Lara Dearman

Lara Dearman grew up on the island of Guernsey, where she spent a good part of her childhood exploring abandoned Nazi bunkers, listening to her dad’s stories about local witches’ covens and haunted houses and reading – anything she could get her hands on, but preferably The Famous Five. She moved to ‘the Mainland’ to study International Relations and French at Sussex University before briefly pursuing a career in finance in London. Long days spent crunching numbers were followed by long nights curled up with a good book – invariably a murder mystery or a pacey crime thriller. Having put her career on hold to care for her family, Lara found herself living on a very different island when her husband’s job took them to Singapore for three years. It was here, at the edge of the jungle, thousands of miles away from home, that Lara began to think, rather longingly, of Guernsey. And that is when she began to write. On her return to London she enrolled on the MA in Creative Writing at St Mary's University and, as part of her studies, wrote The Devil’s Claw, published by Trapeze in 2017. Her second novel, Dark Sky Island, will be published September 2018. Lara now lives in New York with her husband and three children. She still misses Guernsey.