About the author

Alison Littlewood was raised in Penistone, South Yorkshire, and went on to attend the University of Northumbria at Newcastle (now Northumbria University). Originally she planned to study graphic design, but “missed the words too much” and switched to a joint English and History degree. She followed a career in marketing before developing her love of writing fiction.

Alison Littlewood’s latest novel, Mistletoe, is a seasonal ghost story with glimpses into the Victorian era. Her first book, A Cold Season, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club and described as ‘perfect reading for a dark winter’s night.’ Other titles include A Cold Silence, Path of Needles, The Unquiet House, Zombie Apocalypse! Acapulcalypse Now, The Hidden People and The Crow Garden.

Alison’s short stories have been picked for Best British Horror, The Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror anthologies, as well as The Best British Fantasy and The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime. They have been gathered together in her collections Quieter Paths and in Five Feathered Tales, a collaboration with award-winning illustrator Daniele Serra. She won the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award for Short Fiction.

Alison lives with her partner Fergus in deepest Yorkshire, England, in a house of creaking doors and crooked walls. She loves exploring the hills and dales with her two hugely enthusiastic Dalmatians and has a penchant for books on folklore and weird history, Earl Grey tea and semicolons.

Alison is a member of the Society of Authors and the British Fantasy Society.

Twitter: @Ali__L (with a double underscore) or find her on Facebook.

Alison Littlewood also writes as AJ. Elwood:

A.J. Elwood studied literature and history, which everyone assured her would never have any direct relevance to what she ended up doing with her life. She remains fascinated by those times when people could believe in things we think of as madness and have perfectly good reasons for doing so. An early obsession with fairy tales has stayed with her and she loves to pen stories that hopefully contain a little bit of magic and often more than a little of the strange.

Elwood lives in a three-hundred-year old house where floorboards creak, doors open of their own accord and rooms seem to spontaneously transform into libraries. She enjoys travel, particularly to cold places; she dreams of living above the Arctic Circle with mysterious lights and the silence of the snow. For now, her beloved dogs wouldn’t let her. She’s happy to remain in Yorkshire with her partner, a growing collection of fountain pens and increasingly inky fingers.