Danuta Reah who also writes as Carla Banks grew up with stories. Her father, a Belarusian cavalry officer, kept his past alive by telling his children stories of his childhood in the forests of Eastern Europe. She lives in South Yorkshire and uses her urban background in her books. The settings range from the claustrophobic parochialism of the South Yorkshire mining communities to the international stage of new Europe and beyond. Her most recent book, Strangers, is set in the ex-pat community in Saudi Arabia. Crime - or at least dissent - runs in the family. One of her ancestors, John Woodcock, was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1646 for his religious beliefs. In 2005, she won the Crime Writers' Association Short Story Dagger for her story No Flies on Frank. Books: Fiction. Writing as Danuta Reah: Only Darkness, Silent Playgrounds (published in the US as Listen to the Shadows), Night Angels, Bleak Water Writing as Carla Banks: The Forest of Souls, Strangers Non-Fiction The Language of Newspapers, Working with Texts