Karen Lowe

Born in Swansea, where my mother's family lived, I moved to Shropshire, my father's home county, when I was five. I studied English, French and German for a B.A. degree at university in London and worked as a secretary in Fleet Street and South Kensington, until moving back to Shropshire with my land surveyor husband to bring up our two children.

After publishing collections of my crosswords, based on Shropshire, gardening, and literature, and qualifying as a garden designer, I finally completed my first murder mystery, 'Death in the Physic Garden' which combines my passion for gardening and crime fiction and features my heroine Fern Green, a garden designer. Readers loved the Shropshire setting and the fabulous flowers. The sequel, 'Death in the Winter Garden' was published in Autumn 2010 and continues Fern's career in Shropshire and develops her relationship with hunky Welsh detective, DI Ross Drummond. It was a Quarter Finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards in 2011. The books have now shaped into a new series, 'Star Gardens', and I am now planning the next book in the series.

As well as my love of reading, writing, gardening, and drawing, I am also a keen crafter. I enjoy designing templates for my new Silhouette Cameo, and for the Craft Robo, and am now a scrapbooking addict. I've recently rediscovered a passion for textile art and design. In addition to my shelves crammed with gardening, crime and art books, I now have a growing collection of papers, paints, fabrics and ribbons to contend with. I'm working on two patchwork quilts at the moment, one of which is a family tree. It's going to take some time to finish. Inspired by textiles, I've just published the first book in a new series of cozy mysteries, 'The Quilt Detective', though naturally the plants aren't too far away. The first book in this new series is called 'A Patchwork of Poison' and follows the fortunes of textile artist Bronwen Jones as she investigates the history of an antique quilt.