Tess Stimson

Tess Stimson was born and brought up in Sussex, England. As a child, she lived for several years in Greece and Africa, before winning a scholarship to Notre Dame School, Lingfield. She subsequently read English at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she received the Eleanor Rooke Award (for English Literature), the Dorothy Whitelock Award (for Anglo-Saxon), and was made an Exhibitioner. After graduating, Tess joined ITN (Independent Television News), where she reported and produced regional and world stories, travelling to hotspots and war-zones all over the globe. In 1991, she left ITN to write her first book, Yours Till the End, the biography of Beirut hostage Jackie Mann, and moved to Cyprus with her then-husband, CNN correspondent Brent Sadler, with whom she has two sons, Henry and Matthew. Her first novel, Hard News, set in the world of television news, was published in 1993 to immediate acclaim and became an instant bestseller. Later that year, she moved to Rome, Italy, where she wrote Soft Focus (1995), and Pole Postion (1996). Both were commercial and critical successes. All three novels were translated into several languages. In 1997, Tess moved to Beirut, Lebanon, from whence she juggled reporting on the Middle-East for CNN, BBC and NTV (Lebanese television) with raising a family. She also freelanced for UK-based TV stations Sky, Channel Five and other cable channels, and wrote for the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Daily Express, You and Glamour Magazine and The Times. In 2000, following her divorce, Tess moved back to London with her children. Two years later, she was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Florida. She left USF in 2004 to return to full-time writing and journalism, becoming a regular feature columnist for the Daily Mail newspaper. Her novel, The Adultery Club, went straight into the Top Ten Bestseller List on publication in the UK in January 2007, and was translated into 15 languages. Her new novel, The Infidelity Chain, will be published by Pan Macmillan in January 2008. It has also been sold to a number of other countries. Tess is married to Erik Oliver, with whom she has a daughter, Lily. She lives in Florida with her husband and three children