Amanda Brenner is a native Midwesterner and has spent her adult life in the business world. She has traveled extensively throughout the United States, occasionally venturing into Canada and Nova Scotia. Her initial interest in writing started at an early age, when westerns were the most popular attractions at the local theater. Her first novel, Trail of Vengeance, is in that genre. In the course of plotting and fleshing out this work, she lived at the library, scouring dozens of books for authentic details of life on the frontier in the 1880s. After finishing a second western, Shadow of the Rope, Amanda began to explore a new direction and completed several short stories, along with three contemporary mysteries involving a private investigator she created, the latest being The Mystery of the Nourdon Blue.