Bio: Martha Reynolds

Martha Reynolds

is the award-winning and bestselling author of eleven novels, including the Amazon bestsellers Chocolate for Breakfast, Bits of Broken Glass, and I Wish I Had a River. She transformed her grandfather’s 1924 canoeing journal into a short nonfiction book, A Winding Stream.

After ending an accomplished career as a fraud investigator in 2011, she decided to do what she’d always wanted to do - write. Her debut novel, Chocolate for Breakfast, is based on what she terms “the most pivotal year” of her life, a year spent overseas in Fribourg, Switzerland, as part of her college’s junior year abroad program. As she has stated, the sudden death of a beloved figure in her life did actually occur, as it happened to the central character in the book, but with the rest of her time in Switzerland “not interesting enough,” she made up the character of Bernadette and her adventures. After Martha’s first novel was published, a good friend encouraged her to continue the story, and she did, writing Chocolate Fondue and then Bittersweet Chocolate to round out the trilogy.

Since the publication of Chocolate for Breakfast in 2012, she has turned out novels in rapid succession - Bits of Broken Glass, The Way to Remember, A Jingle Valley Wedding. Her goal was to publish a book each year for the first ten years, and she accomplished that objective. “I’ll continue writing as long as there are stories to tell,” Reynolds says. “Perhaps not at the same pace, though.”

Her writing has been compared to that of Claire Cook, Elizabeth Gilbert, Alice Hoffman, and even Joan Didion, though Reynolds says she can only aspire to be as good as they are.

Her essays have appeared in “Magnificat” magazine, and her very short poem was read by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Connie Schultz on NPR’s “Tell Me More” poetry challenge.

She and her husband live in Rhode Island, never far from the ocean, which she prefers off-season. With five of her novels set in Switzerland, she is always dreaming about her next trip.