Alan Bradley was born in Toronto, Canada. He studied electronic engineering and worked at numerous radio and television stations in Ontario and at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in Toronto. Later, he became the Director of Television Engineering in the media centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, SK, where he remained for 25 years before taking early retirement to write in 1994. He is the author of the Flavia de Luce Mystery series, all 6 of which have been New York Times bestsellers. In 2009 he won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. He also writes non-fiction books including The Shoebox Bible and Ms. Holmes of Baker Street. (Bowker Author Biography)