KERRY BAILEY is a freelance journalist based in Buckinghamshire. Storybook Britain is her delightful and informative family guide to the geographical locations of favourite children's books and the places and buildings linked to them.

HELEN BLACK is the pen name of a solicitor specialising in child care cases. Damaged Goods (Avon) is the first in a series of hard-hitting crime novels featuring Lilly Valentine, a solicitor who defends a child accused of killing her own drug-addicted mother. Place of Safety (Avon) sees Lilly dealing with people trafficking, rape, and murder. www.hblack.co.uk  www.collins-crime.co.uk

S.J. BOLTON trained as an actor and dancer. Sacrifice (Bantam), her fictional debut, is a contemporary thriller in which a series of kidnaps and murders in a remote island community are linked to an ancient Shetland legend. Her engrossing second novel, Awakening (Bantam), is also set in a small community haunted by its past . www.SJBolton.com  www.booksattransworld.co.uk

DRUIN BURCH is a working doctor. Digging Up the Dead (Chatto), which received a Jerwood Award for Non-fiction, uses his own experience, combined with meticulous research, to recreate the gruesome world of 19^th-century medicine in a biography of Astley Cooper, celebrity surgeon and radical vivisectionist. His second book, Taking the Medicine (Chatto), is about our relationship with medical drugs and the ways we have learnt to understand them. www.randomhouse.co.uk

GARETH CARINS didn't think life as a quantity surveyor had enough adventure, so he joined the Foreign Legion . Diary of a Legionnaire is a thoughtful, and often humorous, inside account of a punishing training regime and the realities of jungle warfare with a legendary fighting force that still attracts recruits from all over the world.

MARTIN CONWAY is the pen name of an actor and scriptwriter whose first novel for children, Olaf the Viking (Oxford), is an epic comedy about a 12-year-old boy who gets involved in battles between the Norse gods and giants, as well as the carousing, marauding, and pillaging of his fellow humans. Olaf’s adventures continue in The Pig Who Would Be King (Oxford). www.oup.com/oxed/children

ANNA CROSBIE is a New Zealander, whose How To Publish Your Own Book (How To Books) is an indispensable guide to a growing trend. www.howtobooks.co.uk

ANDREW CULLEN is a playwright and screenwriter whose first book, From Here to Paternity (Fusion Press)is the painfully truthful travel diary of an expectant father’s journey to parenthood. www.andrewcullen.net   www.visionpaperbacks.co.uk

VANESSA CURTIS is a freelance journalist and the author of two books on Virginia Woolf. Zelah Green: Queen of Clean (Egmont), the first in a series of children’s novels, is a striking, funny, and touching record of a 14-year-old battling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Zelah Green: Dating Queen (Egmont) is the second book in this distinctive series. www.vanessacurtis.com www.egmont.co.uk

J. D. DAVIES is a leading authority on maritime history in the seventeenth century and has written the definitive work on the ships, men, and organisation of Pepys's navy. His first novel, Gentleman Captain, begins an absorbing adventure series featuring Matthew Quinton, a Royalist officer whose career spans the naval wars and great events of the Restoration age.

WILL DAVIS is an exciting new voice in fiction. His debut novel My Side of the Story (Bloomsbury) is the first-person account of a self-aware, witty teenager who has no problem with being gay – though everyone else does. Winner of the Betty Trask Prize 2007. TV rights optioned by the BBC. Will is finishing his new novel, about the participants in a tv reality show. www.bloomsbury.com

BARBARA ELSE is a distinguished New Zealand writer whose sixth novel, Wild Latitudes, is the stirring tale of a brother and sister sent from Yorkshire to Dunedin during the gold rush of 1864. It is a high-spirited combination of history, comedy, parody, and gothic adventure. www.elseware.co.nz

TRACY GILPIN is a South African media consultant whose fast-moving crime novel, Double Cross (Harlequin), features Dunai Marks, a single mother of mixed race living in contemporary Cape Town, who investigates the killing of her mentor with the help of Carl Lambrecht, a tough private detective. Tracy is working on Double Take (Harlequin), the second in this dramatic series.

MATTHEW GRANT is a BBC news journalist whose work has included on-location reporting of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wrathsville, his striking first novel, fuses elements of a high-action thriller with a satirical look at the world of tv journalism.

CORA HARRISON lives in Ireland where her two dozen children’s books are bestsellers. My Lady Judge (Macmillan), her adult debut, is the first in a series of mysteries set in 16^th-century Ireland, featuring the learned and practical Mara, a woman Brehon or investigating magistrate. The second in the series, Michaelmas Tribute (Macmillan), will appear soon, and the third, Sting of Justice (Macmillan), has just been completed. www.coraharrison.com  www.panmacmillan.com

GEORGETTE HEYER invented the Regency romance. Her historical novels remain in print all over the world more than thirty years after her death. She also wrote a dozen detective stories, which continue to enjoy a wide readership.  www.randomhouse.co.uk

MICHAEL HUTCHINSON holds a record number of national cycling titles. His first book, The Hour (Yellow Jersey Press), combines the history of this cycling grail with his own attempt at capturing the record. He won Best New Writer Award at the 2007 British Sports Book Awards, and is at work on his second book about the world of competitive yachting. www.randomhouse.co.uk

DEREK KEILTY is a published children’s writer who lives in Belfast. The Chronicles of West Rock combines fantasy and the western to produce a delightful and novel adventure story. www.keilty.btinternet.co.uk

BERYL KINGSTON is a hugely popular writer of sagas and romances. The Gates of Paradise (Allison & Busby) centres on the trial for sedition and acquittal of the poet William Blake in the Sussex village of Felpham. Neptune’s Daughter (Transita) is a contemporary novel about a widow learning to enjoy life until her daughter tries to land her with a new baby. www.berylkingston.co.uk  www.allisonandbusby.ltd.uk  www.transita.co.uk

KATIE LONDON has a background in theatre as a director, writer, and actor. Her outstanding debut novel, The School of Love, combines marvellous writing with a compelling story of passion, suffering, and history during World War I.

MIRIAM MORRISON was a journalist, and also ran a country inn in the Lake District. Her experience informs Recipe for Disaster (Arrow), a romantic comedy about the titanic clash of egos, attitudes and recipes when two star chefs open restaurants in the same small town. She is at work on her second novel, The Cinderella Effect (Arrow). www.randomhouse.co.uk

J. D. OLIVER is a journalist who writes for The Daily Telegraph. He is working on a pioneering set of guidebooks to modern living which combine incisive and witty interviews with beautiful photography, hard facts, and practical information. Getting Into Sex is the first in the series. www.getnology.com

PHILIP PURSER is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction and several plays for tv and radio. His latest novel, Lights in the Sky (Severn House) is a taut thriller about a young British pilot sent behind German lines in 1943 to bring out some escapees from Treblinka.

RICHARD PIERS RAYNER did the art work for the graphic novel “The Road to Perdition” and is writing and illustrating Middlesbrough: An Alternative History (Breedon Books) about the football club where he is artist-in-residence.

WILL RAWSON lives on England's south coast, where he is a playwright and interactive guru. Sharks in the Bath!, his first children's novel, tells what happens when four plastic sharks come alive and cause mayhem. A short story, Tremble with Fear, will appear in "Wow! 366" (Scholastic) to celebrate the National Year of Reading. Liberty Smith and the Halloween Street is the first in a series about a secret rip in the space-time continuum that threatens life as we know it.

NEIL RHODES is a playwright. Pickers & Stealers is a wonderfully inventive picaresque tale featuring the 15-year-old son of Stratford’s hereditary beadle whose best friend happened to be William Shakespeare.

BINA SHAH is well known in Pakistan as the author of novels and short stories. Slum Child is the dramatic and poignant story of a young girl growing up in Karachi’s poorest quarter. www.binashah.net

NIAMH SHAW is a corporate escapee who writes in between caring for her Siamese Fighting Fish. Smart/Casual, her first novel, is a romantic comedy in which a career girl is framed for sabotage and wreaks a terrible revenge.

PAUL ROBERT SMITH is an Australian whose first novel, Up a Tree in the Park at Night with a Hedgehog (Vintage), is a brilliantly funny story about a man avoiding commitment and feeling bad about not feeling worse. Paul has just finished his second novel. www.randomhouse.co.uk

GEORGINA SOWERBY & BRIAN LUFF are seasoned writers and producers of comedy whose podcast, “The Big Squeeze”, turned them into internet celebrities. Sex Tips for Pandas (The Friday Project) is the story of their rise to notoriety and their international travels in search of their fans. www.sowerbyandluff.com  www.thefridayproject.co.uk

IVO STOURTON is 25, grew up in London, Washington and Paris, and has an English degree from Cambridge. The Night Climbers (Doubleday), his first novel, is an original, disturbing, and beautifully written story about a small group of students who commit a multi-million pound art fraud. Film rights optioned. www.booksattransworld.co.uk

VIKAS SWARUP is an Indian diplomat. Q&A (Doubleday) his debut novel, is about a young Mumbai waiter who wins a billion rupees (£13 million) in a tv quiz show and is promptly arrested and accused of cheating. (Translation rights sold in over 30 countries. Filmed as "Slumdog Millionaire", directed by Danny Boyle.Shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.) His new novel, Six Suspects, is a multi-layered story about crime and corruption in contemporary India. www.vikasswarup.net  www.booksattransworld.co.uk

NICK VAN BLOSS is a pianist who has suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome since he was seven. Busy Body (Fusion Press) is his heart-breakingly honest, humorous, and unselfpitying account of learning to live with this incurable affliction. www.visionpaperbacks.co.uk

MIKE WALTERS is a much-travelled management consultant whose first novel The Shadow Walker (Quercus) is a gripping thriller set in Mongolia. In charge of the investigation is Nergui, a detective as fascinating and mysterious as his country. The Adversary (Quercus) is the second book in this unique series, and the third, The Outcast (Quercus), has just been completed .www.theshadowwalker.com  www.quercusbooks.co.uk