime thriller, Princes Gate, set in WW2 London and featuring charismatic Scotland Yard detective Frank Merlin, was published in Summer 2011. Frank Merlin 2, Stalin's Gold, published March 1 2014. Merlin 3 Merlin At War published in July 2017. Merlin At War has been longlisted for the 2018 CWA Historical Dagger.

Country of Origin

Eva Dolan

Author
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Eva Dolan was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger for unpublished authors when only a teenager. The four novels in her Zigic and Ferreira series have been published to widespread critical acclaim: Tell No Tales and After You Die were shortlisted for the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year Award and After You Die was also longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. She lives in Cambridge.

Country of Origin

M.J. Arlidge

Author
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M.J. Arlidge has worked in television for the last 15 years, specialising in high end drama production. Arlidge has produced a number of prime-time crime serials for ITV In the last five years, and is currently working on a major adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans for the BBC.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

It was a very good Christmas / New Year Break with just enough hot weather to make me stay inside, watch the cricket (can anybody explain what it was that the Poms were doing out there...), and read some fabulous books. So I'm doing a bit of catch up as many of these are still from last year.

From the Blurb:

He’s back…

Eight years ago, ‘The Inside Man’ murdered four women and left three more in critical condition – all of them with their stomachs slit open and a plastic doll stitched inside.

And then the killer just … disappeared.

Jason Dean

Author
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Jason Dean was born in South London in 1966. He spent many years as a graphic designer before turning his talent to writing the kind of American thrillers he has always loved reading. He lives in Thailand with his wife and is currently working on his second James Bishop novel.

Country of Origin
Karen Chisholm

No idea why I picked up this book - but very glad I did.

From the Blurb:

Janusz Kiszka, unofficial 'fixer' to East London’s Polish community, and a man with his own distinctive moral code, has been hired to track down a missing waitress. Meanwhile, DC Natalie Kershaw, a rookie detective who’s not afraid of breaking a few rules, investigates the suspicious deaths of two Polish girls.

They hail from very different worlds, but Kiszka and Kershaw are set on collision course…

Karen Chisholm

It's a Christopher Brookmyre book. Of course I was going to read it.

From the Blurb:

Is the devil merely the name we give the worst in ourselves?

When private investigator Jasmine Sharp is hired to find Tessa Garrion, a young woman who has vanished without trace, it becomes increasingly clear that there are those who want her to stay that way. What begins as a simple search awakens a malevolence that has lain dormant for three decades, putting Jasmine in the crosshairs of those who would stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried.

Karen Chisholm

Noir + short stories is a favourite combination.

From the Blurb:

English writer Paul D Brazill's 13 Shots Of Noir is a collection of short stories in the vein of Roald Dahl, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The first story, "The Tut", was nominated for a 2010 Spinetingler Award, while the story "Anger Management" was chosen as one of the Predators and Editors top twenty crime stories.

Crime, horror and dark fiction are contained within the pages of 13 Shots Of Noir.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Author
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Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a British Victorian era popular novelist. She was an extremely prolific writer, producing some 75 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is her first novel, Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition and fortune as well. The novel has been in print ever since, and has been dramatised and filmed several times.

Gillian Galbraith

Author
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Gillian Galbraith was born in Coupar Angus, Perthshire, in January 1957. She was educated at a convent and at the Universities of Edinburgh and Dundee. Following careers in dish-washing, bookselling and journalism she was called to the Scottish Bar in 1987.

 

Country of Origin

Anya Lipska

Author
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Anya lives with her Polish husband in the East End, where the book is (mostly) located. In her day job as a producer of factual TV documentaries, Anya has worked on a dizzying range of topics from a missing Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece,to the sex lives of Neanderthals, how to clone a mammoth, and a history of Italian gardens with Monty Don. 

Country of Origin

Chris Ewan

Author
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I'm the author of the popular GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO ... series of mysteries about globetrotting crime writer and thief-for-hire, Charlie Howard. The series has been praised as "crime writing at its best" (Sydney Morning Herald) and a "delightful series" (The Seattle Times) and comprises THE GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM (winner of the Long Barn Books First Novel Award), THE GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO PARIS, THE GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO VEGAS, THE GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO VENICE and THE GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO BERLIN.

 

Country of Origin

Richard Kunzmann

Author
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Richard Kunzmann published his first police procedural in the UK at the tender age of 26, and Bloody Harvests was immediately short-listed for the Crime Writers Association’s lucrative J.C.W. Creasy Award for Best New Novel, in 2002. Publication of Bloody Harvestsand his second thriller, Salamander Cotton , quickly followed in all English language territories.

Country of Origin

Simon Read

Author
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When I'm not writing, I enjoy reading (naturally), messing about on the piano, listening to classic British rock, and searching for good English pubs (I live in California, where such drinking establishments can sometimes be hard to find).

Country of Origin

Peter Guttridge

Author
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Peter Guttridge is the Royal Literary Fund writing fellow at Southampton University and teaches creative writing. Between 1998 and 2002, he was the director of the Brighton Literature Festival. Since 1998, he has been the mystery reviewer for The Observer, one of Britain's most prestigious Sunday newspapers. He lives in Sussex on the edge of the South Downs National Park.

Country of Origin

Sophie Hannah

Author
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Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling writer of psychological crime fiction, published in 27 countries. In 2013, her latest novel, The Carrier, won the Crime Thriller of the Year Award at the Specsavers National Book Awards. 

Country of Origin

Adrian Magson

Author
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Adrian Magson is a British crime-writer, his books often involve conspiracies, and have two repeating main characters - Riley Gavin, a young female investigative reporter, and Frank Palmer, a former RMP (British Royal Military Policeman) now a private investigator.

Country of Origin

Zoë Sharp

Author
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Zoë Sharp spent most of her formative years living aboard a catamaran on the northwest coast of England. She opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve and wrote her first novel at fifteen. She became a freelance photojournalist in 1988 and started writing her Charlie Fox crime thriller series after receiving death-threats in the course of her work.

Country of Origin

Roz Southey

Author
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Roz Southey is a novelist and musicologist living in the north-east of England. She is the author of the Charles Patterson mysteries, a series of detective novels set in Newcastle upon Tyne and published by Creme de la Crime (now an imprint of Severn House); the fifth novel in the series will be published in March 2011. Her short stories have won a number of competitions; one was published in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime (ed. Maxim Jakubowski, 2009) and another will appear in the 2011 version of the same collection. She has also published non-fiction books and articles, including local and family history, and academic papers.

Country of Origin

Simon Brett

Author
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Simon Brett is a prolific British writer of whodunnits. 

He is the son of a Chartered Surveyor and was educated at Dulwich College and Wadham College, Oxford, where he got a first class honours degree in English. 

Country of Origin

Maureen Carter

Author
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Former BBC Newsnight presenter Maureen has worked extensively in newspapers, radio and television. She still freelances in the business, when she's not busy novel writing. As a journalist she's worked closely with the police, covering countless crime stories, including several murders. She's also interviewed victims and seen villains sent down.

Country of Origin

Ann Cleeves

Author
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Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands...

Country of Origin

Martin Edwards

Author
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He is consultant to the British Library’s Crime Classics series, and has written sixteen contemporary whodunits, including The Coffin Trail, which was shortlisted for the Theakston’s Prize for best crime novel of the year. 

Country of Origin

Jo Bannister

Author
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Jo Bannister lives in Northern Ireland, where she worked as a journalist and editor on local newspapers. Since giving up the day job, her books have been shortlisted for a number of awards. Most of her spare time is spent with her horse and dog, or clambering over archaeological sites. She is currently working on a new series of psychological crime/thrillers.

Country of Origin

Ali Knight

Author
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I'm the author of five psychological thriller novels. The latest, Before I Find You, is a 99p digital special offer. My other books are The Silent Ones, 'Eerie, smart and brutal,' said Heat; Wink Murder, named by The Independent as 'One of their best commercial reads of 2011'; The First Cut, 'One of the top ten crime books to take on holiday,' according to The Telegraph; and Until Death, 'A gripping read,' The Sunday Mirror.

Country of Origin

Terry Pratchett

Author
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Sir Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was thirteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. 

Country of Origin

John Harvey

Author
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John Harvey (born 21 December 1938 in London) is a British author of crime fiction most famous for his series of jazz-influenced Charlie Resnick novels, based in the City of Nottingham. Harvey has also published over 90 books under various names, and has worked on scripts for TV and radio. He also ran Slow Dancer Press from 1977 to 1999 publishing poetry. The first Resnick novel, Lonely Hearts, was published in 1989, and was named by The Times as one of the 100 Greatest Crime Novels of the Century. Harvey brought the series to an end in 1998 with Last Rites, though Resnick has since made peripheral appearances in Harvey's new Frank Elder series. The protagonist Elder is a retired detective who now lives, as Harvey briefly did, in Cornwall. The first novel in this series, Flesh and Blood, won Harvey the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger in 2004, an accolade many crime fiction critics thought long overdue. In 2007 he was awarded the Diamond Dagger for a Lifetime's Contribution to the genre. On 14th July 2009 he received an honorary degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Nottingham in recognition of his literary eminence and his associations with both the University and Nottingham (particularly in the Charlie Resnick novels). He is also a big Notts County fan.

Country of Origin

Lynda La Plante

Author
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Lynda La Plante (born Lynda Titchmarsh) is a British author, screenwriter, and erstwhile actress (her performances in Rentaghost and other programmes were under her stage name of Lynda Marchal), best known for writing the Prime Suspect television crime series.

Country of Origin

Gordon Ferris

Author
Body

I was born on Rabbie Burns' day in the small industrial town of Kilmarnock, in the West of Scotland. My mother took it as a sign of impending literary fortune. Naturally enough, I ignored her, despite writing being the only thing I loved [after rugby and the fairer sex].

Country of Origin

Graham Hurley

Author
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Graham Hurley was born November, 1946 in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. His seaside childhood was punctuated by football, swimming, afternoons on the dodgems, run-ins with the police, multiple raids on the local library - plus near-total immersion in English post-war movies.

Country of Origin

Mark Gatiss

Author
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Mark Gatiss (born 17 October 1966) is an English actor, screenwriter and novelist. He is best known as a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and has both written for and acted in the TV series Doctor Who and Sherlock.

Country of Origin

Stephen Knight

Author
Body

1940- Born in the UK, Stephen Knight came to Australia when he was appointed Teaching Fellow at the University of Sydney in 1963, then lecturer in English the following the year.  He went on to hold senior positions at the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne, before returning to England in 1992 to take up a chair at De Montford University, Leicester. As well as numerous scholarly works in the area of medieval English literature, Knight's long held interest in crime fiction led him to him editing several anthologies of Australian crime stories. He was awarded the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.

Country of Origin

Colin Cotterill

Author
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Colin Cotterill is a cartoonist, illustrator and novelist.  An Australian citizen, born in London, he has lived and been employed in various educational roles in Australia, Israel, the USA, Japan and Laos, before settling in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.  For the last several years he has been involved with local nongovernmental agencies working to prevent child prostitution and rehabilitate abused children, and he recently set up the Books for Laos project, which raises money for the production of children's books.

Country of Origin

Barry Maitland

Author
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Barry Maitland was born in Scotland and grew up in London. He pursued a career in architecture, writing a number of books on architecture and urban design. In 1984, he emigrated to Australia, where he took up the position of Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales. He retired from the University to write full time in 2000. He lives in Australia. The first of his crime novels was published in 1994. They feature Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and his colleague, Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla, and are set in London.

Country of Origin

Graham Reilly

Author
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Graham Reilly emigrated from Glasgow to Melbourne with his family when he was 13. At different times he has worked as a cook, a truck washer and a maintenance man in an abattoir, but for the last 20 years he has been a journalist, mostly with The Age. Graham wrote his first two novels while living in Vietnam with his wife - Saigon Tea is a comedic tale that crosses from Glasgow to Melbourne to Saigon and back again; Sweet Time is a humorous exploration of Melbourne in the late 1960s when soccer challenged the dominant sport of Aussie rules. Graham's latest novel, Five Oranges, returns to the characters from Saigon Tea as they holiday in Australia and brave the Vietnamese underworld.

Country of Origin

Paul Thomas

Author
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Paul Thomas was born in the UK and grew up in New Zealand. He graduated from the University of Auckland and subsequently worked in journalism and public relations in Auckland, London, Toulouse and Sydney. He won the Australian Ned Kelly Award for his first book, Dirty Laundry. All of his books have been published internationally to widespread critical acclaim and commercial success. A full time writer, Paul has also worked in newspapers and advertising. He lives in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia with his journalist wife.

Country of Origin

Sarah Evans

Author
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An English ex-pat and former news journalist, Sarah writes short stories, novellas, novels and poetry and is published in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. She also runs writing workshops. Her latest book is Seasons and Seasonings in a Teapot: an anthology of rural family life (Access Press). It's an account of modern pioneering life in the southwest of Western Australia, where Sarah lives on a hobby farm with her home-schooling family. Although Sarah writes across most genres, chick-lit crime is her current favourite

Country of Origin

Kim Wilkins

Author
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I was born in London, and my family brought me to Australia when I was four. I grew up near the seaside in a creepy old Queenslander. Underneath it I had a cubbyhole where I used to go to write. I'd fill endless exercise books with earnest beginnings of stories, but didn't actually manage to finish my first novel until I was eleven. It was a story about three orphans who inherited a haunted house and somehow got mixed up with an international diamond smuggling ring. I wish I still had it, but I burned it in a fit of teenage disdain. During my teenage years, I wrote reams of unimaginative fantasy fiction, in which an unpopular buck-toothed girl saved the world. Then I got braces and my heroines were rather straighter-toothed. I worked for a long time in bad jobs: hospitality, typing, and indulging an embarrassing wish to be an alternative rock goddess. Then I decided I didn't know enough and went to university, so far picking up an English degree with first class honours, a university medal, and an MA in creative writing. The PhD is nearly finished. All along, I've never stopped writing. In 1997 my first novel The Infernal was published. It went on to win the 1997 Aurealis Awards for best horror novel, and best fantasy novel. Grimoire was next in 1999, then I changed publishers. HarperCollins published The Resurrectionists in October 2000; Angel of Ruin in October 2001; The Autumn Castle in June 2003; and Giants Of The Frost in 2004. I also write a young adult series about a teenage psychic detective, published by Penguin. My books are sold all over the world.

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Fergus Hume

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Fergus Hume (1859-1932) Ferguson Wright Hume was born in England. At the age of three his father emigrated with his family to New Zealand. He attended high school in Dunedin and studied law at the University of Otago. Shortly after graduation he left for Melbourne where he obtained a post as a barrister's clerk. After failed attempts to become a playwright, he decided to write a novel instead. Not knowing what to write: "I enquired of a leading Melbourne bookseller what style of book he sold most of He replied that the detective stories of Gaboriau had a large sale; and as, at this time, I had never even heard of this author, I bought all his works - eleven or thereabouts - and read them carefully. The style of these stories attracted me, and I determined to write a book of the same class; containing a mystery, a murder, and a description of low life in Melbourne." The result was The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, which became a great success after he self-published. After the success of his first novel, Hume returned to England. He resided in London for few years and then he moved to the Essex countryside where he lived in Thundersley for thirty years. 

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Jill Marshall

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Jill Marshall moved from the United Kingdom to New Zealand, along with her small daughter and her even smaller mad dog.  Her childhood ambition was to become an author, so in 2001 Jill gave up her career as a training director at a huge international company to concentrate on writing and being a mum. Jill plays guitar, takes singing lessons and is learning to play the drum kit she has set up in the garage.  One day she might even sing in a band again...

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Robert Schofield

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Having received a degree in engineering from Cambridge, Robert Schofield worked as a structural engineering consultant, engineering signature architecture including East Croydon Station, The Eden Project, Madrid Airport, Lichfield Theatre, and the London Imax Theatre. He then travelled to Australia and finding no call for creative architectural engineering in Perth, he adapted his skills to the mining and offshore industries. Whatever time he has left after working, writing, and wrangling three young children, he spends reading, cycling, kayaking on the Blackwood River, and maintaining his scooter: a beautiful 1970 Vespa Rally.

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Maxim Jakubowski

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Maxim Jakubowski is a crime, erotic, and science fiction writer and critic.

Jakubowski was born in England by Russian-British and Polish parents, but raised in France. Jakubowski has also lived in Italy and has travelled extensively. Jakubowski edited the science fiction anthology Twenty Houses of the Zodiac in 1979 for the 37th World Science Fiction Convention (Seacon '79) in Brighton. He also contributed a short story to that anthology. He has now published almost 100 books in a variety of areas.

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Ted Bell

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Ted Bell, formerly Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University and Writer-In-Residence at Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, is a full-time writer. He is the author of twelve consecutive New York Times Bestsellers. 

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Jane Isaac

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Jane Isaac is married to a serving detective and they live in rural Northamptonshire, UK with their daughter, and dog, Bollo. Jane's debut novel, An Unfamiliar Murder, introduces DCI Helen Lavery and was nominated as best mystery in the 'eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook awards 2013.'

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Susan Hill

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Susan Hill was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in 1942. Her hometown was later referred to in her novel A Change for the Better (1969) and some short stories especially "Cockles and Mussels".

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Aifric Campbell

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Aifric Campbell is the author of On the Floor, longlisted for the Orange Prize. Campbell spent thirteen years at Morgan Stanley, where she became the first woman managing director on the London trading floor. She left to earn a Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of East Anglia and currently teaches at Imperial College, London. Campbell’s writing has been awarded a fellowship at UCLA and residencies at Yaddo. She is currently at work on a new novel. 

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Ian Stewart

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Ian Nicholas Stewart is an Emeritus Professor and Digital Media Fellow in the Mathematics Department at Warwick University, with special responsibility for public awareness of mathematics and science. He is best known for his popular science writing on mathematical themes.

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Leslie Charteris

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Born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, Leslie Charteris was a half-Chinese, half English author of primarily mystery fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint."

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Neil Gaiman

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Neil Gaiman's work has been honoured with many awards internationally, including the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. His books and stories have also been honoured with 4 Hugos, 2 Nebulas, 1 World Fantasy Award, 4 Bram Stoker Awards, 6 Locus Awards, 2 British SF Awards, 1 British Fantasy Award, 3 Geffens, 1 International Horror Guild Award and 2 Mythopoeic Awards. 

Country of Origin

Paul French

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Paul French is the Chief China Representative of Access Asia, a market research and business intelligence company specialising in China and North Asia's economics and markets. He was educated in London and at the University of Glasgow. He is the co-author of One Billion Shoppers - Accessing Asia's Consuming Passions(1998) and author of Carl Crow - A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times, and Adventures of an American in Shanghai (2006). He lives in Shanghai. 

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Ruth Dugdall

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Ruth Dugdall was born in 1971. She holds a BA honours degree in English Literature (Warwick University) and an MA in Social Work (University of East Anglia). She qualified as a probation officer in 1996 and has worked in prison with offenders guilty of serious crimes, including stalking, rape and murder. This has informed her crime writing. Since she started writing, Ruth has won awards in several writing competitions, and has had short stories published in the Winchester Writers' Conference and the Eva Wiggins Award anthologies.

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Craig Russell

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Award-winning, best-selling and critically-acclaimed author. His novels have been published in twenty-five languages around the world. The movie rights to the Devil Aspect have been bought by Columbia Pictures. Biblical, his science-fiction novel, has been acquired by Imaginarium Studios/Sonar Entertainment, four Jan Fabel novels have been made into movies (in one of which Craig Russell makes a cameo appearance as a detective) for ARD, the German national broadcaster, and the Lennox series has been optioned for TV development.
 

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Sheila Quigley

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Sheila Quigley started work at 15 as a presser in Hepworths, a tailoring factory. She married at 18 and had three daughters: Dawn, Janine and Diane and a younger son, Michael. Recently divorced, she now has eight grandchildren, five boys and three girls, and every Saturday and Sunday can be found at a football match for the under tens and under fifteens. Sheila has lived on the Homelands Estate (at present with her son and two dogs) at Houghton-le-Spring near Sunderland for 30 years.

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Judith Cutler

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Judith Cutler was born and bred in the Midlands, and revels in using her birthplace, with its rich cultural life, as a background for her novels. After a long stint as an English lecturer at a run-down college of further education, Judith, a prize-winning short-story writer, has taught Creative Writing at Birmingham University, has run occasional writing course elsewhere (from a maximum security prison to an idyltic Greek island) and ministered to needy colleagues in her role as Secretary of the Crime Writers' Association.

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Irvine Welsh

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Probably most famous for his gritty depiction of a gang of Scottish Heroin addicts, Trainspotting(1993), Welsh focuses on the darker side of human nature and drug use. All of his novels are set in his native Scotland and filled with anti-heroes, small time crooks and hooligans. Welsh manages, however to imbue these characters with a sad humanity that makes them likable despite their obvious scumbaggerry. Irvine Welsh is also known for writing in his native Edinburgh Scots dialect, making his prose challenging for the average reader unfamiliar with this style. 

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Julian Barnes

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Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer of postmodernism in literature. He has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize--- Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005), and won the prize for The Sense of an Ending (2011). He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.

 

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Edmund Crispin

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Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of (Robert) Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978). His first crime novel and musical composition were both accepted for publication while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford. After a brief spell of teaching, he became a full-time writer and composer (particularly of film music. He wrote the music for six of the Carry On films. But he was also well known for his concert and church music). He also edited science fiction anthologies, and became a regular crime fiction reviewer for The Sunday Times. His friends included Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Agatha Christie.

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Tania Carver

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Pseudonym Of

Martyn Waites

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Martyn Waites (b. 1963) is an English actor and author of hard-boiled fiction. Raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, he spent his post-university years selling leather coats, working in pubs and doing stand-up comedy. After a stint in drama school, Waites pursued life on the stage, performing regionally in theaters across England. TV and commercial work followed, and he continued to act full-time until the early 1990s, when he began writing his first novel: a noir mystery set in the city of his birth. Mary’s Prayer was published in 1997, and Waites followed it with three more novels starring the same character, an investigative journalist named Stephen Larkin.
 

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Country of Origin

Iain Pears

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Iain Pears is an English art historian, novelist and journalist. He was educated at Warwick School, Warwick, Wadham College and Wolfson College, Oxford. Before writing, he worked as a reporter for the BBC, Channel 4 (UK) and ZDF (Germany) and correspondent for Reuters from 1982 to 1990 in Italy, France, UK and US. In 1987 he became a Getty Fellow in the Arts and Humanities at Yale University. 

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Craig Robertson

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During his 20-year career with a Scottish Sunday newspaper, Craig Robertson has interviewed three recent Prime Ministers; attended major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann; been pilloried on breakfast television, beaten Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, been among the first to interview Susan Boyle, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India.

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Duncan Campbell

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Duncan Campbell is former crime correspondent of the Guardian, former chairman of the Crime Reporters Association and winner of the Bar Council's newspaper journalist of the year. He has written for the Observer, New Statesman, LRB, Oldie, Esquire and British Journalism Review. He has presented Crime Desk on BBC Radio 5 Live and the Radio 4 documentary Bandits of the Blitz, has appeared on the Today programme, LBC radio and numerous TV documentaries, and has lectured widely on crime reporting. He is the author of six books including the bestselling The Underworld (1994) and an acclaimed crime novel, If it Bleeds (2010). 

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Andrew Grant

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Andrew Grant (born 1968, Birmingham, England) is the younger brother of bestselling thriller writer Lee Child. After graduating from the University of Sheffield, where he studied Drama and English Literature, Grant founded a theatre company that produced original material, culminating with a critically successful appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. 

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Elena Forbes

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Elena Forbes is an English writer of crime fiction.She grew up in London. After completing a degree in French and Italian at Bristol University, she worked in portfolio management for a number of international groups before becoming a full-time writer.

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Grant McKenzie

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Born in Scotland, living in Canada and writing fast-paced fiction, Grant likes to wear a kilt and toque with his six-guns. Often compared to Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay, Grant has three internationally published thrillers to his name - Switch, No Cry For Help, and K.A.R.M.A. - that have earned him an avalanche of positive reviews and loyal readership around the globe. 

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Stephen Booth

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A former newspaper journalist, British author Stephen Booth is the creator of two young Derbyshire police detectives, Ben Cooper and Diane Fry, who have appeared in 17 crime novels, all set in and around England's Peak District. 

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Barbara Nadel

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Barbara Nadel is an English crime-writer. Many of her books are set in Turkey. Born in the East End of London, Barbara Nadel trained as an actress before becoming a writer. Now writing full-time, she has previously worked as a public relations officer for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship's Good Companion Service and as a mental health advocate for the mentally disordered in a psychiatric hospital. She has also worked with sexually abused teenagers and taught psychology in schools and colleges, and is currently the patron of a charity that cares for those in emotional and mental distress. She has been a regular visitor to Turkey for more than twenty-five years.

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Isla Dewar

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Born in Edinburgh, Isla Dewar now lives in Fife with her husband, a cartoonist, and two sons. Her first novel, Keeping Up with Magda, published in 1995, has been followed by a string of bestsellers.

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M.R. Hall

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M R Hall, otherwise known as Matthew or Matt Hall, lives and works in the Wye Valley in Monmouthshire. Born in London in 1967, he was educated at Hereford Cathedral School and Worcester College, Oxford, where he graduated in law.

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Colin Watson

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Colin Watson was educated at the Whitgift School in South Croydon, London. During his career as a journalist he worked in London and Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he was a leader-writer for Kemsley Newspapers.

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Eileen-Marie Duell Buchanan

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Eileen-Marie Duell Buchanan  (1922-2010) was a British author who specialized in writing literature belonging to the mystery, suspense, or detective genre. She wrote under a number of pseudonyms, including Marie Buchanan, Marie Duell, Clare Curzon and Rhona Petrie. She studied French and psychology at King's College in London.

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Clare Curzon

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Pseudonym Of

Eileen-Marie Duell Buchanan

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Eileen-Marie Duell Buchanan  (1922-2010) was a British author who specialized in writing literature belonging to the mystery, suspense, or detective genre. She wrote under a number of pseudonyms, including Marie Buchanan, Marie Duell, Clare Curzon and Rhona Petrie. She studied French and psychology at King's College in London.

Country of Origin
Country of Origin

Laura Wilson

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Laura Wilson is an English crime-writer based in London, where she was born and raised. She has degrees in English Literature form Somerville College, Oxford, and University College London, and has worked as a teacher and editor of non-fiction.

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Adam Creed

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Adam Creed was born in Salford and read PPE at Balliol College Oxford before working for Flemings in the City. He abandoned his career to study writing at Sheffield Hallam University, following which he wrote in Andalucia then returned to England to work with writers in prison. He is now Head of Writing at Liverpool John Moores University and Project Leader of Free To Write.

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Anthony Horowitz

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Anthony Horowitz, OBE is ranked alongside Enid Blyton and Mark A. Cooper as "The most original and best spy-kids authors of the century." (New York Times). Anthony has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he is also the writer and creator of award winning detective series Foyle’s War, and more recently event drama Collision, among his other television works he has written episodes for Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. Anthony became patron to East Anglia Children’s Hospices in 2009. 

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Christopher Fowler

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Christopher Fowler is an English novelist living in London, his books contain elements of black comedy, anxiety and social satire. As well as novels, he writes short stories, scripts, press articles and reviews.

He lives in King's Cross, on the Battlebridge Basin, and chooses London as the backdrop of many of his stories because any one of the events in its two thousand year history can provide inspiration
 

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Phil Rickman

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Phil Rickman, born in Lancashire, has won awards for his TV and radio journalism. After five acclaimed novels, he introduced the fascinating Merrily Watkins series with The Wine of Angels. He is married and lives on the Welsh Border.

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Peter Robinson

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Peter Robinson was born in Yorkshire. After getting his BA Honours Degree in English Literature at the University of Leeds, he came to Canada and took his MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, with Joyce Carol Oates as his tutor, then a PhD in English at York University. He has taught at a number of Toronto community colleges and universities and served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Windsor, 1992-93.
 

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Martyn Waites

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Martyn Waites (b. 1963) is an English actor and author of hard-boiled fiction. Raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, he spent his post-university years selling leather coats, working in pubs and doing stand-up comedy. After a stint in drama school, Waites pursued life on the stage, performing regionally in theaters across England. TV and commercial work followed, and he continued to act full-time until the early 1990s, when he began writing his first novel: a noir mystery set in the city of his birth. Mary’s Prayer was published in 1997, and Waites followed it with three more novels starring the same character, an investigative journalist named Stephen Larkin.
 

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Quintin Jardine

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Quintin Jardine (born 1945) is a Scottish author of three series of crime novels, featuring the fictional characters Bob Skinner, Oz Blackstone, and Primavera Blackstone. He was educated in Motherwell and in Glasgow where he studied at what was then the city’s only University. After career as a journalist, government information officer and media relations consultant, he took to the creation of crime fiction. 
 

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Marjorie Eccles

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Marjorie Eccles has written several romantic and crime novels, which have been published both in the UK and in the US. Many of her book shave been translated and serialised around the world. She has one grown up son and now lives in Hertfordshire

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Chris Ryan

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Chris Ryan was born in 1961 in a village near Newcastle. In 1984 he joined the SAS. During his ten years in the Regiment, he was involved in overt and covert operations and was also Sniper team commander of the anti-terrorist team.

During the Gulf War, Chris was the only member of an eight-man team to escape from Iraq, of which three colleagues were killed and four captured. It was the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS.

For this he was awarded the Military Medal. During Ryan's last two years in the Regiment he selected and trained potential SAS recruits, he left the SAS in 1994. His work in security takes him around the world.

He has also appeared in a number of TV programmes, including HUNTING CHRIS RYAN, PUSHED TO THE LIMIT (Toughest Families) and TERROR ALERT (Sky TV, 2004).

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Elizabeth Corley

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Elizabeth Corley was born and brought up in West Sussex. Married with a stepdaughter, she manages to balance her crime-writing with a position as Chief Executive, Europe for a global investment company. A one-time committee member and vice-chairperson of the Crime Writers' Association, she is still an active member, while finding time to pursue her outside interests of travel, gardening and music.

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Robert Wilson

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Robert Wilson has written thirteen novels including the Bruce Medway noir series set in West Africa and two Lisbon books with WW2 settings the first of which, A Small Death in Lisbon, won the CWA Gold Dagger in 1999 and the International Deutsche Krimi prize in 2003. He has written four psychological crime novels set in Seville, with his Spanish detective, Javier Falcón. Two of these books (The Blind Man of Seville and The Silent and the Damned) were filmed and broadcast on Sky Atlantic as ‘Falcón’ in 2012. A film of the fourth Falcón book was released in Spain in 2014 under the title La Ignorancia de la Sangre. Capital Punishment, the first novel in his latest series of pure thrillers set in London and featuring kidnap consultant, Charles Boxer, was published in 2013 and was nominated for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. This was followed by You Will Never Find Me in 2014. The third book in the series, Stealing People, will be published in 2015. Robert Wilson loves to cook food from all over the world but especially Spanish, Portuguese, Indian and Thai. He also loves to walk with dogs…and people, too. 

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Chris Simms

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I was born and brought up in rural Sussex, three miles from the nearest shop. Childhood holidays – which lasted for weeks as my dad was a teacher – were spent in a secluded spot in the heart of Exmoor. Sitting round the campfire at night, the haunting cries of owls floating in from the blackness beyond the flames, he would read me the ghost stories of MR James. The short walk to the safety of my tent was always taken at a sprint.

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Mark Billingham

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Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor and more recently as a TV writer and stand-up comedian his first crime novel was published in 2001. Mark lives in North London with his wife and two children.

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John Burnside

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John Burnside is the author of nine collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Burnside has achieved wide critical acclaim, winning the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2000 for The Asylum Dance which was also shortlisted for the Forward and T. S. Eliot prizes. Born in Scotland, he moved away in 1965, returning to settle there in 1995. In the intervening period he worked as a factory hand, a labourer, a gardener and, for ten years, as a computer systems designer. He now lives in Fife with his wife and children and teaches Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology courses at the University of St Andrews. 

Country of Origin

Tom Rob Smith

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Tom Rob Smith (born 1979) is an English writer. The son of a Swedish mother and an English father, Smith was raised in London where he lives today. After graduating from Cambridge University in 2001, he completed his studies in Italy, studying creative writing for a year. After these studies, he worked as a scriptwriter.

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James Twining

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James Twining was born in London but spent much of his childhood in Paris. After graduating from Christ Church, Oxford with a first-class degree in French Literature, he joined the investment bank UBS, working in their corporate finance division. In 1999 he left to set up his own company and in 2001 was named as one of the eight 'Best of Young British' entrepreneurs in The New Statesman. James lives in London with his wife, Victoria, and is now a full-time writer.

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Dan Waddell

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Dan Waddell is a journalist and author who lives in west London. He has published ten non-fiction books, including the bestselling Who Do You Think You Are?, which tied in with the successful BBC TV series. The Blood Detective is his first novel. 

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Rebecca Tope

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Rebecca Tope grew up on a farm and has held a wide variety of jobs, such as pre-natal instructor, marriage counselor, and funeral director, all of which have taught her a great deal about human nature. In 1992, she founded Praxis Books, a small British press.

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Jim Kelly

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Jim Kelly is a journalist and education correspondent for the Financial Times. He lives in Ely with the biographer Midge Gilles and their young daughter. The Water Clock, his first novel, was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best first crime novel of 2002.
 

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Maureen O'Connor

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Patricia Hall is the pen-name of journalist Maureen O'Connor. She was born and brought up in West Yorkshire, which is where she has chosen to set her acclaimed series of novels featuring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray. She is married, with two grown-up sons, and now lives in Oxford.

Country of Origin

Patricia Hall

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Pseudonym Of

Maureen O'Connor

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Patricia Hall is the pen-name of journalist Maureen O'Connor. She was born and brought up in West Yorkshire, which is where she has chosen to set her acclaimed series of novels featuring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray. She is married, with two grown-up sons, and now lives in Oxford.

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Country of Origin

Dick Francis

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Dick Francis CBE (born Richard Stanley Francis) was a popular British horse racing crime writer and retired jockey.

Dick Francis worked on his books with his wife, Mary, before her death. Dick considered his wife to be his co-writer - as he is quoted in the book, "The Dick Francis Companion", released in 2003: "Mary and I worked as a team. ... I have often said that I would have been happy to have both our names on the cover. Mary's family always called me Richard due to having another Dick in the family. I am Richard, Mary was Mary, and Dick Francis was the two of us together."

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Conn Iggulden

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I was born in the normal way in 1971, and vaguely remember half-pennies and sixpences. I have written for as long as I can remember: poetry, short stories and novels. It’s what I always wanted to do and read English at London University with writing in mind. I taught English for seven years and was Head of English at St. Gregory’s RC High School in London by the end of that period. I have enormous respect for those who still labour at the chalk-face. In truth, I can’t find it in me to miss the grind of paperwork and initiatives. I do miss the camaraderie of the smokers’ room, as well as the lessons where their faces lit up as they understood what I was wittering on about.

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Boris Starling

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Boris Starling's writing career began at the age of eight, when his English teacher spotted that his short story was (a) unusually good for a child his age (b) copied verbatim from Tintin's 'Prisoners Of The Sun.' (That was also the first time he learnt the word 'verbatim', not to mention the term 'copyright violation'.) 

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Mark Barber

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Lieutenant Mark Barker, Royal Navy, is a pilot based at RNAS Culdrose. His dissertation on the Fleet Air Arm in the Mediterranean during the Second World War was named as the best in year at the Royal Navy Academy, Dartmouth. He was named Best Aircrew Officer upon graduation of his class.

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Nicci Gerrard

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Nicci Gerrard was born in June 1958 in Worcestershire. After graduating with a first class honours degree in English Literature from Oxford University, she began her first job, working with emotionally disturbed children in Sheffield. 

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Sean French

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Sean French was born in May 1959 in Bristol, to a British father and Swedish mother. He too studied English Literature at Oxford University at the same time as Nicci, also graduating with a first class degree, but their paths didn't cross until 1990. In 1981 he won Vogue magazine's Writing Talent Contest, and from 1981 to 1986 he was their theatre critic. During that time he also worked at the Sunday Times as deputy literary editor and television critic, and was the film critic for Marie Claire and deputy editor of New Society.

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Nicci French

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Pseudonym Of

Nicci Gerrard

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Nicci Gerrard was born in June 1958 in Worcestershire. After graduating with a first class honours degree in English Literature from Oxford University, she began her first job, working with emotionally disturbed children in Sheffield. 

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Sean French

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Sean French was born in May 1959 in Bristol, to a British father and Swedish mother. He too studied English Literature at Oxford University at the same time as Nicci, also graduating with a first class degree, but their paths didn't cross until 1990. In 1981 he won Vogue magazine's Writing Talent Contest, and from 1981 to 1986 he was their theatre critic. During that time he also worked at the Sunday Times as deputy literary editor and television critic, and was the film critic for Marie Claire and deputy editor of New Society.

Country of Origin
Country of Origin

Kate Mosse

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Kate Mosse is an international bestselling author with sales of more than five million copies in 42 languages. Her fiction includes the novels Labyrinth (2005), Sepulchre (2007), The Winter Ghosts (2009), and Citadel (2012), as well as an acclaimed collection of short stories, The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales (2013). Kate’s new novel, The Taxidermist’s Daughter is out now.

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Kevin Lewis

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Born in 1970 in Southeast London, Kevin's childhood years were spent in the city's rough council estates. The violent and depraved conditions that Kevin lived in are documented in his autobiographical books The Kid and The Kid Moves On. Today Kevin combines his creative skill with his knowledge of the inner cities to write novels with gritty realism. Kevin currently lives in Surrey with his wife and two children.

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Deryn Lake

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Deryn Lake is a well-known historical novelist who joined the popular ranks of historical detective writers with her gripping John Rawlings Mysteries, Death in the Dark Walk, Death at the Devil's Tavern, Death on the Romney Marsh, Death in the Peerless Pool and Death at Apothecaries' Hall.

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Hazel Holt

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Hazel Holt is a British novelist. She studied at King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham, England, and then Newnham College, Cambridge. She went on to work at the International African Institute in London, where she became acquainted with the novelist Barbara Pym, whose biography she later wrote. She also finished one of Pym's novels after Pym died. 

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Stef Penney

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Stef Penney grew up in the Scottish capital and turned to film-making after a degree in Philosophy and Theology from Bristol University. She made three short films before studying Film and TV at Bournemouth College of Art, and on graduation was selected for the Carlton Television New Writers Scheme. She has also written and directed two short films; a BBC 10 x 10 starring Anna Friel and a Film Council Digital Short in 2002 starring Lucy Russell.

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M.J. Trow

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Meirion James Trow is a full-time teacher of history who has been doubling as a crime writer for seventeen years. Originally from Ferndale, Rhondda in South Wales he now lives on the Isle of Wight. His interests include collecting militaria, film, the supernatural and true crime. 

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Ian McFadyen

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Originally from Liverpool, I now live in Hertfordshire with my wife, and whichever of my children have decided to come home for a bit! I have been writing since 2000, and am very pleased to have four books published, Little White Lies, Lillia's Diary,Frozen to Death and Deadly Secrets. I also have 2 more written - awaiting publication dates. All four of my titles will shortly be available in large print and the latest book,Deadly Secrets, is being translated for release in Italy. 

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Priscilla Masters

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Priscilla Masters' writing career started in 1987 when she published Mr. Bateman's Garden, a children's book set in Biddulph Grange Gardens belonging to the National Trust. After that she created Inspector Joanna Piercy and has now also written a number of Medical Mysteries.
 

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Mark Mills

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Mark Mills is a British writer of screenplays and novels. His first screenplay was BAFTA-nominated short film One Night Stand starring Jemma Redgrave and James Purefoy in 1993; this won Mills a 'Best Screenplay' award at the Angers European First Film Festival in 1995.

Mills's first novel was Amagansett, later reissued under the title The Whaleboat House published in 2004; this won him the 'Best Crime Novel by a Debut Author' at the Crime Writers' Association Award. His second novel, The Savage Garden, was published in 2006. His third novel, The Information Officer, was published in April, 2009.

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Martin Langfield

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Martin Langfield has been a foreign correspondent, bureau chief and editor for Reuters since 1987, working mostly in the Americas. He has reported from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Madrid, Miami, London and New York. He now works with the company's Breakingviews commentary team. Martin studied French and Spanish languages and literature at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University in England. He has also worked as an English teacher in Paris and studied indigenous literature in Mexico. He lives in New York.

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Andrew Wilson

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I'm a journalist and author. My work has appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, the Sunday Times, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Mail, the New Statesman and the Evening Standard magazine.

 

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Raymond Harold Sawkins

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Raymond Harold Sawkins was a British novelist, who mainly published under the pseudonym Colin Forbes, but also as Richard Raine, Jay Bernard and Harold English. He only published three of his first books under his own name.Sawkins wrote over 40 books, mostly as Colin Forbes. He was most famous for his long-running series of thriller novels in which the principal character is Tweed, Deputy Director of the Secret Intelligence Service.

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Colin Forbes

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Raymond Harold Sawkins

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Raymond Harold Sawkins was a British novelist, who mainly published under the pseudonym Colin Forbes, but also as Richard Raine, Jay Bernard and Harold English. He only published three of his first books under his own name.Sawkins wrote over 40 books, mostly as Colin Forbes. He was most famous for his long-running series of thriller novels in which the principal character is Tweed, Deputy Director of the Secret Intelligence Service.

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Diane Wei Liang

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Diane Wei Liang was born in Beijing. She spent part of her childhood with her parents in a labor camp in a remote region of China, and the other part in Beijing with her mother when her parents were forced to live and work in different cities. She studied psychology at Peking University. In 1989 she took part in the Student Democracy Movement and was in Tiananmen Square. Later that year, she left China for the U.S. Liang has a PhD in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University and was a business professor in the U.S. and U.K. for over ten years. She lives in London with her family.

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Susan B. Kelly

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Susan B. Kelley was born in the Chilterns and grew up in Oxford. After reading French and English at London University, she worked as a freelance computer programmer for many years. She is now a full-time writer and lives in West London with her solicitor husband and cat.

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Nick Stone

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Nick Stone was born in Cambridge in 1966, the son of a Scottish father and a Haitian mother. His first novel, Mr Clarinet, won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel and the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for The Barry Award for Best British Novel.

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Katy Gardner

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Katy Gardner is a British author, best known for her novel Losing Gemma, which was turned into a two part mini series for ITV1 in 2006. As well as writing, she also teaches Social Anthropology at Sussex University.

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Charlie Williams

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Author of the Mangel trilogy (which is soon to become a tetralogy, but trilogy sounds better so we'll carry on calling it that). Those books are DEADFOLK, FAGS AND LAGER (new US edition retitled BOOZE AND BURN), KING OF THE ROAD, and the new one will be ONE DEAD HEN, out in August. The other three will be released one per month leading up to it. 

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Simon Levack

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Simon Levack is a British author of historical mystery novels set in Precolumbian Mexico on the eve of the Spanish colonization of the Americas and feature as the protagonist Yaotl, a fictitious slave to Tlilpotonqui, the Cihuacóatl or chief minister in the Aztec state of Tenochtitlan under Hueyi Tlatoani, or Emperor, Moctezuma II. Demon of the Air won the Debut Dagger Award, given by the UK Crime Writers' Association, in 2000. 

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John le Carre

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June Hampson

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June Hampson was born in Gosport, Hampshire, where she still lives. She has had a variety of jobs including waitress, fruit picker, barmaid, shop assistant and market trader selling second-hand books.

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Andy McNab

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Andy McNab joined the infantry in 1976 as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was badged as a member of 22 SAS Regiment. He served in B Squadron 22 SAS for ten years and worked on both covert and overt special operations worldwide, including anti-terrorist and anti-drug operations in the Middle and Far East, South and Central America and Northern Ireland.

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Anabel Donald

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Anabel has been writing fiction since 1982 when her first novel, Hannah at Thirty-five, was published to great critical acclaim. 

In her thirty-six-year teaching career she has taught adolescent girls in private boarding schools, a comprehensive and an American university. Most recently, she has written the five Alex Tanner crime novels in the Notting Hill series.

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Patrick Redmond

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Patrick Redmond is an English author of psychological thrillers; typical themes include insanity, secrets and death. He attended Felsted School, then studied law at Leicester University and British Columbia in Vancouver. 

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P. D. James

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P. D. James, byname of Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park, (born August 3, 1920, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England—died November 27, 2014, Oxford), British mystery novelist best known for her fictional detective Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard.

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John Mortimer

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John Clifford Mortimer was a novelist, playwright and former practising barrister. Among his many publications are several volumes of Rumpole stories and a trilogy of political novels, Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets, featuring Leslie Titmuss - a character as brilliant as Rumpole. John Mortimer received a knighthood for his services to the arts in 1998.

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Alex Bell

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Alex Bell was born in 1986. She always wanted to be a writer but had several different back-up plans to ensure she didn’t end up in the poor house first. For some years these ranged from dolphin trainer to animal shelter vet but then, at fifteen, she had an epiphany involving John and Robert Kennedy and decided to become a lawyer instead.

 

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