Children's author and crime writer Magdalen Nabb was born in Lancashire, England in 1947. She is the author of the Salvatore Guarnaccia series and the Josie Smith books. Her book Josie Smith was runner-up for the Guardian Children's Fiction Award in 1989 and Josie Smith and Eileen won the Smarties Book Prize in l99l. Occasionally she writes journalistic pieces for English, German, and Italian newspapers. Her final novel, Vita Nuova, was posthumously published in 2008. She died in Florence, Italy, of a stroke. She was 60 years old.