Anna Legat is best known for her crime thrillers and murder mysteries. Her debut novel, Life Without Me – a flamboyant mash-up of satire, suspense and magic realism – was released in 2015 (Accent Press). Her flint-sharp DI Gillian Marsh detective series and her deceptively charming cosy mysteries The Shires followed, published by Headline.

Murder isn’t the only thing on Anna’s mind. She has always been a closet time traveller and recently resolved to turn her hand to writing historical fiction. In 2023, Buried in the Past, her first historical novel was published by Sharpe Books. Set in Nazi-occupied Poland, it is the story of two young men from the same community, yet of very diverse backgrounds, caught in the atrocities of the brutal occupation whilst trying to navigate the confusing landscape of the retreating Nazis and the advancing Red Army.

Anna’s second historical novel, The Queen’s Avenger, is scheduled for release in May 2024. It revisits the tragic story of Mary Queen of Scots from an unorthodox angle. It is narrated by Ninian Winzet, Mary’s confessor and guardian. He is also a zealous and uncompromising defender of Catholicism in Scotland. When his queen is charged with the murder of her husband, Ninian embarks on a mission to unmask the real regicides and to exact his own justice upon them.

The themes of murder, suspense and shady political machinations will return in Anna’s historical crime series, A Case for Copernicus, set in Renaissance Europe at the turn of the XV century. The first case should be solved by mid-2025.

Anna read European political history when studying for her law degree. Apart from writing, she has been making a living as a lawyer, a teacher, a silver-service waitress and a librarian (not all at the same time). She has lived in far-flung places but has now settled in a small town near the historical city of Bath.

Sarah Bax Horton is an award-winning true crime writer and historical biographer. She read English and Modern Languages at Somerville College, University of Oxford. Fascinated by genealogy, her discovery of a Whitechapel police ancestor inspired her to write the non-fiction re-examination of the Jack the Ripper case One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper published in August 2023 by Michael O’Mara Books. Her second book Arm of Eve: Investigating the Thames Torso Murders was published in October 2024 by The History Press and won the RBAM ‘Jack the Ripper’ Book of the Year 2024.

Katie Daysh is an author of historical fiction. Her books explore the voices of queer characters in spaces where they are often underrepresented. The sea is a central theme in her stories.

She is the author of the Nightingale/Courtney queer naval adventure series: Leeward, longlisted for the HWA Debut Awards 2024, The Devil to Pay, overall winner of the Isle of Wight Book Awards 2025, and A Merciful Sea, named as part of The Times’ Best Historical Fiction 2025.

She is represented by Francesca Riccardi at Kate Nash Literary Agency.

Florence Olajide was born in London to Nigerian parents. She spent the first six years of her life privately fostered by a white family before moving to Nigeria with her birth family. As an adult, she moved with her own family back to London, where she continued her career in teaching, becoming first, the headteacher of an inner London primary school and later, one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools.

Florence’s memoir, Coconut detailing the challenges of growing up labelled ‘Òyìnbó’ (white) in her Black extended family, was published by Thread Books in 2021. Her first historical fiction novel, The Stolen Daughter, set in the 1880s Yorubaland (in present day southwest Nigeria) at the dawn of colonisation, was published by Bookouture in 2024. Florence lives in Kent with her husband.

Anya Bergman is the internationally bestselling author of THE WITCHES OF VARDØ and THE TAROT READER OF VERSAILLES both published by Manilla Press.

Described as ‘powerful, deeply moving’ THE WITCHES OF VARDØ  was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2023 and named a Sunday Times Historical Fiction Book of 2023.

THE TAROT READER OF VERSAILLES – ‘[A] propulsive epic in the company of two extraordinary women’ (Daily Mail) was published in hardback in June 2025, and named book of the summer by Ireland AM VMTV. The paperback is published in February 2026.

Anya has also published twelve novels under her real name Noelle Harrison, as well as the VALENTINA trilogy under the pen name Evie Blake, and has been translated in over fourteen different languages worldwide.

She possesses a doctorate in Creative Writing and is Programme Leader of Edinburgh Napier University’s Global Online Master’s in Genre Fiction.

Her next novel MARIAN OF SHERWOOD will be published by Firefinch Publishing in 2027.