Sydneysider Melissa James is a former nurse and has worked as a waitress, store assistant, and perfume and chocolate demonstrator.

A highly successful Mills & Boon author, Melissa has over 20 romance titles published. Four of these were romantic suspense with Silhouette Intimate Moments (two of which won Romantic Times Top Picks).

Under the name Lisa Chaplin, Melissa writes Napoleonic and ancient historical fiction.

Kate Hewitt discovered her first Mills & Boon romance on a trip to England when she was thirteen and she's continued to read them ever since.

She wrote her first story at the age of five, simply because her older brother had written one and she thought she could do it, too. That story was one sentence long-fortunately, they've become a bit more detailed as she's grown older.

Although she was raised in Pennsylvania, she spent summers and holidays at her family's cottage in rural Ontario, Canada; picking raspberries, making maple syrup and pretending to be a pioneer. Now her children are enjoying roaming the same wilderness!

She studied drama in college and shortly after graduation moved to New York City to pursue a career in theatre. This was derailed by something far better-meeting the man of her dreams who happened also to be her older brother's childhood friend.

Ten days after their wedding they moved to England, where Kate worked a variety of different jobs-drama teacher, editorial assistant, church youth worker, secretary and finally mother.

When her oldest daughter was one year old, she sold her first short story to a British magazine, The People's Friend. Since then she has written many stories and serials as well as novels. She loves writing stories that celebrate the healing and redemptive power of love and there's no better way of doing it than through the romance genre!

Besides writing, she enjoys reading, traveling and learning to knit-it's an ongoing process and she's made a lot of scarves.

After living in England for six years, she now resides in Connecticut with her husband, an Anglican minister, her three young children and the possibility of one day getting a dog.

Tara lives in textas with her real life hero and her two little girls. When she isn't writing or reading, Tara can be found failing in the kitchen, watching TV and making resolutions to exercise more, or even a little.