Anne Cassidy was born in London in 1952 and was a teacher in London schools for 19 years before she turned to writing full time.

Anne has been writing books for teenagers for many years and concentrates on crime stories and thrillers.

Before she began to write Anne was an avid reader. Her favourite kind of books are those that have a mystery of some sort at their centre. She has a passion for crime books, mystery stories and detective novels. It's not just 'whodunnit' books she likes but why something happened, how a crime was committed, the effects of terrible events on ordinary people's lives. Her favourite crime writers are Ruth Rendell (particularly when she's writing as Barbara Vine), Sue Grafton, John Harvey, Lawrence Block, Scott Trurow and Donna Tartt.

Teenagers inhabit a transitory world between childhood and adulthood. Certainties and expectations are often turned upside down in this period. It seemed therefore an ideal point at which to throw a young adult in the path of crime. To see what happens if a young girl, previously only interested in clothes and records, is late to a meeting with her best friend and when she arrives, finds her murdered. Does she ignore it and get on with her life? Or does she find herself drawn into it?

To Anne there seemed to be a lack of these sorts of books for younger readers so since then she has written a variety of mystery and crime novels for teenagers.

Anne’s recent books for Scholastic have been thrillers for the Teen-Rated range including Love Letters, Missing Judy and Tough Love and she also penned the East End Murders series. Looking For JJ was published in hardback in February 2004 and released in paperback February 2005.

Looking for JJ tells the story of Jennifer Jones, who is convicted of manslaughter as a ten-year-old. Following six years in a secure unit, she's released under a new identity. The novel looks back at the day when three girls went out on an adventure and only two came back and also at JJ's life afterwards as she tries to avoid being discovered by the press and begins to face up to her notoriety.

Anne’s novel, Birthday Blues was published in February 2005 and is a gripping story focusing on an abandoned baby.
A day-old child has been left in a in the street in a cardboard pet carrier - but who is little Bobby's mother? And how could she leave him like this? Police are desperate to reunite them, but no one is coming forward...

Anne’s last novel, The Story of My Life has a male central character. Kenny, a seventeen year old who’s attraction to his brother’s girlfriend causes trouble in the family. But this trouble is nothing to what develops when he meets Mack, and his life takes a violent swerve in a completely different direction. A simple chance meeting that could destroy his whole world…

Looking for JJ has won the Renfrewshire Teenage Book Award 2007, the North East Children’s Book Award 2007, the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2004, the Sheffield Children’s Book Award 2005, and the Angus Book Award 2005, and has been shortlisted for the prestigious Whitbread Children’s Book Award 2004 and also the Carnegie Medal 2004.

Forget Me Not is Anne’s gripping new novel which tackles the difficult subject of child abduction. It publishes in February 2008.