Darren Simpson
Darren Simpson writes vivid, unruly fiction for older children and teens.
His debut novel, Scavengers, was a Guardian Best Book of the Year, and was selected for the national Summer Reading Challenge. The Memory Thieves was an Observer Book of the Month and a World Book Day Summer Read, while Furthermoor was Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Month and a Waterstones Best Book of the Year. Darren’s stories have won awards and been translated into several languages. He’s been nominated twice for the prestigious Carnegie Medal.
His latest novel, Thirst, is out now.
Darren lives in Nottingham, where he works with the Literacy Trust to promote reading for pleasure. He loves using unusual settings to explore bravery, self-discovery, and the strange
If you like author Darren Simpson here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (21)
-
Matt Killeen
MATT KILLEEN was born in Birmingham, in the UK, back when trousers were wide and everything was brown. Early instruction in his craft included being told that a drawing of a Cylon exploding isn't writing and copying out your mother's payslip isn't an essay "about my family". Several alternative careers beckoned, some involving laser guns and guitars, before he finally returned to words and attempted to make a living as an advertising copywriter and largely ignored music and sports journalist. He now writes for the world's best loved toy company, as it wasn't possible to be an X-wing pilot. Married to his Nuyorican soul mate, he is parent to both an unfeasibly clever teenager and a toddler who is challenging his father's antiestablishment cr
Buy books on Amazon -
Benjamin Read
Benjamin Read writes comics and makes films. He wrote the multiply award-nominated PORCELAIN: A GOTHIC FAIRY TALE, the silent comic BUTTERFLY GATE, and children’s book, NIGHT POST, as well as the TRUE GRIT and SUPER 8 comic adaptations. He also wrote and produced the films ARMISTICE and 500 MILES NORTH. He is one of the founder members of the Improper Books comics collective, and is fuelled principally by tea and whimsy. He is currently working on the rest of the Porcelain sequence, alongside writing his first novel.
Buy books on Amazon -
Geraldine McCaughrean
Geraldine McCaughrean is a British children's novelist. She has written more than 170 books, including Peter Pan in Scarlet (2004), the official sequel to Peter Pan commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the holder of Peter Pan's copyright. Her work has been translated into 44 languages worldwide. She has received the Carnegie Medal twice and the Michael L. Printz Award among others.
Buy books on Amazon -
Cressida Cowell
Cressida Cowell grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland. She was convinced that there were dragons living on this island, and has been fascinated by dragons ever since. She has a BA in English Literature from Oxford University, a BA in Graphic Design from St Martin's and an MA in Narrative Illustration from Brighton. Cressida loves illustrating her own work, but also loves writing books for other people to illustrate as the end result can be so unexpected and inspiring. Cressida has written and illustrated eight books in the popular Hiccup series. The unique blend of child centred humour and sublime prose made Hiccup an instant hit. How to Train Your Dragon is now published in over 30 languages. A
Buy books on Amazon -
Jenny Pearson
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Buy books on Amazon -
Patricia Forde
Patricia Forde lives in Galway, in the west of Ireland, with her husband Padraic and two teenage children. She has previously published Picture
Buy books on Amazon
Books and Early Readers for children in Irish and in English. She has written two plays and several television drama series for children and
teenagers. In an earlier life, she was a primary school teacher and the artistic director of the Galway International Arts Festival.
The List ( The Wordsmith in the UK and Ireland) is her first novel. -
David Farr
David Farr is is one of the UK's leading screenwriters and directors for film, TV and theatre. In 2009, he was appointed Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where his productions of The Winter's Tale, King Lear and The Homecoming all opened to critical acclaim. David is known for his work on Spooks and his 2016 BBC adaptation of The Night Manager, starring Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston. He completed his first feature film, Hanna, in 2009, and has since adapted it into a hugely successful series for Amazon Prime. The Book of Stolen Dreams is his first novel.
Buy books on Amazon -
Nat Cassidy
NAT CASSIDY is a national bestselling and Bram Stoker Award-nominated author whose acclaimed works include Mary ("One of the Best Horror Novels of All Time" - Audible), Nestlings, and Rest Stop. Esquire described him as one "of the best horror writers of this generation" and among the writers "shaping horror's next golden age." His award-winning plays have been produced across the country, including Off-Broadway and the Kennedy Center. You've also maybe seen Nat guest-starring on shows such as Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, Bull, Quantico, FBI, and many others ... but that's a topic for a different bio. His newest novel, When the Wolf Comes Home, hit shelves in April 2025 and was called "a classic" by Stephen King. He lives in New York City
Buy books on Amazon -
Katherine Rundell
Katherine Rundell was born in 1987 and grew up in Africa and Europe. In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her first book, The Girl Savage, was born of her love of Zimbabwe and her own childhood there; her second, Rooftoppers, was inspired by summers working in Paris and by night-time trespassing on the rooftops of All Souls. She is currently working on her doctorate alongside an adult novel.
Buy books on Amazon
Source: Katherine Rundell -
Phil Hickes
I live in Oregon at the moment, though I hail from the UK. Growing up in a house overlooking a graveyard, on the edge of the bleak and foreboding Pennine Hills, seems to have instilled in me an obsession with all things dark and spooky. The complete Aveline Jones trilogy is available at all good bookstores and has been, or will be, translated into Spanish, German, Czech, French, Turkish, Polish and Russian. My latest effort is called Shadowhall Academy and follows the spooky adventures of the Aunt Lilian character from the Aveline books as a young girl in the 1980s. I also have a dyslexia-friendly ghost story coming out with Barrington Stoke at Halloween this year.
Buy books on Amazon
Favourite authors include Robert Aickman, Stephen King (his early stuff), M -
Emma Carroll
Buy books on Amazon
After years of teaching English to secondary school students, Emma now writes full time. She graduated with distinction from Bath Spa University’s MA in Writing For Young People. In another life Emma wishes she’d written ‘Rebecca’ by Daphne Du Maurier. She lives in the Somerset hills with her husband and three terriers. -
Robin Stevens
Robin's books are: Murder Most Unladylike (Murder is Bad Manners in the USA), Arsenic for Tea (Poison is Not Polite in the USA), First Class Murder, Jolly Foul Play, Mistletoe and Murder, Cream Buns and Crime, A Spoonful of Murder, Death in the Spotlight and Top Marks for Murder. She is also the author of The Guggenheim Mystery, the sequel to Siobhan Dowd's The London Eye Mystery.
Buy books on Amazon
Robin was born in California and grew up in an Oxford college, across the road from the house where Alice in Wonderland lived. She has been making up stories all her life.
When she was twelve, her father handed her a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and she realised that she wanted to be either Hercule Poirot or Agatha Christie when she grew up. When it occurred -
Peter Bunzl
Peter Bunzl grew up in South London in a rambling Victorian house with three cats, two dogs, one little sister, an antique dealer dad, and an artist mum. As a child he found inspiration visiting TV and film sets, where his mum worked as a costume designer.
Buy books on Amazon
After art college and film school, Peter worked as an animator on commercials, pop videos, and two BAFTA-winning children’s TV shows, and wrote and directed several successful short films.
Peter’s debut novel Cogheart was a Waterstones Book of the Month. It was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book Prize and the Branford Boase Award. Moonlocket was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Award. Cogheart, Skycircus and Shadowsea were nominated for the Carnegie Medal.
Peter lives in North -
M.G. Leonard
M. G. Leonard is a writer of books, poems and screenplays. She has a first-class honours degree in English literature and an MA in Shakespeare Studies from Kings College London. She works as a freelance Digital Media Producer for clients such as the National Theatre, and Harry Potter West End, and previously worked as a Senior Digital Producer at the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House and Shakespeare’s Globe. She spent her early career in the music industry running Setanta Records, an independent record label, and managing bands, most notably The Divine Comedy. After leaving the music industry, she trained as an actor, dabbling in directing and producing as well as performing, before deciding to write her stories down. Maya lives in Br
Buy books on Amazon -
Pádraig Kenny
Pádraig Kenny is an Irish writer who hails from Newbridge in County Kildare.
Buy books on Amazon
His debut novel Tin was published in 2018 and was Waterstones Children’s Book of the Month. It has been nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal and several other awards.
His second novel Pog was published in April 2019 and was Independent Bookseller's Book of the Month.
His third novel The Monsters of Rookhaven was published in September 2020 by Pan Macmillan. It won the Honour Award for Fiction in the 2021 KPMG Children's Books Ireland awards and was Waterstones Children's Book of the Month in October 2021, and has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal. It has also been optioned by Dream Logic Studios with the intention of adapting it into an animated movie. The sequ -
Hannah Gold
Hannah Gold worked in the film and magazine industries before taking time out to pursue her dream of writing. She lives in Lincolnshire with her tortoise, her cat and her husband. This is her middle grade debut.
Buy books on Amazon -
Josh Winning
Josh Winning is a nostalgia nut, book/film lover and author of The Shadow Glass , which is like Labyrinth meets Stranger Things, and Burn the Negative , which is like Scream meets My Best Friend's Exorcism.
Buy books on Amazon
He is senior film writer at Radio Times, writer at Total Film, SFX and Den of Geek, and the co-host of movie podcast Torn Stubs. He has been on set with Kermit the Frog (and Miss Piggy), devoured breakfast with zombies on The Walking Dead, and sat on the Iron Throne on the Dublin set of Game of Thrones.
Josh lives with his cat Penny and dreams of one day convincing Sigourney Weaver to yell “Goddammit!” at him. -
Hannah Kaner
Hannah has her heart in Scotland and her roots in the north of England.
Buy books on Amazon
Hannah’s trade has always been story telling. From creating and unravelling mysteries in Northumberland with her mates, to annoying the hell out of her supervisors at the University of Cambridge by insisting on comparing Terry Pratchett to Charles Dickens, and studying narrative theory in video games.
They grudgingly (or joyfully?) gave her a 1st Class degree in English.
She puts the desire to communicate and challenge into her work in the technology sector, specialising in creating digital tools for hard to reach communities.
Hannah loves the histories and mythologies shared through our cultural histories, the stories we tell ourselves about being human. She also likes s -
Ravena Guron
A born and bred Londoner, Ravena writes MG and YA, usually featuring antiheroines or snarky narrators. She is a lawyer with a degree in biochemistry, and hopes to use the knowledge gained from her experiences to plot her books, whether that's wild MG fantasy adventures, or twisty YA murder-mysteries.
Buy books on Amazon -
Abena Eyeson
PhD educated Abena Eyeson was born in Ghana but has lived in England since she was a child.
Buy books on Amazon
In July 2025, RUNNING MY OWN RACE, her debut middle grade novel, was published by Nosy Crow in the UK. Centred around eleven year old Kofi, it's a story about family, friendship, gaining courage and going for your dreams.
In 2021, she completed the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. In the same year, she became a Faber Children’s FAB Prize Commended Text winner and was longlisted for the Jericho Prize for one of her picture books. She was longlisted for the TLC Pen Factor in 2022 and was added to the Oxford University Press’ (OUP) Primary Literacy list as a potential author. Her first book for OUP Primary, Our Family Farm, was published in 2024.
In -
Richard L. Tames
Richard Lawrence Tames, born 30 January 1946, lectures on history at Syracuse University London and is a Blue Badge guide.
Buy books on Amazon
Tames is also a Lecturer on London’s history for the Institute of Tourist Guiding. He has written over twenty books on different aspects of English history, including Shakespeare’s London on 5 Groats a Day.