Ann B. Ross is an America author noted for her series of New York Times bestsellers set in her home state of North Carolina This comedic cozy mystery series features Miss Julia, whose name appears at the beginning of each title in the series. Ross also taught literature and humanities at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Early life Ross attended Blue Ridge Community College and Armstrong College before completing her B.A. in literature at the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1984, while her children were also at university. She earned an MA and Ph.D. in Old English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in 1991. Career Ross began her publishing career in the early 1980s with two paperback murder mysteries: The Murder Cure published in 1978 and The Murder Stroke published in 1981. They "didn't do very well" and she gave up on writing. While a graduate student, she wrote The Pilgrimage, an adventure story about two North Carolina sisters who go west in the 19th–century as missionaries. Doris Betts, a novelist and creative writing professor at UNC, put Ross in touch with agent Rhoda Weyr, who read The Pilgrimage and sold it to MacMillan Press in 1988. However, sales were again limited. After 1991, Ross transitioned to a career as a university instructor at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, when Miss Julia just "came into her head." Ross said, “For the first time in my life, I was no one’s daughter, niece, wife, or mother. I was just Ann, and my identity came from my classroom performance alone. ...It was absolutely liberating.” The fictional Miss Julia (aka Mrs. Wesley Lloyd Springer), is "a refined Southern woman" whose life is disrupted by the secrets of her deceased husband. Ross writes from Miss Julia's perspective. Despite the prediction of an editor at William Morrow "that her audience would be limited to women over forty in the Southeastern United States", the first book in the series, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, sold well and went through six printings its first year. The Independent Booksellers Association ranked number nine on its list of recommended books for the year. It also was named to the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers list." Reader's Digest Condensed Books issued the book in twelve different languages." The novels' plots often depend on points of North Carolina