Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a nickname now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. She is the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Amanda Craig is a British novelist, critic and journalist.
Katherine Louise Mosse is a British novelist, non-fiction and short story writer and broadcaster. She is best known for her 2005 novel Labyrinth, which has been translated into more than 37 languages. She co-founded in 1996 the annual award for best UK-published English-language novel by a woman that is now known as the Women's Prize for Fiction.
Kate Atkinson is an English writer of novels, plays and short stories. She has written historical novels, detective novels and family novels, incorporating postmodern and magical realist elements into the plots. Her debut, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book Award, the precursor to the Costa Book Award, in 1995. The novels Life After Life and A God in Ruins won the Costa Book Award for novel in 2013 and 2015. She is also known for the Jackson Brodie series of detective novels, which has been adapted into the BBC One series, Case Histories.
Helen Fielding is a British journalist, novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones. Fielding’s first novel was set in a refugee camp in East Africa and she started writing Bridget Jones in an anonymous column in London’s Independent newspaper. This turned into an unexpected hit, leading to four Bridget Jones novels and three movies, with a fourth movie announced in April 2024 for release in 2025.
Stephen Leather is a British thriller author whose works are published by Hodder & Stoughton. He has written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock, and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. He is one of the top selling Amazon Kindle authors, the second bestselling UK author worldwide on Kindle in 2011.
Beatrice Clare Dunkel was a British author. Earlier in her life she worked as an actress and model under the name Candy Davis and appeared as Miss Belfridge in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? She went on to write novels as Mo Hayder. She won an Edgar Award in 2012.
Kia Abdullah is a British novelist and travel writer. She is the best-selling author of courtroom dramas Take It Back, Truth Be Told, Next of Kin and Those People Next Door. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times,The Financial Times, The Telegraph and the BBC, among other publications.
Steve "S. J." Watson is an English writer. He debuted in 2011 with the thriller novel Before I Go to Sleep. Rights to publish the book have been sold in 42 countries and it has continued to be an international bestseller.
Sara Sheridan is a Scottish activist and writer who works in a variety of genres, though predominantly in historical fiction. She is the creator of the Mirabelle Bevan mysteries.
Adam Richard Kay is a British TV writer, author, comedian and former doctor. He is the author of the memoir This Is Going to Hurt (2017), about his time as a trainee doctor. His television writing credits include This is Going to Hurt, Crims, Mrs. Brown's Boys and Mitchell and Webb.
Nathan Filer is a British writer best known for his debut novel, The Shock of the Fall. This won several major literary awards, including the Costa Book of the Year and the Betty Trask Prize. It was a Sunday Times Bestseller, and has been translated into thirty languages.
Rachel Abbott is an English author of psychological thrillers. A self-publisher, her first seven novels have combined to sell over three million copies, and have all been bestsellers on Amazon's Kindle store. In 2015, she was named the 14th bestselling author over the last five years on Amazon's Kindle in the UK.
Nadiya Jamir Hussain is a British television chef, author and television personality. She rose to fame after winning the sixth series of BBC's The Great British Bake Off in 2015. Since winning, she has signed contracts with the BBC to host the documentary The Chronicles of Nadiya and TV cookery series Nadiya's British Food Adventure and Nadiya's Family Favourites; co-presented The Big Family Cooking Showdown; and has become a regular contributor on The One Show.
Andrew Michael Hurley is a British writer whose debut novel, The Loney, was published in a limited edition of 350 copies on 1 October 2014 by Tartarus Press and was published under Hodder and Stoughton's John Murray imprint in 2015. He was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Open Book programme "British Gothic" in October 2015.
Clare Mackintosh is a British author and former police officer.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a novel by Stuart Turton which won the Best First Novel prize in the 2018 Costa Book Awards and reached number one on TheSaturday Times Bestseller list and number five on The Sunday Times Bestseller list.
Winnie M Li is an American writer, novelist and activist based in England. Her first novel Dark Chapter, released in 2017, was based on her own experience of a stranger rape in 2008. Her second novel Complicit was published in 2022.
The Thursday Murder Club is a 2020 murder mystery novel, the debut novel by British television presenter Richard Osman. It is the first installment in his Thursday Murder Club series. It was published on 3 September 2020 by Viking Press, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House, and also released in 2020 as an audiobook, read by Lesley Manville.
Elodie Lauren Geraldine Harper is an English author and journalist. She began her career working for the BBC and Channel 4 News before joining ITV News Anglia as a reporter. Her Pompeii-set novel The Wolf Den (2021), the first in a trilogy, became a #1 Sunday Times bestseller.
