Nicola Thorne's perceptive storytelling skills have won her an army of fans, and she is the author of many well-known novels.

She was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Her father was English, her mother a New Zealander as a consequence of which she travelled a great deal as a child.

The family finally came to roost in England, and Nicola attended a convent school in the north of England, a co-educational school in Cheshire and then completed her education at the London School of Economics where she graduated in sociology.
 

She always wanted to pursue a literary career, however, and while she wrote her early novels, worked as an editor for a publishing house. Since then she has written over fifty novels in various genres - gothic, historical, contemporary - nearly half a million of which are borrowed in the UK public libraries every year. She has also been translated into most of the world's main languages, including Japanese.

For many years she lived in London, but has now made her home in Devon after several years in Dorset, the scene of many of her novels.