Miranda (aka Dean) James grew up in Mississippi on the family farm. After high school, Dean headed to college and eventually to graduate school in Houston, Texas, where he earned a Ph.D. in history, concentrating on medieval England. The academic job market being so abysmal then, he went on to get a master's degree in library science and has worked, off and on, for the past thirty-three years as a medical librarian with a long stint as a bookseller in addition. Greatly influenced by Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and the Hardy Boys, Dean wanted to become a writer from an early age and tell his own stories about ordinary people who solve mysteries.
