Jane Bettany

I am the author of the DI Isabel Blood crime novels, set in the fictional Derbyshire town of Bainbridge, and the cosy crime series featuring amateur sleuth Violet Brewster, which is also set in Derbyshire.

My debut novel In Cold Blood (the first in the DI Isabel Blood series) won the 2019 Gransnet and HQ writing competition, for women writers over the age of 40 who had written a novel with a protagonist in the same age range.

Before turning to novel writing, I had been writing short stories and non-fiction articles for over twenty years, many of which have appeared in women’s magazines, literary magazines, newspapers and online.

I live in Derby, UK and have an MA in Creative Writing.

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Penny Blackwell grew up in rural West Yorkshire, right in the heart of Brontë country… and she's still there. After graduating from Durham University with a degree in English Literature, she dallied with living in cities including London, Nottingham and Cambridge, but homesickness soon drove her back to her beloved Yorkshire. She lives in the shadow of the moors with her partner and two mischievous border collies.

Penny also writes romantic comedies as Mary Jayne Baker and Lisa Swift, and World War II-set sagas as Betty Firth.

More information can be found about Penny on her website at www.maryjaynebaker.co.uk. You can also follow her on Twitter, @MaryJayneBaker, or like her Facebook page by going to Facebook.com/MaryJayneWrites
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Helena Dixon

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
For other authors of this name, see also:

see: Helena Dixon - Erotica

This author also writes as:

Nell Dixon - Contemporary Womens Fiction

Nell is an multi-award winning author who splits her time between Devon and the Black Country. She lives with her husband, daughters, a tank of tropical fish, and a crazy Cockerpoo called Teddy. She writes contemporary romance as Nell Dixon and historical cozy crime set in 1930's Dartmouth as Helena Dixon. She is represented by the Kate Nash Literary Agency.
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Gail Lukasik

Gail Lukasik's latest book, What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed, tells the stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary discoveries about their parentage and/or race and ethnicity. It's the followup book to her best-selling memoir, White Like Her: My Family's Story of Race and Racial Passing.

Severance Magazine gave What They Never Told Us a glowing review. Click the link to read: https://severancemag.com

Her fifth mystery novel, and first gothic historical mystery, The Darkness Surrounds Us, was praised Publishers Weekly, who said of the book: "Lukasik delivers a gripping ghost story of pandemics past in this well-crafted gothic mystery. With unpredictable plotting and superior atmosph
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Rachel McLean

My name's Rachel McLean and I write thrillers that make you think.

What does that mean?

In short, I want my stories to make your pulse race and your brain tick.

Do you often get through a thriller at breakneck pace but are left with little sense of what the book was really about? Do you sometimes read literary fiction but just wish something would damn well happen?

My books aim to fill that gap.

Easy enough for me to say, but here are some reviews from people who agree with me:

'a fast paced, character-driven novel which enthralls from the very first page': Sherry, goodreads review of Thicker Than Water.

'..every page I was right there fighting with the lead character trying to do the right thing. I loved it!!': Lindsay, goodreads review of A Hous
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Dee MacDonald

The Runaway Wife is Dee’s first (published) novel but in fact she wrote her very first book – at around seven years of age! This was a love story which she duly illustrated before sewing all the pages together up one side. Writing was what she ‘was good at’ in school and she won several essay competitions, but then life got in the way and she didn’t pick up a pen again until after retirement.

Dee left Scotland and headed for London at the beginning of the swinging sixties. After typing her way round the West End she became an air stewardess on long haul routes with BA (then BOAC) for eight years. After that she did market research at Heathrow for both the government statistics and for BA, she became a sales rep and was the receptionist at th
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Fiona Leitch

Fiona Leitch is a writer with a chequered past. She’s written for football and motoring magazines, DJ’ed at illegal raves and is a stalwart of the low budget TV commercial, even appearing as the Australasian face of a cleaning product called 'Sod Off'. After living in London and Cornwall she's finally settled in sunny New Zealand, where she enjoys scaring her cats by trying out dialogue on them. She spends her days dreaming of retiring to a crumbling Venetian palazzo, walking on the windswept beaches of West Auckland, and writing funny, flawed but awesome female characters.

The first book in her 'Nosey Parker' series of cozy mysteries set in Cornwall will be published by One More Chapter in January 2021, with books 2 and 3 following in Febru
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Clare Chase

Clare Chase writes classic mysteries. Her aim is to take readers away from it all via some armchair sleuthing in atmospheric locations.

Her debut novel was shortlisted for Novelicious’s Undiscovered Award, as well as an EPIC award post-publication, and was chosen as a Debut of the Month by LoveReading. Murder in the Marshes (Tara Thorpe 1) was shortlisted for an International Thriller Writers award.

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Merryn Allingham

I was born into an army family and spent my childhood moving around the UK and abroad. Unsurprisingly it gave me itchy feet and in my twenties I escaped an unloved secretarial career to work as cabin crew and see the world.

I still love to travel and visit new places, especially those with an interesting history, but the arrival of marriage, children and cats meant a more settled life in the south of England, where I've lived ever since. It also gave me the opportunity to go back to 'school' and eventually teach at university.

I've written seven historical novels, all mysteries with a helping of suspense and a dash of romance - sometimes set in exotic locations and often against a background of stirring world events.

My latest novel, A Tale of
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T.A. Williams

Firstly, my name isn't T A. It's Trevor. I write under the androgynous name T A Williams because 65% of books are read by women. In my first book, one of the (female) characters suggests the imbalance is due to the fact that men spend too much time getting drunk and watching football. I couldn't possibly comment. Ask my wife...
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I‘ve lived all over Europe, but now I live in a little village in sleepy Devon, tucked away in
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Debbie Young

Hello dear readers!

I hope you will enjoy my warm, witty, feel-good contemporary fiction, full of English humour and heart, inspired by life in the Cotswold village which has been my home for over 30 years. I have three series of cozy mystery novels plus various short fiction, and I've written a couple of non-fiction books too.

NOVELS

My latest book is "Death at the Village Christmas Fair", the third in my Cotswold Curiosity Shop Mystery series. The series begins with "Death at the Old Curiosity Shop", followed by "Death at the Village Chess Club". In this series, moving from the city to the lively Cotswold village of Little Pride, Alice Carroll (50) discovers that nothing is quite what it seems in her new business enterprise. Each novel in
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Alice Castle

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Emylia Hall

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J.R. Ellis

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My love of my native county is deep and the settings of my Yorkshire Murder Mysteries within Yorkshire's varied landscapes are important. I have made a study of the sub-genre of the Locked Room Mystery during the height of its popularity between 1930 - 1960 in the stories of writers such as John Dickson Carr, Clayton Rawson and Ellery Queen. I was an avid watcher of BBC's "Jonathan Creek" in its heyday. I believe the element of puzzle is essential to crime fiction and my novels contain a double mystery: the standard "who dunnit?" but also
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Kate Wells

Library of Congress Authorities: Wells, Kate, 1959-

Senior technical instructor of dyeing and printing, Royal Coll. of Art, London
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Liz Fielding

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Maxine Barry

Romance author Maxine Barry is a pen name of English author Jacquie Walton. She also writes mystery novels under the pen names Joyce Cato, Jessie Daniels and Faith Martin.

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Alex Coombs

Alex Coombs studied Arabic at Oxford and Edinburgh Universities and went on to work in adult education and then retrained to be a chef,

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Bear Lawrence

Hi,

I'm Bear Lawrence and I’ve enjoyed an interesting life. I’ve worked as a delivery driver in Norway, a helicopter tour pilot in the Caribbean, and a flight instructor in Oregon. In the UK I’ve been a sales assistant, gardener, landlord, biomedical engineer and award-winning inventor. I’ve even been lucky enough to have raced motorbikes, karts and yachts.

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Hania Allen

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K.A. Kirtland

K.A. Kirtland is the debut author of Bleeding Sea, an eco-thriller inspired by research expeditions she participated in across the Gulf of Mexico and the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic. Kirtland’s graduate studies focused on the intricate balance of ecosystems, which heavily influenced the novel’s gripping narrative about a toxic dinoflagellate bloom. She is a public health professional and epidemiologist based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she continues to advocate for environmental sustainability. When she's not writing or working, Kirtland enjoys time with her family.
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