Mary-Jane Riley

Mary-Jane spent many years as a BBC journalist, presenting magazine programmes on BBC Radio in the Eastern Counties. She has interviewed people from all walks of life – from politicians to authors to actors to local people in villages and towns. It was when the author Ruth Rendell told her to “just write” that she began seriously writing fiction. Mary-Jane has had stories published in women’s magazines and has contributed to podcasts for the Royal Literary Fund in her role as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Cambridge University. She has taught Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, and has delivered writing workshops to young offenders, people with disabilities and charities – including aid workers in Africa. Mary-Jane is married to a retired BBC TV Reporter and has three grown up children and a Golden Retriever. She lives in the Waveney Valley in rural Suffolk. Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club is the first in the Beattie Cavendish series. Set in post Second World War Europe, Beattie Cavendish is a spy for GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). It is Mary-Jane’s first historical novel. Before creating Beattie Cavendish, Mary-Jane wrote four contemporary thrillers: The Bad Things (a Kindle bestseller), After She Fell, Dark Waters and Gone in the Night, all of which were set in East Anglia.