Berlie Doherty was born in Liverpool and writes for adults and children. Her first book, HOW GREEN YOU ARE! was published in 1982 and she has been a full-time, compulsive writer of novels, stories, poems and plays since then.

She has written over forty books, and is translated into twenty-one languages. Her books and plays have won many awards, including, twice, the Carnegie Medal for her teenage novels DEAR NOBODY and GRANNY WAS A BUFFER GIRL; and twice the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award, for her dramatisation of DEAR NOBODY and for DAUGHTER OF THE SEA.

Many of her books have been adapted for television, radio and stage both by herself and other dramatists. Two of her picture books, THE MIDNIGHT MAN and BLUE JOHN were written specially for the Lindsay String Quartet, to be performed with music, and there is a musical adaptation of her novel DAUGHER OF THE SEA.

In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Derby for excellence in her field.

She lives in Edale in the Peak District, where she spends her spare time walking, day-dreaming, and struggling to learn piano, violin and tin whistle.

The only life Gioga has ever known is that of a fisherman's daughter on remote Hamna Voe. But as a baby she was a gift of the sea to childless Munroe and Jannet, and now the Lord of the Oceans wants her back.

Torn between her love for her adopted parents and her strange attraction to the seal people, which will she choose - the sea or the land?

From the traditional folk-tale of the selkie, award-winning author Berlie Doherty has created her own lyrical and timeless story of a young girl's search for her true identity.