Alina Reyes was born in 1956 in Soulac in the south-west of France. She left school early and married, but then returned to her studies, completing a master's thesis on the fantasy stories of the nineteenth-century writer Marcel Schwob. While studying she supported herself and her two sons by working as a freelance journalist. Her controversial first novel, The Butcher, was originally written for a competition of erotic writing; it was published, became an overnight bestseller in France, and has since been translated into fifteen languages. Her other novels include Lucie's Long Voyage, The Fatal Bodice, When You Love You Must Depart and Behind Closed Doors. Alina Reyes lives in Paris.
