Anna Normann is the pseudonym of authors Anan Singh and Natalie Normann who have been writing together in Norwegian for many years. Anan was born in northern India and had his first short story published in an Indian newspaper at fourteen. Natalie grew up on the west coast of Norway and has always been fascinated with the country’s period of occupation. She is a prolific historical romance writer in her native language, and more recently published two contemporary Norwegian-set romances in English. The Silent Resistance is their first collaboration in English.

 

Mike Hollow’s Blitz Detective mysteries are set in London in 1940-41, when the Blitz is wreaking destruction on the streets and homes of London. The bombs rain down night after night, sleep is scarce and life uncertain, but crime doesn’t stop. For Detective Inspector John Jago of the Metropolitan Police, a murder is still a murder, and justice must be done.

Mike’s interest in crime fiction was first sparked when he read Dorothy Sayers’ Golden Age classic Gaudy Night, which opened a fascinating window on a vanished world. Jago’s is a very different world, but equally remote today, and Mike loves recreating it in fiction. Readers commend the books for the depth and quality of his historical research, and the Daily Mail says, ‘His portrayal of a London battered by war is entirely convincing.’

Mike was born in West Ham, went to school in Romford, and studied Russian and French at Cambridge. After working many years for the BBC and then in the charity sector, he became a freelance copywriter, editor, journalist and translator, before embarking on a new life as a novelist. He’s married, with two children and four grandchildren, and lives in Hampshire, where he spends his days at home in his cellar, writing Blitz Detective stories.

So far there are ten books in the series, the latest being The Bloomsbury Murder, published in October 2025. Top-selling author Lee Child says, ‘This is A-grade crime fiction set during British history’s most dramatic era … thoughtful, tense, tight – and totally recommended.’

 

Fiza has been passionate about historical fiction since reading Cynthia Harnett’s The Woolpack at school. She went on to study Modern History at Keble College, Oxford, specialising in the social and political upheavals of sixteenth century Europe. After graduating from university, she worked briefly in finance and then spent the next twelve years helping the bereaved as part of her work as a complementary therapist.

Her debut novel, The Midnight Carousel, is a darkly glittering story about grief, obsession, revenge and enduring love, set in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

 

Lizzie Bentham grew up in Merseyside, England and now lives in the West Midlands with her surgeon husband and two small children. When she isn’t watching cartoons, playing with dinosaurs and making slime, she enjoys walks in the countryside, reading, flower-arranging and crocheting. In her Red Brick Mystery series, she combines her love of all things academic, with another of her passions – murder mystery novels from the golden age of crime writing. Murder In Her First Degree, Murder By The Book and Dying To Get To The Truth, have recently been published by Sharpe Books. They are set in the 1930s at different red brick universities.

 

Amanda was born in Hong Kong and survived both a convent boarding school and a Jesuit boys’ school before being summarily ejected from the latter. She gets her thirst for adventure from her parents who met in the jungle in Borneo where her mother had set up a hospital and her father, a former Gurkha Intelligence officer and Oxford-educated spy, was probably up to no good.

The Silence Before Dawn, the first in her bestselling WW2 thriller series for Bookouture was published in September 2022 and the second, Paris At First Light, in November 2022, both also to excellent reviews. The third book in the series, The Midwife’s Child, was published in May 2023, The Paris Spy’s Girl in February 2024 and if I Can Save One Child in July 2024. All of these are bestsellers and can be read as standalones. Her new dual timeline WW2/present day novel set in Cairo for was out on 25^th September 2025.

Amanda is also the author of the bestselling satirical novels Selling Out and Secret Admirer (published by Pan) which have both received critical acclaim and have been translated into several languages. Her major YA thriller trilogy, Kumari, Goddess of Gotham, was written as a tribute to her mum, who died a couple of months before

In creating Kumari, Amanda wanted to write books for young people that would reflect her own exotic childhood. Kumari was nominated for the Guardian Children’s Book Prize and the Doncaster Book Award. It featured as Redhouse Book Of The Month and Lovereading4kids Book Of The Month.

Amanda has a degree in drama and her first telly job was as a member of the Communist Resistance in ’Allo ‘Allo. This involved running around with a dachshund tucked under one arm and deploying her best cod French accent. It has all been dramatically downhill since although the experience proved invaluable for her WW2 series.

A broadcaster as well as an actress and novelist, Amanda appears regularly on BBC radio and LBC and was a contracted writer to the hit series Weekending on Radio 4. She researched and edited the leading directory for banks, The Banker’s Almanac, for Euromoney publications while also covering stories of shady dealings in the City for them.

She has written for, or contributed to, The Evening Standard, The Times, New Woman, US Cosmopolitan, Bulgaria’s Vagabond and Company Magazine as well as numerous online publications and has two non-fiction books published under a pen name.

Her non-fiction book under her own name, From Aconite to the Zodiac Killer: The Dictionary of Crime, was published by Robinson/Little Brown in July 2020 to excellent reviews. It was published as The Dictionary of True Crime in the US by Ulysses Press in May 2021.

As well as Eastern European Mafiosi and the ex-head of the KGB, Amanda numbers serving and retired Police Officers, FBI agents, members of the Special Forces and distinguished forensic scientists among her dubious but well-qualified contacts.

She has conducted a love coaching phone-in from the sofa of Richard & Judy and wooed the viewers on Channel 5 Live. She won an award at the Hungarian Gyor Film Festival for a short film she produced, a psychological thriller called Pros and Cons.

She is currently working on a number of book, TV and film projects including a psychological thriller, a political thriller and a spy series. She was elected to the board of the Crime Writers Association in 2024.

 

I grew up in Brisbane. I spent eighteen years in Japan between 1986 and 2005, with brief stints in Singapore and London. After working as a reporter in Tokyo, I spent twenty years in the financial services industry. I left that sector in 2008 and am currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).