Hello and welcome to my website. I’m Dawn Brookes, an award winning English novelist and memoirist living in Derby. I hold an MA in Creative Writing with distinction. I’m also founder of a local literature festival, plus The All Things Books Show on my YouTube channel.

I write most days and publish regularly. I’m passionate about being an author and encouraging others to achieve their creative ambitions whatever they may be.

I am an award winning indie author who writes cosy crime mysteries, winning the Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal Award for crime fiction and having Body in the Woods reviewed by Wind Dancer Films in the USA remains one of my proudest moments.

I have found my niche writing clean crime, with half a million downloads/purchases across three series in multiple formats including audiobooks.

Publishing Journey

As well as being an indie author, I have recently signed the Lady Marjorie Snellthorpe series over to Storm Publishing. They will be rebranding and relaunching the six books in the series in 2025, and publishing a seventh.

Translations

German

This year, dp Verlag have published the first two Lady Marjorie Snellthorpe Mysteries in German.

Japanese

A Cruise to Murder and Deadly Cruise are currently in translation into Japanese and will be published print first in 2026, followed by eBooks a year later.

I wrote the first book in her Rachel Prince Mystery series in 2018 and haven’t looked back. 

Thank you for visiting.

“Award-Winning Author Dawn Brookes Brings Medical Expertise to Cozy Mysteries”

Dawn is founder and director of Oakwood Publishing Ltd.

I believe there are no limits to what a person can achieve if they set their mind to it, no matter what background we are born into, we should not be restrained by boundaries. I was born into a working class background where there was no money and life was a daily struggle for my mother. In spite of this she did her best and taught us that the most important thing in life was to be honest and earn respect. She once told me that it takes a lifetime to develop a good name and only a moment to lose it. I have never forgotten this. I left school with hardly any qualifications but I was determined to make something of my life, if it hadn’t been nursing, it would have been something else. I don’t believe that your background dictates who you are. I hope that my memoirs demonstrate this. I hope to engage readers from every walk of life through my writing. Please enjoy – if you do, tell others, if not, tell me and I will work hard to improve.