Tracy Chevalier is the author of the international bestseller Girl with a Pearl Earring. The book, based on the creation of the famous painting by Johannes Vermeer, was adapted into an award-winning film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. Noted for her mesmerizing storytelling and the fluid use of period language, Chevalier pays exquisite attention to detail in both plot and setting in her historical novels. Her latest novel, Remarkable Creatures, is based on the life of the 19th-century English fossil collector Mary Anning, who discovered the first complete specimen of an ichthyosaur.