Madeleine Ker

Madeleine Ker is the romance pen name of Marius Gabriel (born 1954), a British novelist who wrote around 28 Mills & Boon and Harlequin romances from 1983 before publishing historical novels under his own name.

Marius Gabriel Cipolla was born on 13 November 1954 in Mafikeng, South Africa. He studied Shakespeare at Newcastle University as a doctoral candidate and began writing romance fiction to pay for his postgraduate research. His first novel sold to Mills & Boon and appeared in 1983 under the female pen name Madeleine Ker.

Romance Wiki credits him with 19 Harlequin Presents titles, starting with Aquamarine (#642, November 1983), and seven Harlequin Romance novels, alongside Mills & Boon editions. Titles include Virtuous Lady (1984), Hostage (1985), Impact (1987), Judgement (1989), A Special Arrangement (1990), Duel of Passion (1990), Whirlpool (1993) and The Bruges Engagement (1994). Under his own name he then wrote The Original Sin (dated 1992 or 1993 by different sources), The Mask of Time (1994) and The Seventh Moon, all with Bantam, and later a run of historical novels including The Designer (2017), The Parisians (2019), Goodnight, Vienna (2023) and The German Daughter (2024). Wikipedia says he has homes in Cairo and Lincolnshire.

For collectors. The Ker novels were numbered paperback originals published in Britain by Mills & Boon and in North America by Harlequin, often at different dates, so a Mills & Boon copy may predate the Harlequin edition. Aquamarine (1983) is the first Ker title. Collectors of Gabriel's later fiction may find the pseudonymous romances of interest as his earliest published work.