Bannister wrote her first book, The Lord and the Gypsy, while she was working full-time and it was published in 1978.[1] Bannister's books published under the pseudonym Veryan, have been the most critically acclaimed.[2] Publishers Weekly praised her works and called The Riddle of Alabaster Royal (1997), a "Regency that rises farther above the formula than her fine novels usually do."[8] Kirkus Reviews called Never Doubt I Love (1995), one of her best Georgian-period novels.[9] Libraries are recommended to collect her books as part of a core collection of Regency Romances by Kristin Ramsdell in her 2012 "Genreflecting Advisory Series."[10] "Veryan's books are distinguished by well-developed central characters," according to Twentieth-century romance and historical writers,[11] a book which also discusses the suffering undergone by some of her heroes before they can be considered free of past wrongdoing: in, for example, The Lord and the Gypsy and Love Alters Not.[11]