Jessica Hart was born in Scotland, where her mother continues to live. Jessica's earliest dreams were about sitting on a sand dune in the Sahara,working in the Outback, hacking her way through a jungle or bouncing along adusty track in a battered old Land Rover rather than writing a book. Heritchy feet took her from Afghanistan to Australia, from Algeria to Belize,and Cameroon to Indonesia, with various stops en route, and she loved itall.

Because she was always thinking about where she wanted to go next, she neverquite managed a proper career. Instead she had a haphazard series of jobsaround the world. Her last 'proper' job was on the foreign newsdesk of anational newspaper. Before that, she was on expedition in West Africa,cooked on an outback cattle station, taught English as a foreign language,was production assistant for a theatre company and research assistant for apublisher of restaurant guides and filled in the gaps between by working asa secretary, waitress, chambermaid and dishwasher. Regular readers willprobably recognize how often she has drawn on her wide but lowly workingexperience for inspiration when it comes to setting and plot!

Now Jessica leads a rather more staid existence, dividing her time betweencity life in York and a country cottage in Wiltshire where her partner,John, lives. This involves a lot of driving up and down the motorway, whichtakes up a lot of time. After nine years of research, Jessica finallycompleted a Ph.D. on York's later medieval and early modern streets in 2004,but still never seems to have enough time to get everything done. When she'snot writing romance, she is usually busy doing something connected with food(cooking, meeting friends for a drink, eating, gossiping over coffee etc) orwalking her Westie, Mungo, but she also loves history and gardening andreading and travelling, and there are still times, too, when she yearns forwider horizons.

Jessica has written over 45 books for Harlequin Romance, and won the RomanceWriters of America's prestigious RITA award for the best traditional romancein 2005. In 2006, she was awarded the Romance Prize for the best categoryromance by the UK's Romantic Novelists' Association, and is short-listed forthe same award in 2007.