MARIANNE MACDONALD was born in the lumber town of Kenora, Northern Ontario, and grew up in Winnipeg and Montreal. Her first children’s book was published when she was 16. She took her BA at McGill University, then went to Oxford for graduate studies in English. For thirty years she pretended to be an academic, acquiring various degrees and teaching at universities in Canada and England. She left teaching early in order to return to her writing.

She now lives in a tall Victorian house on top of Muswell Hill in London, with open fireplaces in the cellar and stained glass in the attic windows. Her hobbies include dog walking, theatre, old movies, travel, talking to strangers, worrying about the socio-economic development of the contemporary world, and taking long hot baths when any of the above threatens to overwhelm her.

Since 1996 she has published a series of novels in which Dido Hoare, thirty-something London single mother and antiquarian book shop owner, is involved in murder and mayhem thanks to her itch of curiosity and an inability to back down even when she knows she should. DEATH’S AUTOGRAPH, GHOST WALK, SMOKE SCREEN and ROAD KILL were followed in 2001 by BLOOD LIES, with a body in a country house library and a valuable first-edition "Peter Rabbit" lost, stolen or strayed. This was followed in summer 2002 by DIE ONCE, a tale of disguises and absences.

In 2005 Marianne moved to a new publisher, Severn House, to release the latest two books in the series - THREE MONKEYS and FAKING IT.