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Ann Cleeves

Goodreads Author

Born

in Herefordshire, The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.anncleeves.com

Twitter

AnnCleeves

Genre

Crime, Mystery, Thriller

Member Since

October 2012

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/anncleeves

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Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands...

Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs - child care officer, women's refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard - before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.

While she wa Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands...

Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs - child care officer, women's refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard - before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.

While she was cooking in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle, she met her husband Tim, a visiting ornithologist. She was attracted less by the ornithology than the bottle of malt whisky she saw in his rucksack when she showed him his room. Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary. They were the only residents, there was no mains electricity or water and access to the mainland was at low tide across the shore. If a person's not heavily into birds - and Ann isn't - there's not much to do on Hilbre and that was when she started writing. Her first series of crime novels features the elderly naturalist, George Palmer-Jones. A couple of these books are seriously dreadful.

In 1987 Tim, Ann and their two daughters moved to Northumberland and the north east provides the inspiration for many of her subsequent titles. The girls have both taken up with Geordie lads. In the autumn of 2006, Ann and Tim finally achieved their ambition of moving back to the North East.

For the National Year of Reading, Ann was made reader-in-residence for three library authorities. It came as a revelation that it was possible to get paid for talking to readers about books! She went on to set up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project, became Cheltenham Literature Festival's first reader-in-residence and still enjoys working with libraries.
Ann Cleeves on stage at the Duncan Lawrie Dagger awards ceremony

Ann's short film for Border TV, Catching Birds, won a Royal Television Society Award. She has twice been short listed for a CWA Dagger Award - once for her short story The Plater, and the following year for the Dagger in the Library award.

In 2006 Ann Cleeves was the first winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet. The Duncan Lawrie Dagger replaces the CWA's Gold Dagger award, and the winner receives £20,000, making it the world's largest award for crime fiction.

Ann's success was announced at the 2006 Dagger Awards ceremony at the Waldorf Hilton, in London's Aldwych, on Thursday 29 June 2006. She said: "I have never won anything before in my life, so it was a complete shock - but lovely of course.. The evening was relatively relaxing because I'd lost my voice and knew that even if the unexpected happened there was physically no way I could utter a word. So I wouldn't have to give a speech. My editor was deputed to do it!"

The judging panel consisted of Geoff Bradley (non-voting Chair), Lyn Brown MP (a committee member on the London Libraries service), Frances Gray (an academic who writes about and teaches courses on modern crime fiction), Heather O'Donoghue (academic, linguist, crime fiction reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, and keen reader of all crime fiction) and Barry Forshaw (reviewer and editor of Crime Time magazine).

Ann's books have been translated into sixteen languages. She's a bestseller in Scandinavia and Germany. Her novels sell widely and to critical acclaim in the United States. Raven Black was shortlisted for the Martin Beck award for best translated crime novel in Sweden in 200 ...more

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Ann Cleeves's Blog

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Published on May 01, 2025 00:30

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Combine Editions
Ann Cleeves’s books

Average rating: 4.02 · 590,979 ratings · 45,812 reviews · 130 distinct works • Similar authors

	Raven Black (Shetland, #1) 3.96 avg rating — 56,084 ratings — published 2006 — 101 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Long Call (Two Rivers, #1) 3.94 avg rating — 41,466 ratings — published 2019 — 39 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	White Nights (Shetland, #2) 4.02 avg rating — 33,133 ratings — published 2008 — 86 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Crow Trap (Vera Stanhope, #1) 3.85 avg rating — 31,904 ratings — published 1999 — 58 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Heron's Cry (Two Rivers, #2) 4.03 avg rating — 26,670 ratings — published 2021 — 29 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Red Bones (Shetland, #3) 4.01 avg rating — 26,004 ratings — published 2009 — 67 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Darkest Evening (Vera Stanhope, #9) 4.28 avg rating — 24,317 ratings — published 2020 — 31 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blue Lightning (Shetland, #4) 4.12 avg rating — 22,764 ratings — published 2010 — 25 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dead Water (Shetland, #5) 4.12 avg rating — 20,750 ratings — published 2013 — 49 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Telling Tales (Vera Stanhope, #2) 4.09 avg rating — 20,683 ratings — published 2005 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Ann Cleeves…

Series by Ann Cleeves

Shetland (9 books)
by

Ann Cleeves (Goodreads Author)

4.05 avg rating — 226,635 ratings

Four Seasons (8 books)
by

Ann Cleeves (Goodreads Author)

4.05 avg rating — 213,574 ratings

Vera Stanhope (11 books)
by

Ann Cleeves (Goodreads Author)

4.10 avg rating — 210,491 ratings

Two Rivers (3 books)
by

Ann Cleeves (Goodreads Author)

3.95 avg rating — 91,215 ratings

Dead Water (4 books)
by

Ann Cleeves (Goodreads Author)

4.13 avg rating — 75,612 ratings

More series by Ann Cleeves…

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Ann’s Recent Updates

Ann Cleeves wrote a new blog post ERROR: Database error: Table './rss/feeds' is marked as crashed and should be repaired at /var/www/html/feed.pl line 1657.
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Quotes by Ann Cleeves (?)

“Rather than the grey and dreary institutions of public perception, these should be places of innovation and experiment, where readers can take a chance on a book, pick one because they like the look of the cover or the title or because they see it returned by the gorgeous young man who lives in their street. After all, they will have absolutely nothing to lose. The book will be free.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Library Book

23 likes

“We don't often notice the people who look after us, do we? Though we'd miss them if they weren't there”
― Ann Cleeves, Harbour Street

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“But she thought the men’s brains had turned to jelly. They couldn’t see straight. Faced with a pretty woman they all seemed to lose their reason.”
― Ann Cleeves, Telling Tales

16 likes

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Polls

Which more modern mystery would you like to read with us during April? Please vote here.

Mrs, Presumed Dead by Simon Brett

21 votes, 34.4%

The Long Call by Ann Cleeves

18 votes, 29.5%

The Midnight Hour by Eve Chase

13 votes, 21.3%

A Moment of Silence by Anna Dean

9 votes, 14.8%

61 total votes

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Ann Cleeves

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