John Burley was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up near the Chesapeake Bay.  Following college, he served as a paramedic/firefighter in a busy 911 jurisdiction just north of Washington, D.C. He later completed a graduate degree in medical pathology and attended medical school in Chicago, earning his Doctor of Medicine from Rosalind Franklin University before returning to Baltimore to complete an emergency medicine residency training program at University of Maryland Medical Center and the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. 

After graduating from residency, John moved to California, where he began work on his first novel. THE ABSENCE OF MERCY was published by HarperCollins in November 2013. It received the National Black Ribbon Award in recognition of an author who brings a fresh, new voice to suspense writing. 

John currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area where he works as an emergency department physician. His third novel, THE QUIET CHILD, released in the United States in August 2017.

Books by John Burley

The Quiet Child

by John Burley - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

It's the summer of 1954, and the residents of Cottonwood, California are dying. At the center of it all is six-year-old Danny McCray, a strange and silent child who appears to bring ruin to those around him. Even his own mother is plagued by an illness that is slowly consuming her. Sheriff Jim Kent has watched the people of his town suffer, increasingly aware of the whispers and rumors surrounding the boy --- and he worries someone might take drastic action to protect their loved ones. Then a stranger arrives, and Danny and his 10-year-old brother Sean go missing. In the search that follows, everyone is a suspect, and the consequences of finding the two brothers may be worse than not finding them at all.