Julia Spencer-Fleming, with one parent from Tuscaloosa, AL and the other from Argyle, NY, likes to think of herself multi-geographical. A former military brat, she grew up in places as diverse as Mobile, Rome, Stuttgart and Syracuse. A graduate of Ithaca College, George Washington University and the U Maine School of Law, she took up writing while still a stay-at-home mother of two. During the time it took to finish her first book, she got a full-time job at a Portland, Maine, law firm and had a third child. Julia didn't want to write yet another lawyer-sleuth, so she used her army past and a keen eye for the goings-on at her Episcopal church to create Clare Fergusson, first female priest in the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill. The result, In the Bleak Midwinter, made debut history when it won the St.Martin's/Malice Domestic contest, the Dilys Award from the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, and the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for Best First Novel.

Now happily quit of the law, Julia lives and works in a 180-year-old farmhouse in the southern Maine countryside with her husband, three children, and beloved big dog.