Johanna Nicholls comes from a theatrical family. She was a journalist and magazine feature writer in Sydney, Melbourne and London. In television she worked as a researcher/writer and Head Script Editor of TV Drama at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Johanna has lived in England, Italy and Greece. Her home is an 1830s convict-built sandstone cottage in Birchgrove, Sydney, where she is currently writing her fourth Australian historical novel and researching her fifth. Her first saga,Ironbark, was published by Simon & Schuster in Australia and New Zealand in 2009 and 2010. Ghost Gum Valley was published in 2012 and 2013. The Lace  Balcony (2014) is her third novel to have been translated into German and published in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.