A writer who was inspired to pen two novels after walking her dogs on Epsom Downs has landed a publishing deal with the company behind international bestseller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Natalie Meg Evans, 52, will release two historical romances with Quercus Books, the publishers of Stieg Larsson’s Sweden-set mystery, and said her success is down to the many hours she spent walking her dogs in Epsom’s beautiful countryside.

The first novel, The Dress Thief, will hit the shelves next June.  Set in Paris in the 1930s, it centres around Alix, a young woman desperate to make it in the world of couture fashion, who resorts to stealing designs to make extra money. 

The second book, The Collaborator, to be released in 2015, will be set in wartime Paris and will feature Epsom Downs and the 1937 Epsom Derby. 

The world-famous flat race was won by rank outsider Midday-sun that year, who came in at odds of around 100-1. 

The book will kick off on Derby Day, which will see the main character Cora risk every penny she has on this unlikely horse - with life-changing consequences.

Mrs Evans, who lived in Epsom Downs for 15 years until 2007 before moving to East Anglia six years ago, said she first conceived the plot of The Dress Thief while walking on Epsom Downs and Headley Heath. 

She said: "I had two big dogs and we used to walk for miles.  Those hours with just dogs for company gave me time to wrestle with a multi-layered plot and a big dilemma.  

"I wanted to write about fashion, but from a unique angle.  I wanted to make my central character a thief.  

"This was a moral quandary, but I followed my gut instinct.  The book reveals the pressures that make my heroin, Alix, follow a course she later bitterly regrets."

The writer would even practice her characters’ dialogue as she walked. 

She added: "I’d bump into fellow-walkers while I was having an ‘argument’ between my villain and my heroine and quickly pretend I was calling to the dogs."

Mrs Evans said she has been writing since childhood and penned her first novel aged 22 - which she threw into the recycling bin because it was "pretty awful".

She has worked in Public Relations as a freelance copywriter and supported her husband's engineering business as a bookeeper, but is now a full-time writer.

But Mrs Evans finally achieved recognition for her writing after winning the Harry Bowling Fiction Prize in 2013, which was instituted in memory of the writer of Tuppence to Tooley Street and The Girl from Cotton Lane and secured her an agent. 

Her two-book deal is worth £25,000 and she said it has already netted her £50,000 before publication, with Spanish, German and Italian publishers having snatched up the rights to The Dress Thief.

The author added: "Success is a wonderful feeling but only I know how long it has taken to get to this point. 

"Those walks on Epsom Downs - and the dogs who accompanied me - were a key part of the journey."