Elodie Lauren Geraldine Harper (born 1979) is an English author and journalist. She began her career working for the BBC and Channel 4 News before joining ITV News Anglia as a reporter. Her Pompeii-set novel The Wolf Den (2021), the first in a trilogy, became a #1 Sunday Times bestseller.
Harper successfully submitted her short story "Wild Swimming" to Stephen King's Bazaar of Bad Dreams short story competition.[6] The winning story then featured King's 2016 anthology Six Scary Stories. That March, Harper signed a two-book deal with Mulholland Books for the publication of her debut novel The Binding Song, a thriller set at the fictional HMP Halvergate in Norfolk, in 2017.[7] This was followed by her second crime novel The Death Knock in 2018. However, she felt her first two novels, set in the "Norfolk Noir" genre,[8] were too close to her day job, motivating her to go into historical fiction.[9]
Historian Dan Jones introduced Harper to Head of Zeus (a Bloomsbury Books imprint),[10] through which Harper published her first historical fiction novel The Wolf Den in May 2021. Set in ancient Pompeii, the novel follows Amara, a young woman enslaved in the city's Lupanar.[11] She cited Robert Knapp's Invisible Romans, Mary Beard's Pompeii, and Alison Cooley's Pompeii and Herculaneum as some of her sources when conducting research for the novel.[12]The Wolf's Den debuted at #1 on The Sunday Times paperback fiction list,[13] won the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award,[14] and was shortlisted for Page Turner of the Year at the 2022 British Book Awards.[15] It was also longlisted for the Historical Writers' Association's (HWA) Gold Crown Award.[16] This was followed by a sequel The House with the Golden Door in 2022,[17] which entered the top 10 on the bestseller list.[18] The third and final installment The Temple of Fortuna was published in 2023.[19] Antonia Senior of The Times called it "one of the best historical fiction trilogies" since Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.[20]
In 2022, it was confirmed Harper would reunite with Head of Zeus for her next two novels: Boudicca's Daughter and an untitled novel about Fulvia, Mark Antony's wife.[21] In 2024, Harper signed her first children's book deal with DK Children for a middle-grade trilogy.[22]
Personal life
Harper married Jason Farrington in 2010 and has a son.[23][24]