Authors

Belinda Bauer is a British writer of crime novels. She grew up in England and South Africa and her debut novel Blacklands earned her the British Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger award for the best crime novel of 2010. Both Blacklands and her second novel Darkside (2011) are set in the village of Shipcott, on Exmoor, in north Devon, England. Both have been translated into several languages.Finders Keepers is Belinda Bauer's third novel, also set in the tiny village of Shipcott. The book was released in the UK on January 5, 2012, and in the USA on February 28, 2012.Bauer is a former journalist and screenwriter, having won the Carl Foreman BAFTA for her screenplay The Locker Room.

Alastair Preston Reynolds is a British science fiction author. He specialises in dark hard science fiction and space opera. He spent his early years in Cornwall, moved back to Wales before going to Newcastle, where he read physics and astronomy. Afterwards, he earned a PhD from St Andrews, Scotland. In 1991, he moved to Noordwijk in the Netherlands where he met his wife Josette (who is from France). There, he worked for the European Space Research and Technology Centre, part of the European Space Agency, until 2004 when he left to pursue writing full time. He returned to Wales in 2008 and lives near Cardiff.

Tim Lebbon is a horror and dark fantasy writer, and a judge at the 2005 World Fantasy Convention. Lebbon was born in London. His short story "Reconstructing Amy" won the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction in 2001 and his novel Dusk won the 2007 August Derleth Award from the British Fantasy Society for best novel of the year. His novelisation of the movie 30 Days of Night became a New York Times bestseller and won a Scribe Award in 2008. Tim lived in Devon until he was eight and then in Newport until the age of 26. He now lives in Goytre, Monmouthshire with his wife and two children. His short story "Pay the Ghost" is re-written from Dan Kay in a screenbook for an Sidney Kimmel Entertainment film.

Julian Stockwin is an author of historical action-adventure fiction. Born in 1944, Stockwin soon developed a love for the sea. Having an uncle, Tom Clay, who was a seaman in square-rigged ships and had sailed around Cape Horn in the Cutty Sark, the sea was in his blood.

After grammar school, his father sent him to sea-training school at Indefatigable at age 14. He joined the Royal Navy at 15 and transferred to the Royal Australian Navy when his family emigrated Stockwin served eight years, and was eventually rated petty officer. Stockwin attended the University of Tasmania to read Far Eastern studies and psychology. He did post-graduate work in cross-cultural psychology. He got involved in the manufacture and design of computers and software development. Returning to the navy and the Royal Navy Reserve, Stockwin was honoured with an MBE and retired as Lt Commander.

James Aitcheson was born in Wiltshire and studied History at Emmanuel college, Cambridge, graduating in 2006. He has a special interest in the medieval period, particularly in Anglo-Saxon England and the political upheavals of the eleventh century. It was his final-year dissertation on King Harold and the Norman Conquest that formed the inspiration for his current novel, Tancred.

Amanda Brookfield was born in London. She was educated at Godolphin School in Wiltshire and University College, Oxford, from where she graduated with a First Class Honours degree in English in 1982. After working in advertising for three years she accompanied her husband on a posting to Buenos Aires where she worked as a freelance journalist and wrote her first novel. She now lives in London with her husband where she divides her time between writing and looking after their two sons.

Priscilla Masters is the author of more than twenty crime novels and works part time as a respiratory nurse in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Initially published by Pan Macmillan she then moved to Allison&Busby before finally settling with Severn House who have just published Frozen Charlotte, third in the Martha Gunn series. She has two sons and two grandsons and lives on the Staffordshire/Shropshire border.

Chrisse Manby grew up in Gloucester. She attended the High School for Girls. Otherwise known as Denmark Road in the city centre. She published her first story in Just Seventeen when she was fourteen years old. Chrissie is now a Best-selling author of 25 books.

Simon Brett born in Worcester Park, Surrey, England) is a prolific writer of whodunnits. The son of a chartered surveyor, he was educated at Dulwich College and Wadham College, Oxford, where he got a first-class honours degree in English. He then joined the BBC as a trainee and worked for BBC Radio and London Weekend Television before devoting most of his time to writing from the late 1970s. He is married with three children and lives in Arundel, West Sussex, England. He is the current president of the Detection Club.