Rebecca James has worked as a waitress, a bartender, an English teacher in Japan and Indonesia, and a kitchen designer.
After publishing a novel exploring a marriage breakdown with American-based ebook publisher Samhain, James had significant success with her first young-adult novel, thriller Beautiful Malice: the bidding war that the novel sparked at Frankfurt book Fair led to the Wall Street Journal suggesting James could be the next J.K. Rowling.
James has subsequently published additional young-adult novels, including Sweet Damage and Cooper Bartholomew Is Dead: the former was nominated for a Ned Kelly Award and highly commended at the FAW Awards, while the latter was longlisted for a Davitt Award.
She grew up in New South Wales and has two sisters, one of whom is Wendy James.
As of 2018, she was based in Geelong.