Sheila Lowe is a British-born novelist who has lived in the United States since 1964. Her first book was published in 1999 and became a bestseller in the Complete Idiot's Guides series. Her second book was released a year later. In 2007, the first edition of Poison Pen, the beginning of her Claudia Rose forensic mystery series came out with a small publisher, Capital Crime Press. When Poison Pen received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, who called it "a dynamite debut," Kristen Weber, then-senior editor at New American Library, picked it up and published the first four books in the series. Lowe took an intensive writing course with Elizabeth George, best-selling author of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries through Book Passage, an independent bookstore in the Bay Area of California.