Mark de Castrique was born in Hendersonville, NC, near Asheville. He went straight from the hospital to the funeral home where his father was the funeral director and the family lived upstairs. The unusual setting sparked his popular Barry Clayton series and launched his mystery writing career.

Mark is the author of nineteen novels: seven set in the fictional NC mountain town of Gainesboro, seven set in Asheville, two in Washington D.C., one science thriller in the year 2030, and two mysteries written for Middle Graders and set in the Charlotte region.

His novels have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. The CHICAGO TRIBUNE wrote,“As important and as impressive as the author’s narrative skills are the subtle ways he captures the geography – both physical and human – of a unique part of the American South.”

Mark is a veteran of the broadcast and film production business. In Washington D.C., he directed numerous news and public affairs programs and received an EMMY Award for his documentary film work. Through his company, MARK et al., he writes and produces videos for corporate and broadcast clients.

His years in Washington inspired his DC thrillers, THE 13TH TARGET, involving a terrorist plot against The Federal Reserve, and THE SINGULARITY RACE, a winner-take-all quest for Artificial Intelligence.

Mark and his wife Linda have two daughters: the older, Melissa Thomson, is the author of the Keena Ford Journals, a children’s series published by Penguin Press. His younger daughter, Lindsay, works as a communications consultant in Washington D.C.

Mark lives in Charlotte, but he and his wife Linda can be often found in the NC mountains or the nation’s capital.