M. M. Kaye was born in 1908 in Simla, India, the summer residence of the British viceroy and the city to which she returned every summer for the first ten years of her life. The cool months were spent in Delhi, the capital of British India. At the time, her father was President of the Council of an Indian state then known as Rajputana, and she often accompanied him on official visits to other parts of the country. Kaye's ties with India are strong: her grandfather, father, brother and husband all served the Raj, and her grandfather's first cousin, Sir John Kaye, wrote standard accounts of the first Afghan War, and was Political Secretary of the India Office and the author of a classic… six-volume history of the Indian Mutiny. When India achieved independence her husband joined the British Army and for the next nineteen years she followed him to places she would not otherwise have seen, including Kenya, Zanzibar, Egypt, Cyprus and Germany. M. M. Kaye has written a number of detective novels, but is known for her highly successful historical novels, including the bestselling The Far Pavilions, her first book, and Shadow of the Moon. She died on January 29, 2004.