Merryn Allingham is a bestselling English author, born into an army family, which resulted in her spending most of her childhood traveling around the United Kingdom and abroad. This experience instilled in her a love for travel and exploration, which she pursued by quitting her secretarial job in her twenties to work as a cabin crew and see the world.
After some time, Allingham settled down in the south of England, following the arrival of marriage, children, and cats. She gained a PhD and went on to teach university literature for many years, a job she thoroughly enjoyed. However, her itchy feet eventually led her to write books, starting with six Regency period romances, followed by a wartime trilogy and the Summerhayes books, set in the Sussex countryside during the summers of 1914 and 1944.
Allingham's latest novel, "A Tale of Two Sisters," is set in Constantinople at the turn of the 20th century, against the backdrop of growing rebellion within the Ottoman Empire. The novel explores themes of family, love, and loss, and traces the fate of two sisters, Alice and Lydia Verinder. She has also ventured into the world of crime fiction with her Tremayne Mysteries series, featuring a feisty 1950s heroine, Nancy, turned amateur sleuth, and the Flora Steele Mysteries, set in a 1950s Sussex village, featuring a duo of crime fighters - Flora, who owns the local bookshop, and Jack, a reclusive crime writer. The Bookshop Murder, the first in the series, has received over 3000 reviews.