M. M. Kaye was born in India and spent most of her childhood and much of her early married life in that country. Her ties with India are strong: her grandfather, father, brother and husband all served the Raj, and her grandfather's first cousin, Sir John Kaye, wrote the standard accounts of the Indian Mutiny and the first Afghan War. When India achieved independence her husband joined the British Army, and for the next nineteen years she followed the drum to all sorts of exciting places she would not otherwise have seen, including Kenya, Zanzibar, Egypt, Cyprus and Berlin.M. M. Kaye is best-known for her highly successful historical novels, including the bestselling The Far Pavilions, Shadow of the Moon and Trade Wind, all published by Penguin, and for her detective novels, which include Death in Berlin, Death in Kenya and Death in Cyprus (also published by Penguin in one volume entitled Murder Abroad), and Death in Zanzibar, Death in Kashmir and Death in the Andamans, also collected together in one volume. Penguin also publish the first volume of her autobiography, The Sun in the Morning. The second volume, Golden Afternoon, was published by Viking. M. M. Kaye has also written a children's story, The Ordinary Princess (1991).