Catherine McCullagh trained as a history and language teacher before embarking on a twenty-year career in the Australian Regular Army as a teacher, linguist and editor. She then left the Army and established herself as a freelance editor, primarily in military history. Fifteen years later, inspired by the extraordinary stories that surrounded her, she embarked on a new career, this time as a writer. She has published two non-fiction works, Willingly into the Fray and War Child. Catherine's first historical novel, Dancing with Deception, was published in 2017 and was followed by Secrets and Showgirls in 2021. Love and Retribution marks a move away from the Parisian backdrop of these earlier novels, and a foray into the British experience of World War II.