Jane Johnson

JANE JOHNSON is a Publishing Director at HarperCollins UK, where she is responsible for publishing George RR Martin, Robin Hobb and Dean Koontz, among many other fine authors. While she was researching the story of an ancestor stolen by pirates in the 17th century and sold into the slave trade in North Africa, she met and married a Berber tribesman in the mountains of Morocco: they have been married since 2005 and divide their time between Cornwall and his mountain village. Many of her novels explore the interface between cultures through key points in history. The novel about the Barbary pirates is THE TENTH GIFT. This was followed by her desert novel THE SALT ROAD; THE SULTAN'S WIFE is set in the Moroccan court and was inspired by Delacroix's painting 'Turk in a Turban'. PILLARS OF LIGHT tells the story of the infamous Siege of Acre during the Third Crusade, and her most recent novel, COURT OF LIONS is a gorgeous epic set in Granada in Spain in the 15th century.\nHer novels for children include the Eidolon Chronicles: THE SECRET COUNTRY, THE SHADOW WORLD and DRAGON'S FIRE; and 4 epic cat novels under the pseudonym of Gabriel King. As Jude Fisher, she also wrote the official Visual Companions to Peter Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT movies: she spent many months travelling New Zealand with the production.