Valerie Helene Mendes (née Barnett, born October 1939) is an English novelist and poet.
[4] Mendes began her career as a journalist with Marshall Cavendish, working as an in-house writer and project editor on their weekly magazines Book of Life and Man and Woman.
She then moved to Oxford University Press as an editor for their list of readers in the early days of the English Language Teaching Division.
[5] While Mendes worked for Penguin Books, her stories New Year Cat and The Best Guy in Albert Street were published in Puffin Post.
[6] In 2002, Mendes published her first novel for teenagers, Girl in the Attic, followed by four more: Coming of Age, Lost and Found,[7] The Drowning[8] and Where Peacocks Scream.