Mary Katherine Pershall is an Australian children's author published by Penguin Books.
She writes novels for the tween market, (children of late primary school age).
Her best known book is You Take the High Road, published in 1988, a novel for children set in contemporary Australia.
[3] Pershall is also responsible for the Ruby Clair series, which depicts a 12-year-old girl's struggle to juggle a normal life with the ghosts she can see, and has co-authored a number of novels with her daughters.
Her younger daughter, who had a long history of mental illness, anorexia, and substance abuse, gained national media attention in November 2015 as the woman who stabbed her 67-year-old roommate, Zvonimir “Johnnie” Petrovski, to death over a pack of cigarettes.