Norman Russell

Hello, reader! I hope that all's well with you. I am a graduate of Oxford and London universities, with the degrees of MA and PhD respectively. I served abroad in several regiments of the British Army before training as a teacher, and spending a very happy 26 years as Head of English in a comprehensive school in Liverpool UK. After accepting early retirement, I began a new career as an author, and to date I have had twenty novels published. My current publisher is the brilliant Joffe Books, who have just published the first of my Oldminster series of detective novels - more to follow!

My fiction leans towards the 'cosy' genre, though there are plenty of thrills and cunning plots to be found. I like to produce rounded characters who exist in

If you like author Norman Russell here is the list of authors you may also like

Buy books on Amazon

Total similar authors (34)

Anthea Fraser

aka Vanessa Graham

Buy books on Amazon
D.B. Borton

D. B. Borton is a Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio Wesleyan University and now a full-time writer. Specializing in humorous mysteries, she has published eleven mystery novels in two series, the Cat Caliban series (Berkley, Hilliard and Harris) and the Gilda Liberty series (Fawcett), as well as the mystery novel SMOKE (Boomerang) and the humorous science fiction novel SECOND COMING (Boomerang). Her latest mystery, BAYOU CITY BURNING (Boomerang), was published in June 2019.

A native of Houston, Texas, Borton became an ardent admirer of Nancy Drew at a young age. At the age of fourteen, she acquired her own blue roadster, trained on the freeways of Houston and the broad stretches of oil-endowed Texas highway, and began her travels.
She ha
Buy books on Amazon
Annie Adams

Annie Adams is the author of THE FINAL ARRANGEMENT, book one in The Flower Shop Mystery series. She lives with her husband, two giant dogs, and two too giant cats in Northern Utah at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains. When not writing she can be found arranging flowers or delivering them in her own Zombie Delivery Van.
Buy books on Amazon
Jean G. Goodhind

Jean G. Goodhind is a popular writer of women’s fiction, romance and comedy. For many years she owned and ran a haunted guest house on the outskirts of Bath and was one of the founder members of the Bath Hotel and Restaurant Association. Her experiences inspired the international bestselling Honey Driver series. She has won a BBC Radio award for scriptwriting. She also writes women’s fiction as Lizzie Lane and has writes a regular column for the Western Daily Press.
Buy books on Amazon
Catriona McPherson

Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories about a toff; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about an oik; and contemporary psychothriller standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comedies about a Scot-out-of-water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California.

She has won multiple Anthonys, Agathas, Leftys and Macavitys for her work and been shortlisted for an Edgar, three Mary Higgins Clark awards and a UK dagger

Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.

Buy books on Amazon
Michael Leese

Michael Leese was a senior news executive who had a ringside seat for the most extra-ordinary stories that happened during a twenty-five-year career as a British national newspaper journalist.
From the death of Princess Diana and two Gulf wars to the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11 he was leading the teams bringing the first news to a wider public. Most of his career was spent at the London Evening Standard. His time in journalism has left him with an indelible passion for news and current affairs and he tries to replicate that in his crime thriller series, Jonathan Roper investigates.
His son is profoundly autistic. It was thinking about him and how he fits into this complicated world was the inspiration for the Roper character. Who is hig
Buy books on Amazon
Joan Lock

Ex-policewoman JOAN LOCK is the author of non-fiction books and crime novels. She has been a regular contributor to the police press and the journal of the Crime Writers' Association. She has also written short stories, radio plays and radio documentaries. She lives in London.
Buy books on Amazon
Jane R. Goodall

For the primatologist, see Dame Jane Goodall.

Professor Jane Goodall (b.1951) is a researcher at the Writing and Society Research Centre of Western Sydney University, Australia.

Prof Goodall has written extensively on arts in the modern era, with a special interest in the relationship between the arts and sciences. She has taught undergraduate courses and supervised research projects in relevant areas of arts history, and has conducted local history research on the Parramatta Road. Her academic publications include Artaud and the Gnostic Drama, Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin (winner of the Australasian Drama Studies Association’s Robert Jordan Prize), and, with Christa Knellwolf, the collection Frankenstein's Science (Ashgate,
Buy books on Amazon
Margaret Mayhew

Margaret Mayhew was born in London and her earliest childhood memories were of the London Blitz. She began writing in her mid-thirties and had her first novel published in 1976. She is married to American aviation author, Philip Kaplan, and lives in Gloucestershire.
Buy books on Amazon
Faith Martin

Faith Martin is a pen name of English author Jacquie Walton, who is best known for her popular detective series, starring Detective Inspector Hillary Greene.

As Joyce Cato, she writes more classically-inspired 'cosy' murder mysteries, such as the Monica Noble mystery series.

As Maxine Barry, her latest romance novels are now available from Corazon Books.

As Jessie Daniels, her 'spooky' crime novel, The Lavender Lady Casefile came out in November 2017.
Buy books on Amazon
Rebecca Tope

Rebecca Tope is best known as the author of over twenty crime novels. She has also recently produced the e-book entitled 'The Indifference of Tumbleweed'. She has every intention of continuing with the murder stories, as well as a variety of other kinds of fiction.

She has experienced many different kinds of work in her time - running antenatal classes, counselling troubled couples and being an office girl for an undertaker, for example. There were also several years monitoring the output of dairy cows, as well as every sort of task associated with book publishing. In 1992, she founded Praxis Books, a small British press.

She lives surrounded by trees she has planted herself, tending her own sheep.
Buy books on Amazon
Judith Cutler

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.
Buy books on Amazon
Gerald Hammond

Gerald Hammond, (Gerald Arthur Douglas Hammond) son of Frederick Arthur Lucas (a physician) and Maria Birnie (a nursing sister) Hammond; married Gilda Isobel Watt (a nurse), August 20, 1952; children: Peter, David, Steven. Education: Aberdeen School of Architecture, Dip. Arch., 1952. He served in the British Army, 1944-45. Although born in Bournemouth, Hampshire, England, he worked in and retired to the country he most loved, Scotland.

He also writes under the names of Arthur Douglas and Dalby Holden. He was an architect for thirty years before retiring to write novels full-time in 1982. He has written over 50 novels since the late 1960s.

His novels center around guns, shooting, hunting, fishing, and dog training.
Buy books on Amazon
Margaret Mayhew

Margaret Mayhew was born in London and her earliest childhood memories were of the London Blitz. She began writing in her mid-thirties and had her first novel published in 1976. She is married to American aviation author, Philip Kaplan, and lives in Gloucestershire.
Buy books on Amazon
Liz Fielding

Hi, I'm Liz Fielding, and I'm a best selling contemporary romance author with more than 15 million books in print and Katie Fforde wrote, when honouring me with the Romantic Novelists' Association's Outstanding Achievement Award in 2019 said - "Liz Fielding's books, with their warmth, humour and emotion, have charmed millions of readers. She is a true star of the romantic fiction genre..."

And now I've turned to a life of crime with my first cozy mystery. Murder Among the Roses, published on 18 April 2023 - of which Katie Fforde also said, "I was gripped from beginning to end..."

Reading is a big part of my life. I love witty, contemporary romances, not too much sex,, Women's fiction by the likes of Fiona Harper, Julie Cohen, Susan Elizabeth
Buy books on Amazon
Veronica Heley

Veronica Heley has published more than fifty books, including crime fiction, historical, and children's titles. She is currently involved in the Ellie Quicke series of crime stories and a variety of other projects. A full-time writer, she has been married to a London probation officer since 1964, and has one musician daughter.

AKA Veronica Thorne

Buy books on Amazon
Priscilla Masters

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.

Priscilla Masters lives in Shropshire, England. She works part-time in Staffordshire as a practice nurse.
Buy books on Amazon
Anthea Fraser

aka Vanessa Graham

Buy books on Amazon
Pauline Rowson

Pauline Rowson is the author of twenty-nine crime novels - eighteen featuring DI Andy Horton in the Solent Murder Mystery series; four in Art Marvik mystery thrillers series, five in the 1950s set historical mysteries with Scotland Yard's Inspector Ryga, who is sent out to solve baffling coastal crimes and two standalone thrillers. All her crime novels are set against the backdrop of the ever changing sea.
Buy books on Amazon
Frances Lloyd

Frances Lloyd was born in Essex but spent a nomadic childhood being carted between RAF stations until mercifully, she was allowed a crack at a proper education in Cheltenham, studying English and Classics. As an adult, she eventually fetched up in the south west of England but by then, had become something of a wandering minstrel with no physical or spiritual roots apart from work.
Frances has always been a writer. The job that paid the mortgage was in government communications, writing speeches and other parliamentary material for some well-known politicians.
Buy books on Amazon
John Dean

John Dean is a freelance journalist who has runs his own business and draws heavily on his years as a crime reporter for newspapers and magazines to create his novels.

He is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and cites Sherlock Holmes as his all-time favorite detective. He lives in the South West of Scotland.

(Also writes under the pseudonym John Stanley)

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Buy books on Amazon
Joyce Cato

Joyce Cato is a pen name of English author Jacquie Walton. She also writes under the pen names Jessie Daniels, Faith Martin and Maxine Barry.
Buy books on Amazon
Jane A. Adams

Some of her early books were published under the name of Jane Adams. This should not be confused with this Jane Adams who is a different author.
Buy books on Amazon
Diane M. Dickson

English. Love writing - love reading. Feel very lucky and amazed to have books published.
Buy books on Amazon
Pete Brassett

Pete Brassett is the author of the best-selling series of detective novels based in and around his native Scotland featuring James Munro and Charlie West.

Following the publication of his debut novel, 'Clam Chowder at Lafayette and Spring', Pete ventured into the world of crime fiction tackling issues like PTSD, religious scandal, and manic depression with the novels 'Kiss the Girls', 'Prayer for the Dying' and 'The Girl From Kilkenny', before moving onto subject matter a little closer to home.

The forging of the Munro and West relationship begins with a fractious encounter in east London where a dissolute West, struggling with personal problems and misogynistic colleagues, is mentored by Munro who, recognising her potential, hoodwinks her in
Buy books on Amazon
P.F. Ford

Having spent most of his life trying to be what everyone else wanted him to be, P.F. (Peter) Ford was a late starter when it came to writing. He had tried writing a novel many years ago (before the advent of self-publishing), only to be turned down by every publisher he approached. It was very much a case of being told by those around him, ‘now you know you can’t write, so get back to work!’

Even at an early age, Peter felt very much like the proverbial square peg being forced into a round hole. This resulted in the creation of a Grammar School drop-out who then drifted through a succession of unfulfilling jobs, finally ending up in a totally unsuitable role which eventually sapped his energy and self-confidence. There followed a brief foray
Buy books on Amazon
Cheryl Rees-Price

Cheryl Rees-Price was born in Cardiff and moved as a Young child to a small ex-mining village on the edge of the Black Mountains, South Wales, where she still lives with her husband, daughters and two cats. After leaving school she worked as a legal clerk for several years before leaving to raise her two daughters.

Cheryl returned to education, studying philosophy, sociology and accountancy whilst working as a part time book keeper. She now works as a finance director for a company that delivers project management and accounting services.

In her spare time Cheryl indulges in her passion for writing, the success of writing plays for local performances gave her the confidence to write her first novel. Her other hobbies include walking and gard
Buy books on Amazon
Jean G. Goodhind

Jean G. Goodhind is a popular writer of women’s fiction, romance and comedy. For many years she owned and ran a haunted guest house on the outskirts of Bath and was one of the founder members of the Bath Hotel and Restaurant Association. Her experiences inspired the international bestselling Honey Driver series. She has won a BBC Radio award for scriptwriting. She also writes women’s fiction as Lizzie Lane and has writes a regular column for the Western Daily Press.
Buy books on Amazon
Catherine Moloney

I was born in Ikom, Nigeria (where my parents were missionaries) and come from a Liverpool medical family, but am not a doctor of medicine. . After graduating in Jurisprudence from Jesus College (University of Oxford), I was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn. Despite qualifying as a barrister, my first love was English; this led to a PhD in English Literature at Birkbeck College (University of London).

In my academic career, I lectured and published widely on the subject of tuberculosis and nineteenth-century literature, but somehow managed to avoid contracting galloping hypochondria and turned my attention to crime fiction.
Buy books on Amazon
Pippa McCathie

South Wales has played a big part in Pippa's life, two of her three sons were born in Swansea and she visits close friends near Newport as often as she can. Brought up in Mauritius, she's spent a lot of her life travelling, to Guernsey, London, South Africa, South Wales, Iran and back to Guernsey. She began writing in school exercise books to entertain her friends, which resulted in dubious exam results but much laughter. She's had many poems and short stories published and, once her boys had been packed off to school, started on the novels. For the last 17 years she's taught a creative writing class, and in her spare time she's worked as a volunteer with a national charity, helped run Guernsey's local Eisteddfod, and looked after a gorgeou
Buy books on Amazon
Liz Evans

Also writes as Patricia Grey
Buy books on Amazon
Maureen Carter

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.

Maureen was inspired to write Working Girls by a police pilot scheme to treat younger prostitutes as victims rather than criminals.

"It set me thinking about women on the game," she says. "What made a girl risk her health, and her life, night after night? What, if any, choice did she have? I wondered: could I combine appealing characters from this largely ignored section of society with a measure of so
Buy books on Amazon
Veronica Black

Pseudonym for Maureen Peters

Maureen Peters was born in Caernarvon, Wales, on March 3, 1935, and was married and divorced twice; she has two sons and two daughters. In addition to biographical fiction, historical romances, and mystery novels written under her own name, other noms de plume include Veronica Black, Catherine Darby, Levanah Lloyd, Belinda Grey, Elizabeth Law, Judith Rothman, and Sharon Whitby.

Said Maureen Peters about Sister Joan in an interview, "I chose a nun because they have got a lot of time on their hands. I have friends who are real nuns and they give me information on their lives, but mine’s a bit more unconventional. Every time she goes to a convent, she finds a dead body — Cornwall is littered with them."
Buy books on Amazon
D.M. Greenwood

Dr D(iane) M Greenwood described herself as "a low level ecclesiastical civil servant". Coming originally from Norfolk in England, she took a first degree in classics at Oxford, then, as a mature student, a second degree in theology at London University. She taught at various schools before working for the diocese of Rochester. She was described by an ex-pupil as "a classics teacher of terrifying erudition and eccentricity". She retired as diocesan director of education for the diocese of Rochester in 2004. She published nine Theodora Braithwaite novels between 1991 and 1999. She was last heard of living in Greenwich with her lurcher bitch.
Buy books on Amazon