Andrea Barton is an Australian author of crime and mystery fiction, best known for The Jade Riley Mysteries series, including The Godfather of Dance (2024) and A Killer Among Friends (2024). Her work combines suspense, emotional realism, and the complexities of friendship and trust. A Killer Among Friends received the Literary Titan Gold Award for its layered plotting and psychological depth.
Born and educated in Australia, Andrea Barton graduated as an electrical engineer and worked in telecommunications before completing a postgraduate diploma in organisational behaviour. She later became a career consultant, a role that deepened her interest in human motivation and identity. Her move abroad for her husband’s work marked a turning point: twelve years spent in Nigeria, the United States, and Qatar gave her both cultural insight and the seed for her writing career.
During her years overseas, Barton began writing short fiction and editing anthologies about expatriate life, including Nigerian Gems and Papua New Guinea Pearls. She co-edited these collections with Gail Collins. Her stories appeared in Signed, Sealed… Deceased, Against All Odds, and Heart, and she was shortlisted twice for the Australian Writers’ Centre Furious Fiction competition in 2021. She also long-listed a manuscript, Lost in Lagos (later retitled The Runaway Girl), in the 2021 Hawkeye Publishing Manuscript Development Prize.
Her debut novel, The Godfather of Dance (2024), introduces journalist Jade Riley, whose investigation into the unsolved murder of a ballroom dancer in Houston, Texas, reveals dark family secrets. The novel draws on Barton’s fascination with music and dance, passions she developed through years of ballroom and Latin training. “Murder, dance, family secrets,” she has said, “capture the energy and contradictions of human ambition.”
The sequel A Killer Among Friends (2024) returns Jade Riley to Melbourne, where she investigates the murder of a close friend. The case exposes betrayal inside a small technology firm and unearths a link to an earlier death.
Barton explained that she wanted to explore how hidden dangers can lie within familiar circles: “Murder is usually committed by someone known to the victim. By default, Jade knew all the suspects.” The novel’s shifting perspectives and timelines heighten its psychological tension, a structure Barton refined through meticulous scene mapping.
Book Three, The Man in the Dam (2025), set in Victoria’s High Country, continues Riley’s story against a backdrop of theatre, community life, and another mysterious death. Barton has signed a five-book deal with Next Chapter Publishing, ensuring the continuation of the series.
Alongside her fiction, Barton runs Brightside Story Studio, an editing service for authors of crime, romance, and women’s fiction. She is Vice President of the Mansfield Readers and Writers Festival and a member of the Australian Society of Authors, Writers Victoria, the Queensland Writers Centre, and Sisters in Crime.
Andrea Barton divides her time between Melbourne and Mansfield.
Photo by Susan Bradfield Photography
Born and educated in Australia, Andrea Barton graduated as an electrical engineer and worked in telecommunications before completing a postgraduate diploma in organisational behaviour. She later became a career consultant, a role that deepened her interest in human motivation and identity. Her move abroad for her husband’s work marked a turning point: twelve years spent in Nigeria, the United States, and Qatar gave her both cultural insight and the seed for her writing career.
During her years overseas, Barton began writing short fiction and editing anthologies about expatriate life, including Nigerian Gems and Papua New Guinea Pearls. She co-edited these collections with Gail Collins. Her stories appeared in Signed, Sealed… Deceased, Against All Odds, and Heart, and she was shortlisted twice for the Australian Writers’ Centre Furious Fiction competition in 2021. She also long-listed a manuscript, Lost in Lagos (later retitled The Runaway Girl), in the 2021 Hawkeye Publishing Manuscript Development Prize.
Her debut novel, The Godfather of Dance (2024), introduces journalist Jade Riley, whose investigation into the unsolved murder of a ballroom dancer in Houston, Texas, reveals dark family secrets. The novel draws on Barton’s fascination with music and dance, passions she developed through years of ballroom and Latin training. “Murder, dance, family secrets,” she has said, “capture the energy and contradictions of human ambition.”
The sequel A Killer Among Friends (2024) returns Jade Riley to Melbourne, where she investigates the murder of a close friend. The case exposes betrayal inside a small technology firm and unearths a link to an earlier death.
Barton explained that she wanted to explore how hidden dangers can lie within familiar circles: “Murder is usually committed by someone known to the victim. By default, Jade knew all the suspects.” The novel’s shifting perspectives and timelines heighten its psychological tension, a structure Barton refined through meticulous scene mapping.
Book Three, The Man in the Dam (2025), set in Victoria’s High Country, continues Riley’s story against a backdrop of theatre, community life, and another mysterious death. Barton has signed a five-book deal with Next Chapter Publishing, ensuring the continuation of the series.
Alongside her fiction, Barton runs Brightside Story Studio, an editing service for authors of crime, romance, and women’s fiction. She is Vice President of the Mansfield Readers and Writers Festival and a member of the Australian Society of Authors, Writers Victoria, the Queensland Writers Centre, and Sisters in Crime.
Andrea Barton divides her time between Melbourne and Mansfield.
Photo by Susan Bradfield Photography
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