Maybelle Wallis

Maybelle is a paediatrician who has spent her career in England and Ireland. She was inspired to write 19th century fiction by the former workhouse buildings at the hospitals where she has practised and by her fascination with how medicine evolved during the Victorian era.

In the DOUGHTY TRILOGY, Maybelle uses this inspiration to evoke a past that holds a mirror to the present, suggesting that times may change, but human nature does not. Her first novel, HEART OF CRUELTY, explores themes of passion, deception and corruption, in the Dickensian setting of 1840s Birmingham. Its sequel, THE PIANO PLAYER, is a story of medicine and murder set in cholera-stricken Dublin during the Great Famine. DAUGHTER of STRANGERS, with a theme of reconciling past trauma, is set in 1850s Manhattan.