Ware has written seven psychological thrillers, as of 2022 : Jacket design for Ruth Ware's first two novels, In a Dark, Dark Wood (copyright 2015 Simon & Schuster, jacket design Alan Dingman, jacket art by Shutterstock) and The Woman in Cabin 10 (copyright 2016 Simon & Schuster, jacket design Alan Dingman, jacket photographs by Alamy and Arcangel). Ware's settings play a key role in drawing in the reader and are as essential and integral to her story as the characters. These environments create a sense of isolation for the events to unfold in. Ware and Christie both choose settings and situations that foster the sense of dread that propels their characters to paranoia and often they react violently as a result. Christie was famously known for utilizing this plot device, in novels such as Murder on the Orient Express.

The first two of Ware's novels feature a murder mystery with a group of people trapped, or otherwise restricted from immediately escaping the dangerous environment. Ware's protagonists are usually ordinary women who find themselves in dangerous situations involving a crime. Ware has admitted to being unconsciously influenced by Christie and other mystery novelists of that time. In her crime books, Ware's writing style is often compared to that of Agatha Christie. She also spent time in Paris, teaching English as a foreign language.īefore embarking on her writing career as Ruth Ware, Ware wrote five young-adult fantasy novels as Ruth Warburton, all of which were published by Hodder's Children Books. She studied English at Manchester University, where she developed a fascination with Old English and Middle English texts.īefore her writing career, Ware worked as a waitress, a bookseller and a publicist. Ruth Ware was born in 1977 and grew up in Lewes. She switched to the pen name Ruth Ware to distinguish her crime novels from the young-adult fantasy novels published under her name, Ruth Warburton. She is represented by Eve White of the Eve White Literary Agency. Both In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10 were on the U.K.'s Sunday Times and The New York Times top ten bestseller lists. Her novels include In a Dark, Dark Wood (2015), The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), The Lying Game (2017), The Death of Mrs Westaway (2018), The Turn of the Key (2019), One By One (2020), and The It Girl (2022). Ruth Ware (born 1977), alias for Ruth Warburton, is a British psychological thriller author.

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