Laura Shepherd-Robinson is a British historical novelist best known for richly plotted crime and mystery fiction set in Georgian England. Born in Bristol in 1976, she studied Politics at the University of Bristol and Political Theory at the London School of Economics before working in politics for nearly twenty years. She later completed an MA in Creative Writing at City University and turned to fiction. Her novels are characterised by detailed social and political research, intricate plotting and a particular interest in people living at the edges of respectable society. She lives in London with her husband.
Her debut, Blood & Sugar, is set in Deptford in 1781 and uses a murder investigation to explore Britain’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Daughters of Night returns to Georgian London, following Caroline Corsham as she investigates the murder of a woman whom polite society is eager to ignore. The Square of Sevens broadens the scope into an expansive Georgian mystery involving fortune-telling, disputed inheritance, Bath society and London, while The Art of a Lie is set in 1749 and centres on a widowed confectioner drawn into deception and murder. Across the four novels Shepherd-Robinson combines crime, family secrets and social history with close attention to class, gender, wealth and the inequalities of eighteenth-century Britain.
