Avon Authors

Writing Her Hidden Life

As I point out in my Author’s Note for the book, the idea for Her Hidden Life came from an Associated Press article published in April 2013. The true story of a woman, Margot Woelk, who tasted Adolf Hitler’s food to protect him from poisoning captured my imagination and spurred… Read More

Researching an Orphan’s War

When Avon suggested I write a series of novels set in Liverpool in a Dr Barnardo’s orphanage in the Second World War I was filled with trepidation. The last bit was fine – I’ve always been very interested in that period, and had done loads of research for one of… Read More

The Importance of Flowers

Before writing The Memories of Us, my relationship with flowers was probably not dissimilar to that of most people—I considered them beautiful, loved receiving them and enjoyed buying them for loved ones on special occasions. However, I had given very little thought to where our fresh blooms come from or… Read More

How to Have an Adventure at Any Age

I have so enjoyed reading recent reviews of my debut novel, A Grand Old Time, and there seems to be a couple of recurring themes from these early readers that make my heart rejoice. One is that my feisty, mischievous heroine, Evie Gallagher, is celebrated for going off on a… Read More

Ten Points About Guilt

  A brief summary. My psychological thriller Guilt begins with a stabbing, leaving one twin sister dead, and the other accused of her murder. After the opening scene, past and present story arcs are intermingled, gradually revealing the reason for the fight and, at the crescendo of the book, the… Read More

How real crime inspired The Rebel

  There’s been an alarming increase in fatal gun and knife attacks across London. Most of victims are young people and many of the killings are gang-related. But this surge in extreme violence is clearly a trend that poses a threat to everyone, young or old, male or female. And… Read More

Life in Devon

In 2015 we sold our house in Cheltenham to someone who was moving out of London. She declared it absolutely perfect (and then spent the first year knocking seven bells and several walls out of it.) Devon has more thatched houses than just about any other county and we were… Read More

MJ Ford on his writing journey to Hold My Hand

First off, I think I’ve been pretty lucky with my journey into writing. I started out as an editor of children’s non-fiction, almost straight out of university, with an English and Classics degree and little idea what to do with it. I was fortunate that the opportunity arose to write a book… Read More

Joining Avon as a digital-first author

When my agent, Anne Williams, phoned me to say that Avon was interested in my first novel, Saving Sophie, I was driving to pick up my sons and had to pull over to take the call. I remember that moment with absolute clarity, but because of my excitement and being… Read More

Why our authors love Avon

Here at Avon Books UK we count ourselves lucky to have some absolutely incredible authors on our list. We publish a variety of genres so we have a wide range of authors who’ve signed book deals with us, both male and females. Of course we’re by no means perfect –… Read More

Writing as Ellen Berry

Hello! It’s lovely to be here, on the shiny new Avon website. As an author, I have been with Avon for several years now, and have written seven romantic comedy novels under my own name. However, a couple of years ago I had an urge to write something slightly different,… Read More

Claudia’s Book Deal Moment

Like a lot of authors, for about as long as I can remember, I’d been scribbling down stories and embarrassingly rough drafts for novels. But then like most people, I just assumed that book deals were something that happened to other people so I’d just shove what I’d written into… Read More

Why I Write Crime

Writing crime is something I thought I would never do. I first started penning contemporary women’s fiction, but when I began working as a housing officer for the local authority – and also watching the British television program Shameless – I sensed a shift in what I wanted to write. Read More

My Perfect Year

As I write this, my second book – Perfect Prey – is 20 days from publication. My debut crime novel was released in January and I’m currently editing book three. So it’s been a busy year, to put it mildly. What’s odd is that I’m so much more excited about… Read More

Paul Finch and Ash Cameron undercover

I’m pretty sure soon there’ll be a medical term for crime-fiction addiction. The nation is seriously suffering. If you too can’t get enough then let us turn your attention to this brilliant podcast by Sunday Times Bestseller, Paul Finch, whose latest book Strangers wowed critics everywhere, with Peter… Read More