Lauren St John grew up surrounded by horses, cats, dogs and a pet giraffe on a farm and game reserve in Zimbabwe, the inspiration for her bestselling White Giraffe and One Dollar Horse series, as well as her YA horse novel, The Glory. Dead Man's Cove, the first in her Laura Marlin Mystery series, won the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. Before becoming a children's author, she worked as a journalist for The Sunday Times, writing about sports, music and spies. Along with her veterinary nursing training, it served as perfect research for her Kat Wolfe mystery series and The Snow Angel, a standalone MG novel.

A passionate conservationist, Lauren is an Ambassador for the Born Free Foundation, a patron for horse sanctuary, Mane Chance, and the founder of Authors4Oceans. When not rescuing leopards and dolphins, she is a full-time valet to her rescued, and not in the least demanding, Bengal cat, Max.

To find out more, visit her website at www.laurenstjohn.com

David Dean studied illustration at Manchester Metropolitan University and has been working as an illustrator since 1999. He has to date created covers for nearly 40 books including Lauren St. John's THE WHITE GIRAFFE and DOLPHIN SONG (both Orion), as well as many other illustrations for books, magazines, CDs, posters and advertisements. He lives (with his cat) in Cheshire.