Born in Scotland at 318ppm CO2 Manda studied veterinary surgery in Glasgow before going on to practice in a specialist equine clinic in Newmarket and then to teach at the universities of Cambridge and Dublin.

Her writing career opened with a crime trilogy set in Scotland, the first of which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and the third granted an Arts Council Award (back in the days when governments believed creativity had value). No Good Deed, the dark, edgy standalone thriller which followed, was nominated for an Edgar Award and hailed as ‘one of the most remarkable’ thrillers of its year.

The international bestselling Boudica: Dreaming series came next. Originally conceived as a trilogy, this grew to four books and gained a cult following around the world for its depiction of how we on the islands of Britain lived before Roman occupation and colonisation—of what we lost and how and why. Translated into over twenty languages, these books are still drawing people to connection with the old, wild gods two decades after first publication.

The Rome series of ancient world spy thrillers followed: another set of four books featuring the spy, Sebastos Pantera. Their timeline followed on from the Boudica series and explored the lives of (some of) the surviving characters as they travelled through Gaul, Rome and beyond. This was my chance to explore my fascination with espionage and it carried on into the two books that followed.  Here, we abandoned the Roman era and increased the complexity of writing by combining two time lines: a sharp, fast contemporary thriller interwoven with a historical thread linking past and present.

A Times ‘Book of the Year’, Into the Fire explores the myths – and the astonishing truth – surrounding the life of the Maid, Jeanne d’Arc.

A Sunday Times ‘Book of the Decade’, A Treachery of Spies took the same contemporary characters and wove the thriller plot through multiple historical threads, bringing to light the courage and treacheries of the Maquis and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War.  Shortlisted for the Saltire Award, this book won the McIlvanney prize in 2018.

Since 2021, Manda’s focus has been on Thrutopian fiction – explicitly designed to map some of the many routes forward from where we are, to a future we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.

Her 2024 novel, Any Human Power, is a seismic political thriller, described by Lee Child as ‘instantly immersive and compelling, rich and strange, human and humane’, this novel explodes out of the old paradigm and into the new, blending page-turning thriller action with a new mythology, redolent of the Boudica series, but updated for a contemporary world hovering on the brink of the meta-crisis.  The novel is a powerful call to action, offering hope for a different, generative, equitable and just way forward.