Sorceress

When the teenage students in Celia Rees’s English classes complained that they couldn’t find the kind of books they wanted to read, she determined to do something about it. The longtime secondary-school teacher had heard an exciting true story that she thought would make a great plot—one that her young readers could identify with—and her plan fell quickly into place. “I’ll have a go at writing that,” she decided, and forged ahead at writing her first book, Every Step You Take.

Many books for teenagers have followed, including the riveting, best-selling novel Witch Child and its sequel, Sorceress. The author says that ever since Witch Child was published, she has been “overwhelmed by the way readers have responded to Mary and her struggle to maintain her own identity.”

She followed these novels with The Wish House, about which she says, “Everyone has special places, special summers, special people, combined into times they will never forget. The people who live in the Wish House are fictional, but the events that happen are archetypal: first love, first sex, first experience with death.”

When she’s not writing, Celia Rees likes to read, watch contemporary thrillers, swim, and take long walks. She has a daughter, Catrin, who has “gone and grown up” and is now a lawyer in London. Celia Rees lives with her husband in Warwickshire, England.