Louise Doughty is a novelist, playwright and cultural commentator. She is the author of seven books. Her first novel, Crazy Paving was published in 1995 and shortlisted for four awards including the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her fourth novel Fires in the Dark, published in 2003 to international critical acclaim, was the first of two historical novels about Romany history and set in central Europe during the Second World War. It was followed by Stone Cradle in 2006, which was about her own English Romanichal ancestors. Her most recent novel is Whatever You Love. The Observer newspaper described it as 'a brilliant and brutal novel that continues to unsettle long after the final page has been turned.' She has also written one work of non-fiction, A Novel in a Year, a how-to-write book based on her highly popular newspaper column. Doughty has also published short stories and written five plays for radio, the first of which, Maybe, won a Radio Times Drama Award. She has worked widely as a critic and broadcaster in the UK, including a spell as the presenter of Radio 4's A Good Read, and was a judge for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for fiction.