Helen Taylor is an award-winning children's book illustrator and an exhibiting artist with works in private collections around New Zealand and overseas.

She has been illustrating books since 1992 and has been twice shortlisted for the LIANZA Children's Book Awards.

In 2006, Helen won Best Picture Book in the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, with A Booming in the Night, a collaboration with writer Ben Brown.

Helen has also written and illustrated a number of picture books and in 2015 her picture book Kakapo Dance won a Storylines Notable Picture Book Award.

Helen lives in an old yellow house on a red-boned hill in the portside town of Lyttelton.

Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) was born in London, the daughter of the famous actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of George du Maurier, the author and artist.

In 1931 her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published. A biography of her father and three other novels followed, but it was the novel Rebecca that launched her into the literary stratosphere and made her one of the most popular authors of her day.

In 1932, du Maurier married Major Frederick Browning, with whom she had three children.Many of du Maurier's bestselling novels and short stories were adapted into award-winning films, including Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now.

In 1969 du Maurier was awarded a DBE. She lived most of her life in Cornwall, the setting for many of her books.