Lucinda Riley was born in 1965 in Ireland and, after an early career as an actress in film, theatre and television, wrote her first novel aged twenty-four. Her books have been translated into forty languages and continue to strike an emotional chord with cultures all around the world. The Seven Sisters series specifically has become a global phenomenon, creating its own genre, and there are plans to create a multi-season TV series. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Italian Bancarella Prize, the Lovely Books Award in Germany and the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. In 2020, she received the Dutch Platinum Award for sales over 300,000 copies for a single novel in one year – a prize last won by J. K. Rowling for Harry Potter. In collaboration with her son Harry Whittaker, she also devised and wrote the Guardian Angels series of books for children. Though she brought up her four children mostly in Norfolk, England, she fulfilled her dream in 2015 of buying a remote farmhouse in West Cork, Ireland, which she always felt was her spiritual home, and this was where her last five books were written. Lucinda was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and died on 11 June 2021, surrounded by her family.