Donna VanLiere

Donna VanLiere (born 1966 in Ohio) is an American novelist best known for The Christmas Shoes, her 2001 debut, and the string of Christmas-season novels that followed it. She studied at Cedarville University in Ohio before moving to Franklin, Tennessee, after marrying her husband, Troy, where she worked in Nashville theater, commercials, voiceover, and radio while writing on the side.

The Christmas Shoes -- inspired by the popular song of the same name -- became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into a 2002 CBS television movie starring Rob Lowe, followed by two further TV-movie adaptations drawn from her later books. VanLiere continued the story-world of an Ohio family and community across ten further novels released roughly every one to two years, forming the Christmas Hope series, each following a different set of characters connected loosely to the original book's small town rather than a single continuing cast. Beyond the Christmas Hope series she has written standalone novels including The Angels of Morgan Hill and The Good Dream, and, in more recent years, the biblically-set End-Times trilogy exploring the books of Jacob, Ezekiel, and Daniel. VanLiere continues to publish from her home in Tennessee.