List Of Writers

FURNIVALL, KATE

Website: http://www.katefurnivall.com

Kate was born and raised in Penarth, attending Penarth Grammar School and spending much of her childhood roaming beaches and climbing cliffs with her twin sister. She went to London University where she achieved a BA Honours degree in English. Kate then worked for Nicholson Publishing, writing material for a series of books on the canals of Britain. Later she moved into advertising at Ted Bates Advertising Agency where she met her future husband, Norman. She travelled widely as a producer of television commercials before leaving London with her husband and two sons for Wiltshire, and then Devon.

Her husband Norman then gave up advertising to become a full–time writer. He has had 13 crime novels published and won the Crime Writers Association John Creasey Award in 1987 under the name Neville Steed. Kate’s mother died in 2000 and she decided to write a book inspired by her mother’s story. The Russian Concubine (Little, Brown Book Group, 2007) contains fictional characters and events, and is set in Junchow, a fictionalised version of Tientsin in northern China. It makes use of her mother’s extraordinary childhood experience; that of two White Russian refugees, a mother and daughter stuck without money or papers in an International Settlement in China.

Selected Publications:
The Russian Concubine (Sphere, 2007)
Under a Blood Red Sky (Sphere, 2008) 
The Red Scarf (USA edition of Berkley Under a Blood Red Sky) (Publishing Group, 2008)