For the American arts advocate, collector, and philanthropist, see Frances Lasker Brody.
Frances McNeil, also writing as Frances Brody, is an English novelist and playwright, and has written extensively for radio.[1]
Early life
McNeil was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, where she now lives. She studied at Ruskin College, Oxford and has a degree in English literature and History from University of York.[2]
Writing
As Frances Brody she has written a series of 1920s crime novels featuring Kate Shackleton.[3][4][5] The sixth in the series, An Avid Reader, is set in the Leeds Library, the oldest surviving subscription library of its type in the UK. After nine books in the series Brody wrote a short story prequel, Kate Shackleton's First Case, in which the story begins in a Harrogate teashop.[6] The twelfth book in the series (excluding "first case") was Death and the Brewery Queen, published in 2020, and the thirteenth, A Mansion for Murder, in 2022. Each book in the series is set in a specific location in Yorkshire. A Woman Unknown was shortlisted for the 2016 Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award, the criteria for which include: "the protagonist is a nice young woman whose life is suddenly invaded".[7][8]
In 2021 Brody published A Murder Inside, the first in the Brackerly Prison Mysteries series set in a 1960s women's prison in Yorkshire.[9][10]
She wrote three novels under her own name, which were republished in 2016 under the name Frances Brody. Sisters on Bread Street is partly based on the story of her mother, who lived on Bread Street in Leeds as a child; it was published in a limited edition just after her mother's hundredth birthday, published in an expanded edition as Somewhere Behind the Morning, and republished in 2016 under its original title. Sixpence in her Shoe relates to the Leeds Children's Holiday Camp Association based at Silverdale, Lancashire, about which she has also written a factual history, Now I am a Swimmer (the title being a quote from a child's letter home). Sisters of Fortune is the tale of two girls of different financial backgrounds growing up in Leeds, and was republished as Halfpenny Dreams.[11]
Sisters on Bread Street (Limited edition,[11] 2003, Pavan Press, ISBN9780952554714; published as Somewhere Behind the Morning 2006, Orion Books, ISBN978-1407223971; republished January 2016 as Sisters on Bread Street, a Frances Brody book, Piatkus, ISBN978-0-3494-1070-8)
Sisters of Fortune (2007, Severn House, ISBN978-0727865847; republished July 2016 as Halfpenny Dreams, a Frances Brody book, Piatkus, ISBN978-0-3494-1073-9)
^ ab"Sagas". Frances Brody. Archived from the original on 4 April 2016. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
^Tressell : a one man play based on the life and times of Robert Treswell author of 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists'. Worldcat catalogue record. OCLC828184818.
^"Frances Brody Archive". explore.library.leeds.ac.uk. University of Leeds Library. Retrieved 30 September 2021.