[2] Perry was born, the youngest of five sisters, in Chelmsford, Essex, into a family of devout Christians who were members of a Strict Baptist church.

Fiction in the Gothic inheritance makes much of the potent importance of the interior, from the castle where Jonathan Harker finds himself holed up to Thornfield, and from the suburban homes in Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black to the ghastly crypts in The Monk.In 2013, she was a writer-in-residence at Gladstone's Library.

[10] Perry's debut novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was released in 2014 by Serpent's Tail, receiving high praise from reviewers including those of The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.

[11] The novel tells the story of a man named John Cole who wanders into a strange world while seeking out his brother amidst a drought.

Inspired by the myth of a sea serpent on the Essex coast, it tells the story of a Victorian widow, Cora Seaborne, and the friends who surround her after the death of her bullying husband.

Cora is intrigued and compelled by the possibility of the serpent's return, but clashes with the local vicar, William Ransome, who is determined to lay superstition to rest in his rural parish.

The novel is again written in a gothic style, and explores themes of goodness, friendship, superstition, and love and once again received positive reviews; John Burnside, quoted on the book's cover, writes: "Had Charles Dickens and Bram Stoker come together to write the great Victorian novel, I wonder if it would have surpassed The Essex Serpent?