Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of addiction, mental illness. 

Jane Harper is an Australian crime author known for writing thrillers set in the rural bush country of Australia. Although she was born in the UK, Harper and her family moved to Australia when she was young. The family lived in a Melbourne suburb close to the setting of Force of Nature, and Harper credits her childhood as the inspiration for many of her novels’ settings. Although Harper obtained Australian citizenship, she moved back to the UK with her family as a teenager and then attended the University of Kent, where she studied English. She later began a journalism career in England before returning to Australia to work for the Geelong Advertiser and then the Herald Sun. Harper worked in print journalism for more than a decade before penning her first novel, The Dry. Its success allowed her to pursue fiction writing as a career, and she has since published several best-selling titles. 

Her Aaron Falk series, which includes The Dry, Force of Nature, and Exiles, is set in and around Melbourne. The Dry (2016) follows Aaron Falk as he investigates the death of his childhood best friend.