Author Brunonia Barry blazed her own unconventional path to literary stardom with her first novel, The Lace Reader. The self-published debut gained local acclaim after Barry submitted her drafts to area book clubs for feedback; the finished novel gained enough buzz that it was given a starred review in Publishers Weekly and eventually signed to a major publishing house. Although she published her debut novel well into adulthood, Barry has always pursued writing and the arts. After studying creative writing and literature at Green Mountain College and the University of New Hampshire, Barry ran promotional campaigns for several major Chicago theaters and worked in Hollywood for a decade before returning to Massachusetts in the mid-1990s. In addition to writing novels, Barry is now an accomplished speaker. Her second novel, The Map of True Places (2011), was widely praised. Her newest novel is The Fifth Petal--like Barry's earlier novels, it is set in evocative, mystery-infused Salem, Massachusetts.