Rachel Ward, author of the NUMBERS series, grew up in Bookham, Surrey. After school she studied Geography at Durham University and, combined working for a number of local authorities with raising a family. She began writing in her 30's, starting out with short stories. One of these short stories formed the basis of the idea for NUMBERS. Rachel later came to the attention of Chicken House at a local writers' surgery and was signed to Chicken House as a result.
Her debut novel, NUMBERS, was the winner of Winner of the Flemish Children and Youth Literature Prize 2011 and the Angus Book Awards 2010, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2009 and the Branford Boase Award 2010.
The sequel to NUMBERS, entitled NUMBERS 2: THE CHAOS, was released in June 2010 and the third and final book in the series, NUMBERS 3: INFINITY was released in June 2011.
NUMBERS is currently in production as a film, and is being produced by the same film-makers who gave us This is England '86 and Four Lions.
Ward’s gritty YA thriller, THE DROWNING was published in May 2013. The second in the series, WATER BORN, will be published in August.