Follow Dawn Brookes on Booksprout

About the author

Bestselling author of the Hurry up Nurse series of memoirs and the Rachel Prince cosy mystery series. My cosy series combines a unique blend of murder, cruising and medicine with a touch of romance.

I have a 39 year nursing pedigree and take regular cruise holidays for research purposes! I like to think I bring these passions along with a love of clean crime and a Christian background to my writing.

The surname of my protagonist is in honour of a childhood dog, ‘Prince’, who used to put his head on my knee while I lost myself in books.

I worked in the NHS in England for the best part of thirty-nine years. My initial training was in Leicester in the late 1970s and this training was the focus of my first memoir – Hurry up Nurse: memoirs of nurse training in the 1970s. This book has been a consistent kindle bestseller throughout 2018 in the USA and at times in the UK.

I moved to London in 1980 to undertake a specialist cardio-thoracic nurse training course, working at the London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green. My time in London is covered in my second memoir – Hurry up Nurse 2: London calling.

I travelled around Asia for three months in 1982 before moving to Berkshire. I later trained as a midwife and worked as a sister on the labour ward. After this I worked for a time in the pharmaceutical industry as a research nurse and then moved on to train as a district nurse, obtaining a BA (Hons) in community health studies at Reading university. After this I completed an MA in Education for health and social care.

My father became ill in the early 2000s and I moved back to the Midlands, living in Derby. I worked as a community matron and an advanced nurse practitioner in my latter years, leaving to pursue a writing career in 2016. More nursing and midwifery memoirs are in the pipeline.

I never confined myself totally to nursing, I have been an amateur photographer for around forty years and ran a photo restoration business for a few years. I have taught youth groups and children’s groups as part of my church life.

I am embracing life as an author and write across genres, more recently focussing on a cosy mystery series based around my love of cruising. The first book in this series, A Cruise to Murder (dedicated to my mum who died 30 years prior to this publication) hit the bestseller list in September 2018 following a Kindle Daily Deal which of course made me very happy. I am continuing to focus on writing and have plans for a PI series once the cosy mystery series is established. I love to hear from readers, so please get in touch.