Marianne lived on a property hugging the Hawkesbury River until a flood washed away the family home when she was five. Her family moved to a farm on the outskirts of Sydney called Plumpton, and with no close neighbours, Marianne soon discovered her love of books.

Marianne has worked as a legal stenographer and a teacher of adult education. She undertook writing courses, experimenting with different styles and techniques and found she enjoyed the challenge of writing for young adults best. Marianne began her writing career while raising her young family in Coffs Harbour, NSW, an idyllic environment where she lived for twenty years.

Today she resides on a mountain in the Gold Coast Hinterland, where, surrounded by rainforests and mountain views, she is continuing with her writing career after a serious battle with cancer and a fall which left her with several broken vertebra. Unable to write for five years, it was eight years before she was published again.

Now Marianne’s children are all grown and left home, and while they still inspire her writing, they have become her first-readers, giving her their invaluable critiques. Marianne’s first four novels, Old Magic, The Named, The Dark and The Key, have been published by Bloomsbury Publishing in Australia, NZ, the UK, and the USA, with translations into more than a dozen foreign languages. Her books have won numerous awards including the International Reading Associations’ Young Adult Choice for 2004 and 2005, a Junior Library Guild Selection for 2005, a Recommended Read in the Red House Children’s Book Award in 2003 and an International Reading Association’s Teacher’s Choice for 2005.

In 2004 doctors diagnosed Marianne with a form of bone marrow cancer called Myelofibrosis, informing her that she had only a short time to live. But after a stem-cell bone marrow transplant using her sister’s cells, she began to recover. Marianne has now been cancer free for thirteen years and is back writing as strong as ever with four more published books.

The Avena Series, also known as Hidden, Broken and Fearless, were published in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Marianne’s latest novel, The Shadow, will be released on 24th March 2018, is the long-awaited fourth book in the Guardians of Time Series. She is currently working on another Young Adult Paranormal Time Travel Fantasy.