Daniela I. Norris is a former diplomat and political writer, turned inspirational author and speaker.

Her award-winning fiction and non-fiction is published in magazines and anthologies and her recent books include On Dragonfly Wings (2014), Collecting Feathers: Tales from the Other Side (2014) and her trilogy of historical novels Recognitions (2016), Premonitions (2019) and Precognitions (2020). She also co-authored From Last to First – a parent’s guide to Fencing success (Changemakers Books). Her latest YA Historical novel – The King of Montréal – is out from Lodestone Books in 2025.

Susan Stokes-Chapman was born in 1985 and grew up in the historic Georgian city of Lichfield, Staffordshire. She studied for four years at Aberystwyth University, graduating with a BA in Education & English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing.

Her debut novel Pandora was published in the UK in January 2022, becoming an instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller. A loose reinterpretation of the Greek myth Pandora’s Box set in Georgian London, it tells the story of aspiring jewellery artist Dora Blake and her encounter with an ancient vase that her tyrannical uncle is desperately keen to keep a secret. The novel was shortlisted for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award 2023, and was also previously shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Bath Novel Award, both in 2020. Her second novel The Shadow Key – a Gothic tale set against the mysterious Welsh landscape of 1783 – was released in the UK in April 2024, and a festive short story collection in the vein of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer was released in September 2025.

 

Jacquie Rogers grew up in Australia, and now lives in the UK. She had careers in advertising and academia before discovering writing suits her best. Her first Roman Britain historical mystery series, the Quintus Valerius series, begins with  The Governor’s Man , followed by The Carnelian Phoenix and The Loyal Centurion.

Her new Otto Cornelius Roman mystery series is published by Sapere Books from 2025.

Linked short stories are ‘Wolves of Viroconium’ in anthology Imperium published November 2021, and ‘Fool’s Gold’ in anthology Triumphs and Tragedies published March 2023.

Jacquie lives in the Malvern Hills of England with her husband Peter. She loves to travel by motorbike, and enjoys discussing politics, travel and books with friends. She admits to spending a fair bit of time in pubs and cafes. She blogs at jacquierogers.substack.com

I am a historian of early modern piracy, Colonial America, the Atlantic World, and maritime history. I earned my PhD from King’s College London in 2017. My dissertation, entitled: “The Crimes of Piracy and its Punishment: The Performance of Maritime Supremacy in the British Atlantic World, 1670 – 1830,” examines British maritime and legal supremacy in its early American colonies in regards to maritime piracy. I use the public executions of pirates in London and the Americas as my narrative to see how the colonists reacted to increased legal restrictions by British authorities, which ultimately led to new ideas of autonomy. I have been published in History Today, BBC History Revealed, Aeon-Psyche, and Truly*Adventurous. I have appeared on podcasts such as You’re Dead To Me, History Hit with Dan Snow, and History Extra among others. I have been a featured historian in BBC4’s Britain’s Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates, and Rogues, History Channel’s The Curse of Oak Island and Beyond Oak Island along, and Netflix’s docu-series The Lost Pirate Kingdom. My first book, Why We Love Pirates: The Hunt for Captain Kidd and How He Changed Piracy Forever was published in 2020 and my next book, Pirate Queens: The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read will be out in the first half of 2022.

After graduating in Spanish and French, Chris Lloyd lived in Catalonia, where he worked in educational publishing and as a travel writer. More recently, he worked as a Catalan and Spanish translator. He has also lived in Grenoble, researching the French Resistance movement.

He writes the Occupation series, featuring Eddie Giral, a French police detective in Paris under Nazi rule. The first book in the series, The Unwanted Dead, won the HWA Gold Crown Award for best historical novel of the year, was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award and was Waterstone’s Welsh Book of the Month. The second, Paris Requiem, was a Sunday Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2023. Third in the series, Banquet of Beggars, was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award. The fourth book, The Art of Occupation, is published in May 2026.

He has also written a trilogy set in present-day Girona, in Catalonia, featuring Elisenda Domènech, a police officer in the devolved Catalan police force. The head of an experimental Serious Crime Unit, she fights the worst of human excesses in the most beautiful of settings

Chris lives in a seaside town in his native Wales with his wife, a jewellery designer. When he’s not writing or trying to keep up with his reading pile, he loves losing himself in European cities, languages, red wine, old movies, rock music, Euro-crime TV series and – recently, thanks to Eddie – 1920s to 1940s French jazz. He is a member of Crime Cymru, a co-operative of crime fiction writers with a connection to Wales, and was part of the team that brought the country’s first international crime fiction festival to Aberystwyth, in 2023.

 

Frances is the author of three historical novels, The Smallest Man, That Bonesetter Woman and The Lost Passenger. She grew up in Forest Gate, East London and studied English at King’s College, Cambridge, realising too late that the course would require more than lying around reading novels for three years. After snatching a degree from the jaws of laziness, she became a journalist, writing for magazines including Prima, Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Weekly, and later branched out into copywriting, producing words for everything from Waitrose pizza packaging to the Easyjet in-flight brochure.

Frances wanted to be a writer since she was about six, but she has a gift for procrastination and her first novel, The Smallest Man, was published when she was 57. It’s inspired by the true story of Jeffrey Hudson, a boy with dwarfism who was given to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, as a sort of human pet, but became a loyal and trusted friend through the turbulent years of the English Civil War. It’s been called ‘the feelgood historical novel of the year.’

Her second novel, That Bonesetter Woman, was also inspired by a real historical character: Crazy Sally Mapp, who defied convention to become a successful bonesetter in Georgian London. Sally’s fictional counterpart in the novel, Endurance Proudfoot, shares some of her adventures, and has a few more of her own.

Frances’ latest novel is The Lost Passenger, and is set in Edwardian England, the tenements of New York – and on board the Titanic. It’s due to be published in February 2025.

Frances lives in Hove, with her husband and three Tonkinese cats.