Mary Burchell
Ida Cook was born on 1904 at 37 Croft Avenue, Sunderland, England. With her eldest sister Mary Louise Cook (1901), she attending the Duchess' School in Alnwick. Later the sisters took civil service jobs in London, and developed a passionate interest in opera. The sisters helped 29 jews to escape from the Nazis, funded mainly by Ida's writing. In 1965, the Cook sisters were honored as Righteous Gentiles by the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel.
As Mary Burchell, she published more than 125 romance novels by Mills & Boon since 1936. She also wrote some western novels as James Keene in collaboration with the author Will Cook (aka Frank Peace). In 1950, Ida Cook wrote her autobiography: "We followed our stars". She he
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Jessica Steele
Jessica Steele was born on May 9, 1933 in the elegant Warwickshire town of Royal Leamington Spa. She has two super brothers, Colin and George, and a lovely sister, Elizabeth. She was a delicate child and missed a lot of school. In fact, she left school at aged 14, when she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis. At 16, she started work as a junior clerk. In 1967, Jessica married with her husband, Peter and within a very short space of time they had moved from her hometown to the lovely area where they now live. Their house is built into the side of a hill, and has beautiful views over more hills and valleys. Her brothers and her sister are very close and she has plenty of nephews and nieces to make up for the fact that she and her husband hav
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Roberta Leigh
aka Rachel Lindsay, Janey Scott, Rozella Lake
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Roberta Leigh was the most frequently used pen name of an author who also published novels as Rachel Lindsay, Rozella Lake, and Janey Scott. Her birth name was Rita Shulman.
Leigh was one of the first romance writers to introduce strong, career-minded heroines who wouldn't be bossed around by the hero.
Leigh had her own film company and wrote and produced 7 TV series for children. She would also "write" the music for her series, although this usually involved her humming or singing the tune into a tape recorder, after which someone else would arrange and write a score.
She studied oil and watercolor painting with Diana Raphael and Michael Chaitow, who her interest in abstract art. Her work has been -
Anne Mather
Anne Mather is the pseudonym used by Mildred Grieveson, a popular British author of over 160 romance novels. She also signed novels as Caroline Fleming and Cardine Fleming.
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Mildred Grieveson began to write down stories in her childhood years. The first novel that she actually finished, Caroline (1965), was also her first book to be published. Her novel, Leopard in the Snow (1974), was developed into a 1978 film. -
Rachel Lindsay
Rachel Lindsay is the pen name of an author who also published as Roberta Leigh, Janey Scott, and Rozella Lake. See the "Roberta Leigh" entry for full biographical information.
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Susan Napier
Perhaps being born on Valentine’s Day was an omen that Susan Napier would become a romance writer. This New Zealand author has written over 30 Mills & Boon category romances since 1984. Napier and her husband Tony Potter met when they both worked at the Auckland Star newspaper. After they married, she left the newspaper to work for a film company where she learned the art of dialogue. After the birth of her sons, Simon and Ben, she was a freelance scriptwriter for documentaries. It was soon after that she decided to try her hand at writing the romance fiction she dearly loved.
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She and her husband still live in the home they bought in Auckland shortly after their marriage. -
Lucy Monroe
I write spicy romance books that end in an HEA. Contemporary romance, historical romance, paranormal romance…I write it all. The two things my books all have in common is lots of emotion and spice. Last year, I fell in love with a new subgenre: mafia romance. Since I write what I love to read, I started a new standalone series, Syndicate Rules where you’ll meet over the top alpha heroes in the Italian and Greek mafias as well as the Irish mob. There are arranged marriages, forced marriages, enemies to lovers, stalkers, forced proximity and lots of mafia intrigue. Morally gray is my new favorite color.
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Follow me on BookBub for alerts on my next release: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lucy-...
I’ve been published a while and most of my 90+ boo -
Margaret Pargeter
Margaret Pargeter was a popular writer of 50 romance novels in Mills & Boon from 1975 to 1986.
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Betty Neels
Evelyn Jessy "Betty" Neels was born on September 15, 1910 in Devon to a family with firm roots in the civil service. She said she had a blissfully happy childhood and teenage years.(This stood her in good stead later for the tribulations to come with the Second World War). She was sent away to boarding school, and then went on to train as a nurse, gaining her SRN and SCM, that is, State Registered Nurse and State Certificate of Midwifery.
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In 1939 she was called up to the Territorial Army Nursing Service, which later became the Queen Alexandra Reserves, and was sent to France with the Casualty Clearing Station. This comprised eight nursing sisters, including Betty, to 100 men! In other circumstances, she thought that might have been quite thr -
Emma Darcy
Emma Darcy is the pseudonym created by the married writing team of Wendy (1940-2020) and Frank Brennan (1936-1995). Their life journey has taken as many twists and turns as the characters in their stories, whose international popularity has resulted in over sixty-million book sales. With more than a hundred titles, Emma Darcy appeared regularly on the Waldenbooks bestseller lists in the U.S.A. and in the Nielson BookScan Top 100 chart in the U.K.
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Wendy was born 28 November 1940 in Australia. Her sister was the novelist Maureen Mary (Miranda Lee). Her father was a country school teacher and brilliant sportsman. Her mother was a talented dressmaker. She obtained an Honours degree in Latin and initially worked as a high school English/French te -
Lynne Graham
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Lynne Graham was born on July 30, 1956 of Irish-Scottish parentage. She has livedin Northern Ireland all her life. She grew up in a seaside village with herbrother. She learnt to read at the age of 3, and haven't stopped since then.
Lynne first met her husband when she was 14. At 15, she wrote her firstbook, but it was rejected everywhere. Lynne married after she completed adegree at Edinburgh University. She started writing again when she was athome with her first child. It took several attempts before she sold herfirst book in 1987 and the delight of seeing that first book for sale in thelocal newsagents has never b -
Charlotte Lamb
Sheila Ann Mary Coates Holland
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aka Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, Charlotte Lamb, Sheila Lancaster, Victoria Woolf, Laura Hardy
Sheila Ann Mary Coates was born on 1937 in Essex, England, just before the Second World War in the East End of London. As a child, she was moved from relative to relative to escape the bombings of World War II. Sheila attended the Ursuline Convent for Girls. On leaving school at 16, the convent-educated author worked for the Bank of England as a clerk. Sheila continued her education by taking advantage of the B of E's enormous library during her lunch breaks and after work. She later worked as a secretary for the BBC. While there, she met and married Richard Holland, a political reporter. A voracious reader of romanc -
Michelle Reid
Hi, my name is Michelle Reid and I’ve been writing for Harlequin Mills & Boon for the last twenty years, and the crazy part about it is that I only realised it had been twenty years while updating this page!
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So, hang on for a minute while I take this huge milestone in....
Twenty years with almost forty books published or in the pipeline ... I know it isn’t a great average when compared with some authors but it sounds pretty good to me!
So what was I doing twenty years ago before I wrote books? Well, I did the all of the usual things, like growing up and attending school, finishing at secretarial college, which I hated, then spent the next several years wandering aimlessly from job to job. Eventually I met my husband, we married and produced tw -
Carole Mortimer
I have written almost 250 romance novels in contemporary and Regency.
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I am a USA Today Bestselling Author and recipient of the 2015 RWA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014 I received a Pioneer of Romance Award from Romantic Times in the US and in 2012 I was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II for my 'outstanding service to literature'.
I am very happily married to Peter with six sons, and live on the Isle of Man -
Jacqueline Baird
Jacqueline Baird was born on the 1st of April at home in a small village Northumbria, England, UK, where she raised. She went to the local village school, and later an all-girls' grammar school where she passed the University of Oxford General Certificate of Education in various subjects. On leaving school she joined the civil service in the then Post Office department.
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She met her husband Jim, when she was only eighteen. Eight years later, after working as a hotel receptionist in a five-star hotel in Scotland and traveling abroad for a few years, she came home and married him. They still live in Northumbria and have two grown sons.
Her number one love is writing. She has always been an avid reader, and she had her first success as a writer a -
Amanda Carpenter
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Amanda Carpenter (aka Thea Harrison) resides in northern California. She wrote her first book, a romance, when she was nineteen and had sixteen romances published under the name Amanda Carpenter.
She took a break from writing to collect a couple of graduate degrees and a grown child. Her graduate degrees are in Philanthropic Studies and Library Information Science, but her first love has always been writing fiction. She's back with her paranormal Elder Races series under the pseudonym Thea Harrison. -
Yvonne Whittal
Yvonne Whittal was born and raised in South Africa, the setting of most of her romances. She started writing stories at a young age, but didn't really get serious about writing until after she married and had children. She got many rejection letters from publishers, until a friend who loved romances gave her to encouragement to continue.
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Diana Hamilton
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Diana Hamilton was born in a English town. Wanting to be a country child, her imagination came into play at an early age, transforming a neighbor’s tree into a forest, a hole in a stone wall into a gingerbread house, a gas puddle into a fairyland, complete with mountains, lakes and flower meadows. She loathed housework but made to do her share, to lessen the boredom, she told herself stories, in a very loud voice, featuring princesses and flower gardens, discovering that telling herself stories was almost as good as reading them in a book.
She loathed school with an equal passion and got through it by pretending to be somewhere else. Even so she left grammar -
Elizabeth Power
Following in her father's footsteps, Elizabeth Power wanted to be a writer from a very early age. Once she realised that copying Rupert Bear stories word for word from her albums wasn't really the thing to do, she was on her way!
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By the age of fourteen, Elizabeth had produced her first full-length novel—alas! never published—and by the age of fifteen her teenage years meant life was so full that all literary ambitions became somewhat overshadowed.
Married in her early twenties, Elizabeth found that the needs of the home became her priority. Despite the ever present nagging little voice in her conscience that constantly reminded her of those unfulfilled writing ambitions, the creativity had stopped.
A few weeks before her thirtieth birthday, -
Essie Summers
Essie Summers was a New Zealand author who wrote so vividly of the people and landscape of her native country that she was offered The Order Of the British Empire for her contributions to New Zealand tourism.
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Ethel Snelson Summers was born on on July 24, 1912 to a newly-emigrated couple, Ethel Snelson and Edwin Summers, situated in Bordesley Street in Christchurch, Essie was always proud of both her British heritage and her New Zealand citizenship. Both her parents were exceptional storytellers, and this, combined with her early introduction to the Anne of Green Gables stories, engendered in her a life-long fascination with the craft of writing and the colorful legacy of pioneers everywhere.
Leaving school at 14 when her father's butcher shop -
Mary Spencer
This author also writes under the name Susan Spencer Paul.
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When I was a senior in high school, everyone in my graduating class was asked to fill out a questionnaire supposing where we'd be in ten years' time, what we'd be doing and what our accomplishments would be. I put down that I would be a published author and have written the Great American Novel. I was joking, of course, but I really did want to be a writer. Unfortunately, it was ten years before I actually got the opportunity to put pen to paper, after the birth of my first daughter. I had given up my job as a secretary to be a stay-at-home-mom, and found the long hours of baby sleep time to be a big change from my former busy days. To pass the time and break my increasing addiction -
Sara Seale
Sara Seale was the pseudonym used by Mary Jane MacPherson (d. 11 March 1974) and/or A.D.L. MacPherson (d. 30 October 1978), a British writing team who published over 45 romance novels from 1932 to 1971. Seale was one of the first Mills & Boon's authors published in Germany and the Netherlands, and reached the pinnacle of her career in the 1940s and 1950s, when they earning over £3,000/year. Many of Seale's novels revisited a theme of an orphaned heroine who finds happiness, and also employed blind or disfigured (but still handsome) heroes as standard characters.
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Mary Jane MacPherson began writing at an early age while still in her convent school. Besides being a writer, MacPherson was also a leading authority on Alsatian dogs, and was a judg -
Lindsay Armstrong
Gillian Smith (alias Lindsay Armstrong) was born in South Africa. She grew up with three ambitions: to become a writer, to travel the world, and to be a game ranger. She didn't achieve the last one, but her fascination for wildlife and that special something about Africa and its big game still remains with her. When she went to work it was in travel, at an agency and an airline, and this started her on the road to seeing the world.
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Lindsey met her New Zealand-born husband, who had been working in West Africa, when he was on his way home through Johannesburg. He did go home but in a matter of weeks he was back in South Africa, and six months later they were married. Three of their five children were born in South Africa. Then one in London an -
Susan Barrie
One of many pseudonyms used by Ida Julia Pollock, née Crowe.
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Mrs. Pollack was a British writer of several short-stories and 125 romance novels that were published under her married name and under a number of different pseudonyms: Joan M. Allen; Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Averil Ives, Anita Charles, Barbara Rowan, Jane Beaufort, Rose Burghley, Mary Whistler and Marguerite Bell. She has sold millions of copies over her 90-year career. She has been referred to as the "world's oldest novelist" who was still active at 105 and continued writing until her death.
Ida and her husband, Lt Colonel Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO (1888–1971), a veteran of war and Winston Churchill's collaborator and editor, had a daughter, Rosemary Pollock, who is also a ro -
Lilian Warren
Lilian Warren aka Rosalind Brett, Kathryn Blair, Katrina Britt, and Celine Conway.
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Lilian Warren was born in London, England, UK. She worked as secretary, when at 19, her first magazine story was accepted. She married and moved to South Africa, where she continued writing. In the 1950s, she started to write to Rich & Cowan, and later to Mills & Boon, under various pseudonyms Rosalind Brett, Celine Conway, and Kathryn Blair. She passed away on 1961 in South Africa. Some of her books were published posthumuously. -
Isobel Chace
Elizabeth Mary Teresa de Guise, née Hunter on 24 October 1934 in Nairobi, Kenya. She spent much of her years in Kenya and South Africa, and studied at the Open University. Her brother Alexander also wrote Western novels. After their parents' divorce, she and her sister, decided change their surname by de Guise.
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Elizabeth wrote under the pseudonym of Isobel Chace, and under her real names: Elizabeth Hunter and Elizabeth de Guise. She was a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Elizabeth passed away in May 2005, at 70. -
Amanda Carpenter
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Amanda Carpenter (aka Thea Harrison) resides in northern California. She wrote her first book, a romance, when she was nineteen and had sixteen romances published under the name Amanda Carpenter.
She took a break from writing to collect a couple of graduate degrees and a grown child. Her graduate degrees are in Philanthropic Studies and Library Information Science, but her first love has always been writing fiction. She's back with her paranormal Elder Races series under the pseudonym Thea Harrison. -
Jane Donnelly
Jane Donnelly began earning her living as a writer as a teenage reporter. When she married the editor of the newspaper she freelanced for women's mags for a while. After she was widowed she and her 5 year old daughter moved to Lancashire. She turned to writing fiction to make a living while still caring for her daughter, she sold her first Mills & Boon romance novel as a hard-up singleparent in 1965. She wrote over 60 romance novels for Mills & Boon until 2000. Now she lives in a roses-round-the door cottage near Stratford-upon-Avon, with four dogs and assorted rescued animals. Besides writing she enjoys travelling, swimming, walking and the company of friends.
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Dorothy Cork
As an author for Mills and Boon and later for Harlequin Romance, Dorothy Cork wrote 38 romance novels. She was born in 1918 and is still alive. Her first book was published in 1965 and the last in 1985.
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Quite a number of her books have been translated into a diversity of languages: Japanese, Greek, Italian, French and so on.
She also wrote a number of short stories - about half of which were published in various Australian magazines. -
Sara Seale
Sara Seale was the pseudonym used by Mary Jane MacPherson (d. 11 March 1974) and/or A.D.L. MacPherson (d. 30 October 1978), a British writing team who published over 45 romance novels from 1932 to 1971. Seale was one of the first Mills & Boon's authors published in Germany and the Netherlands, and reached the pinnacle of her career in the 1940s and 1950s, when they earning over £3,000/year. Many of Seale's novels revisited a theme of an orphaned heroine who finds happiness, and also employed blind or disfigured (but still handsome) heroes as standard characters.
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Mary Jane MacPherson began writing at an early age while still in her convent school. Besides being a writer, MacPherson was also a leading authority on Alsatian dogs, and was a judg -
Lilian Warren
Lilian Warren aka Rosalind Brett, Kathryn Blair, Katrina Britt, and Celine Conway.
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Lilian Warren was born in London, England, UK. She worked as secretary, when at 19, her first magazine story was accepted. She married and moved to South Africa, where she continued writing. In the 1950s, she started to write to Rich & Cowan, and later to Mills & Boon, under various pseudonyms Rosalind Brett, Celine Conway, and Kathryn Blair. She passed away on 1961 in South Africa. Some of her books were published posthumuously. -
Essie Summers
Essie Summers was a New Zealand author who wrote so vividly of the people and landscape of her native country that she was offered The Order Of the British Empire for her contributions to New Zealand tourism.
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Ethel Snelson Summers was born on on July 24, 1912 to a newly-emigrated couple, Ethel Snelson and Edwin Summers, situated in Bordesley Street in Christchurch, Essie was always proud of both her British heritage and her New Zealand citizenship. Both her parents were exceptional storytellers, and this, combined with her early introduction to the Anne of Green Gables stories, engendered in her a life-long fascination with the craft of writing and the colorful legacy of pioneers everywhere.
Leaving school at 14 when her father's butcher shop -
Mary Spencer
This author also writes under the name Susan Spencer Paul.
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When I was a senior in high school, everyone in my graduating class was asked to fill out a questionnaire supposing where we'd be in ten years' time, what we'd be doing and what our accomplishments would be. I put down that I would be a published author and have written the Great American Novel. I was joking, of course, but I really did want to be a writer. Unfortunately, it was ten years before I actually got the opportunity to put pen to paper, after the birth of my first daughter. I had given up my job as a secretary to be a stay-at-home-mom, and found the long hours of baby sleep time to be a big change from my former busy days. To pass the time and break my increasing addiction -
Susan Barrie
One of many pseudonyms used by Ida Julia Pollock, née Crowe.
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Mrs. Pollack was a British writer of several short-stories and 125 romance novels that were published under her married name and under a number of different pseudonyms: Joan M. Allen; Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Averil Ives, Anita Charles, Barbara Rowan, Jane Beaufort, Rose Burghley, Mary Whistler and Marguerite Bell. She has sold millions of copies over her 90-year career. She has been referred to as the "world's oldest novelist" who was still active at 105 and continued writing until her death.
Ida and her husband, Lt Colonel Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO (1888–1971), a veteran of war and Winston Churchill's collaborator and editor, had a daughter, Rosemary Pollock, who is also a ro -
Joyce Dingwell
Enid Joyce Owen Dingwell, née Starr, was born on 1908 in Ryde, New South Wales, Australia. She wrote, as Joyce Dingwell and Kate Starr, 80 romance novels for Mills & Boon from 1931 to 1986. She was the first Australian writer living in Australia to be published by Mills & Boon. Her novel The House in the Timberwood (1959), was made into a motion picture, The Winds of Jarrah (1983). Her work was particularly notable for its use of the Australian land, culture, and people. She passed away on 2 August 1997 in Kincumber, New South Wales.
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Margery Hilton
Margery Hilton and her husband worked in the theater and in wasn't until she had to retire from her job due to a back injury, which also prevented her from doing any housework. So she had time to settle down to serious writing.
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Vanessa James
aka Sally Beauman
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Sally Kinsey-Miles graduated from Girton College, Cambridge (MA in English Literature) She married Christopher Beauman an economist. After graduating, she moved with her husband to the USA, where she lived for three years, first in Washington DC, then New York, and travelled extensively. She began her career as a journalist in America, joining the staff of the newly launched New York magazine, of which she became associate editor, and continued to write for it after her return to England. Interviewed Alan Howard for the Telegraph Magazine in 1970 in an article called 'A Fellow of Most Excellent Fancy'. (Daily Telegraph Supplement, May 29th.) Apparently a very long interview. The following year they met again, and the rest i -
Barbara Rowan
One of many pseudonyms used by Ida Julia Pollock, née Crowe.
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Mrs. Pollack was a British writer of several short-stories and 125 romance novels that were published under her married name and under a number of different pseudonyms: Joan M. Allen; Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Averil Ives, Anita Charles, Barbara Rowan, Jane Beaufort, Rose Burghley, Mary Whistler and Marguerite Bell. She has sold millions of copies over her 90-year career. She has been referred to as the "world's oldest novelist" who was still active at 105 and continued writing until her death.
Ida and her husband, Lt Colonel Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO (1888–1971), a veteran of war and Winston Churchill's collaborator and editor, had a daughter, Rosemary Pollock, who is also a ro -
Esther Wyndham
Mary Lutyens (pseudonym Esther Wyndham; 31 July 1908 – 9 April 1999) was a British author who is principally known for her biographical works on the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti.
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Roumelia Lane
Kay Green
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aka Roumelia Lane, Florissa May, Guy Granger, Katie Kent, Harley Davis
Kay Green was born on 31 December 1927 in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, UK. On 1 October 1949, she married Gavin Frederick Green, they had a son and a daughter. -
Margot Early
Master storyteller Margot Early has known from a very young age that she was born into her vocation. Storytelling has been part of her life since she was a child—whether plotting Nancy Drew cases in the basement of Palo Alto, California’s historic Squire House, pretending to live in trees (while climbing them) or tapping the keys of an ancient manual typewriter, writing stories to share with friends.
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One of her most vivid and joyful childhood memories is when she realized she could read and interrupted a bridge party to display her knowledge. A writer from the age of nine or ten, she has always had an audience—her friends, sisters and parents listening to what she wrote.
A friend and fellow journalist once told her that she was a circle—perfe -
Lilian Peake
Lilian Margaret Peake was born on 25 May 1924 in London, England, UK. During the World War II, she moved to the countryside.
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Her early ambition was to be a journalist, and she ended up working at various newspapers and magazines around England. She also married and started a family, and eventually she decided start to writing romance novels. She wrote over 65 romance novels for Mills & Boon from 1971 to 1996 as Lilian Peake.
Lilian passed away in 27 May 1997. -
Elizabeth Graham
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
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Elizabeth Graham (1):
E. Schattner wrote as Elizabeth Graham and Emma Church. -
Doris E. Smith
Doris Edna Elliott was born on 12 August 1919 in Dulbin, Ireland. Educated at Alexandra College, Dublin. From 1938 worked for an Dublin's insurance group. As Doris E. Smith was the author of over 20 gothic and romance novels from 1966 to 1982. In 1969, her novel Comfort and Keep won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by Romantic Novelists Association.
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