Vivien Alcock was born September 23, 1924, in the seaside town of Worthing in Sussex, England, where she lived until her mother's death ten years later. She studied art for two years at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts and worked as a commercial artist in London for several years after World War II. Alcock met her husband, the children's author Leon Garfield, while serving in the war as an ambulance driver for the British Army. She began publishing juvenile fiction in middle age, when she found that her small daughter enjoyed her storytelling.

Alcock writes provocative and suspenseful stories which often include supernatural and fantastic elements, although these are absent from The Cuckoo Sister. She has won awards or nominations for awards for The Stonewalkers, The Sylvia Game, Travelers by Night, The Cuckoo Sister, The Mysterious Mr. Ross, and The Monster Garden. The...