Mariah Stewart

Mariah Stewart wrote contemporary romance through the 1990s before turning to suspense, and the suspense is what made her a fixture on the national bestseller lists. Brown-Eyed Girl, published in 2000, is the book that opened the turn, first of her FBI novels. Dead Even belongs to a four-book sequence issued across 2004 and 2005, while Cry Mercy and Acts of Mercy carry on the Mercy Street Foundation series: a privately funded outfit that a reclusive billionaire, Robert Magellan, sets up with his cousin Father Kevin Burch and a former detective, Mallory Russo, to reopen cases the police have run out of leads on. Stewart grew up in Hightstown, New Jersey, and works from a century-old Victorian house in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Her honours come mostly from inside the romance field: three Golden Leaf Awards from the New Jersey Romance Writers, for Moments in Time, Voices Carry and The President's Daughter, that chapter's lifetime achievement award, and an award of excellence from the Colorado Romance Writers for A Different Light.