Christina McDonald

A telephone call in the small hours starts Christina McDonald's first novel: Abi Knight's seventeen-year-old daughter has been found below a bridge in a Washington State town, brain dead and pregnant, with machines keeping the pregnancy going while Abi tries to work out how she got there. The Night Olivia Fell came from Gallery Books early in 2019 and was optioned for television. Seattle is where she grew up; she took a communications degree at Washington and an MA in journalism at the National University of Ireland, Galway, then wrote for the Connacht Tribune and the Sunday Times in Dublin. These Still Black Waters, from Thomas & Mercer in 2023, starts the Jess Lambert series and won the 2024 Killer Nashville Readers' Choice Award. She has settled in London.