Dark and Stormy Book Club

Justice Tomorrow

Who lynched Henry Johnson?

Young investigators Madeline Sterling and Socractes Gray head a team sent to a Georgia town in 1965 to learn who lynched the son of a local civil rights leader.

Sterling doesn’t have her head on straight from her last assignment. And Gray knows pretty little Crossville, Georgia is no place for her or the handsom rookie she’s training to be a detective for the civil rights group, Justice Tomorrow.

The town’s seething with rage. Both Black and white commuinities are lashing out a the wrong enemy.

Sterling and Gray suspect someone is using prejudice, murder, arson, and feuds dating back to the Civil War to hide larceny on a grand scale. But it's hard to think when they're fighting a forbidden attraction.

Suddenly, their lives are in danger and time is running out for the investigators. Sterling and Gray must unravel a hundred-year-old murder to get justice for Henry Johnson--and somehow get out alive.

Meet Socrates Gray...
1961
Socrates Gray knew they would come at him sometime during his time at Yale University. He’d endured plenty of racial slights and slurs in his three years on the New Haven campus, but he always expected a physical attack that left him bruised and bloodied. Or dead.

Still, it surprised him when two white men stepped from the shadows of the trees and blocked his path from the apartment he shared with his younger brother. His eyes swept the park-like area warming in the spring afternoon sun. Empty. As he knew it would be. The men had planned the assault.

The taller and younger of the two men, had a hand—the one carrying his weapon no doubt—behind his back. The men didn’t hide their faces, which meant they came to kill so he couldn’t identify them. Not that the New Haven, Connecticut police would really try to find to those who killed or brutalized a black student.

“Socrates Gray?” The older man asked. His green eyes seemed to sparkle in the sun. He was much shorter than his companion or Gray. His shoulders squared, his lips pursed, and he appeared like a butler announcing dinner rather than an assassin.

Gray had learned to be wary of appearances. Some of the most proper, preppy-looking Yalies had peppered him with insults and threats.

“Gray. Call me Gray.” His weight shifting to his back foot.

“I’m Arthur Woolworth. Might we have a word?” His hand swept to a nearby park bench.
“I’m late. . .” Gray gathered his breath. For the first time he noticed they both wore suits. And the taller man’s hands were empty. No weapons. “I-I’m late for class.”

“It won’t take long, I promise. We have an extraordinary offer for you to consider,” said Woolworth. “If you say no, you can continue on to class—or we will drive you if you wish.”
“W-what—What kind of offer?”

Woolworth nodded to his companion and the taller man stepped aside, out of earshot. His eyes, however, scanned the area as though an assault was imminent.

“Please, can we sit. I’m not as young as I used to be and the blasted sun isn’t as warm as I’d hoped.” Before he sat, Woolworth flipped back his dark wool coat, reached into his hip pocket, and took out a billfold. He flipped through the contents a moment, then founded a picture to hand Gray.

The photo had white rippled edges like older Kodak pictures and there was no writing on the back. When Gray turned it over, he gasped.

“I see you recognize two of the people in the picture,” Woolworth said.

Gray sat on the bench. The Eiffel Tower in Paris filled the grainy background of the photo. Six, no eight, young people laughed at the camera. Two of them were his parents. Another was the younger version of the man in front of him.

“Your mother was so fair skinned she passed for white in Paris,” Woolworth said. “She thought it was funny. She actually made a game of it when we were around Americans. Florence—your mother—was daring. What she endured and the horrible stories she told..."

“She was a wonderful storyteller. My father, brother and I loved to hear her spin a yarn.” Gray stared at the photo, felt his eyes burn.

“Well, we were, all of us, idealists, philosophers, painters, and writers who would change the world with our vision. Back then we felt invincible. And we had plans. Your father came late to our gang of adventurers. Your mother met him—.”

“In a French café opposite the Sorbonne where he was a student,” Gray finished.

“As the war clouds gathered, all of us went home. First one, then another. They followed their dream of educating young Negroes in the South, hoping the South would become, well, as free and accepting as Paris. I went to war then followed dreams of a practical nature.You may recognize others in the picture as wealthy, influential people now. One is very well connected in government.” For a moment Woolworth studied his bony hands popping with blue veins. “I still paint a little.”

“You knew them.” Gray couldn’t believe his luck. Someone who could actually speak of his parents, what they were like, how they moved, who they loved.

Woolworth nodded. “For what it’s worth, even then I tried to talk them out of returning to the South after the war. Nothing changed there, even for men like your father who fought Hitler in the same trenches as whites. They were…they were warriors. I am sorry for you and your brother. I never knew of your existence until later. Much later.”

“We moved in with my aunt and kept our heads down. She tried to turn us into God-fearing Christians, who forgave our enemies.” Gray swallowed hard. “Too much to forgive.”


Jackie Ross Flaum
Born and raised in Ashland, Kentucky, I began my professional career as a reporter for The Hartford Courant in Connecticut. More fun than anything! I won a Sigma Delta Chi prize for editorial writing – and met my future husband, David, there.

After David became a business reporter we moved our little poodle Tucky and daughters Stephanie and Becky to Memphis. That’s where my new career in public relations, marketing, and executive speech writing began.

In Memphis, I wrote something different every week: speeches, magazine or newspaper stories, ad copy, even books. I did things like:
Executive speeches for Federal Express
A nationally syndicated newspaper column as a ghost-writer
A prize-winning national marketing plan for a local travel agency
Copy for an on-line city guide that won an Addy award
A Memphis magazine story on women in a Tennessee prison
Parts of AJ’s Tax Court (St. Luke’s Press) and Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll (Professional Counselor Books).

Finally, I abandoned fact for fiction.

I entered an unfinished novel and won the 21st annual River City Romance Writers Duel on the Delta for romantic suspense. "One in Ten Thousand," alas, remains unfinished.
And I won the June short story then came in second in the six-month contests at Short Story Land.

I’m about to release the first novel. Hang on.

Outside writing and my family (I now have five grandchildren) my real passion is working to improve the lives of children.

May you have the luck of the Irish after you discover these Irish mystery authors.

Murder in Connemara
(Home to Ireland Mystery #2)
by Carlene O'Connor

The Killer in Me
(Frankie Sheehan #2)
by Olivia Kiernan

A Keeper
by Graham Norton

Anne’s publishing career began with The Cater Street Hangman. Published in 1979, this was the first book in the series to feature the Victorian policeman Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife Charlotte. This is arguably the longest sustained crime series by a living writer. Murder on the Serpentine is the latest (32nd) in the series. She has now started a series featuring their son Daniel, beginning with 21 Days (2017).

In 1990, Anne started a second series of detective novels with The Face of a Stranger. These are set about 35 years before and features the private detective William Monk and volatile nurse Hester Latterly. The most recent of these (24th in the series) is Dark Tide Rising.

Anne won an Edgar award in 2000 with her short story “Heroes”. The main character in the story features in an ambitious five-book series set during the First World War, which were published between 2003 and 2007. Anne is now working on more titles in the Pitt and Monk series, both of which are under option.

None of her books has ever been out of print, and they have received critical acclaim and huge popular success: over 26 million books are in print world-wide. Her books have appeared on bestseller lists in a number of foreign countries, where she has also had excellent reviews. Her books regularly appear in the New York Times bestseller list, and have also been bestsellers in France, Germany and Canada. The Times selected her as one of the “100 Masters of Crime”, and in 2015 she was awarded the Premio de Honor Aragón Negro.

Moving into a different area, Anne has responded to requests for workshops and teaching by producing her first ‘how to write’ instructional DVD “Put Your Heart On The Page: An Introduction To Writing” and her much-loved tote bags which also carry that slogan. Both items are now available to buy direct from her website. “Developing Your Characters” is the third instalment in Anne’s instructional films.

Jennifer Dornbush is a screenwriter, author, international speaker and forensic specialist. As she says, “I grew up around death.”

The television or movie screen is the closest most people will ever come to witnessing the forensic world. But Jennifer was raised in it. As the daughter of a small town medical examiner whose office was in their home. There were body parts in the fridge. She investigated her first fatality, an airplane crash, when she was 8 years old. Picking up pieces of skull with her father who simply saw it as an anatomy lesson. The first of many coroner lessons she experienced over two decades.

After exploring journalism and high school teaching, Jennifer turned seriously to screenwriting where she began to connect her coroner world to her writing. She sought out a degree at the Forensic Science Academy in Los Angeles to gain more forensic training and earned a unique kinship with LA’s top CSIs, fingerprint specialists, DNA scientists and detectives.

To share her love of forensics with the writing world, she authored the top selling non-fiction authoritative book, Forensic Speak, used by not only by show-runners and writers, but also crime investigators and law enforcement.

She created an Amazon top-selling mystery novel series, The Coroner’s Daughter. The first book in the series, The Coroner, released in 2018. The second in the series, Secret Remains, released January 2020. She is developing the series for TV.

She wrote the theatrically released film and novel, God Bless the Broken Road (2018). She has developed a TV crime drama series with Echo Lake and Hoplite Entertainment. Also she adapted a popular YA novel to script and sold a children’s show.

As a forensic consultant, she is frequently asked to consult with TV writers on shows such as: Bull, Conviction, Hawaii Five-O, Leverage, Suits and Rectify. She teaches screenwriting and mentors aspiring writers.

Jennifer is a member of the Writers’ Guild of America, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and FBI Citizen’s Academy Alumni.

And she has a great sense of gallows humor.
July 1989, in a sleepy Michigan town, high school grad, Nina Laramie, heads out with her friends and is never seen alive again. Months later, her skeleton is found near a remote party spot in the forest.

The ME determines Nina has been brutally raped and bludgeoned to death. Fear and anger ripple through this tight knit community when the case goes cold.

Thirty years later, Riley St. James, a Detroit PD assigned to Nina’s case, is determined to get her first big cold case win despite having a similar past to the victim. Relying on her investigative prowess and gut instinct, Riley tracks down a witness, who saw Nina Laramie’s murder. But as the truth comes to light, Riley must face the killers who want their secret to stay in the Hole in the Woods.

Based on the 1989 true-life murder case of Shannon Siders for Newaygo County, Michigan. After the case went dormant, a Michigan cold case team formed in 2011and uncovered new evidence that enabled them to arrest, try, and convict the killers, who were sent to prison for Shannon’s murder in 2015

We each chose an author we wanted to highlight.

What You Don't Know by Bianca Sloane
From the author of "Killing Me Softly" comes a terrifying thriller that will make you think twice before you open the front door…

It’s Saturday morning. April Fool’s Day to be exact. Malcolm Gilbert is on his way to play golf. His wife, Blair, is headed to the hair salon.

That’s the plan anyway.

Then the doorbell rings.

And their nightmare begins.

For the next forty-eight hours, the Gilberts are at the mercy of sadists who unleash a seemingly unending campaign of terror against them.

But the question isn’t who would attack the Gilberts.

The question is why . . .

The next time your doorbell rings, will you answer it?


A Glimmer of Death by Valerie Wilson Wesley .
In the first of a thrilling new series, one woman's extraordinary psychic gift plunges her already-troubled present into chaos--and puts her future in someone's deadly sights...

Until now, Odessa Jones' inherited ability to read emotions and foretell danger has protected her. But second sight didn't warn her she would soon be a widow--and about to lose her home and the catering business she's worked so hard to build. The only things keeping Dessa going are her love for baking and her sometimes-mellow cat, Juniper. Unfortunately, putting her life back together means taking a gig at an all-kinds-of-shady real estate firm run by volatile owner Charlie Risko...

Until Charlie is brutally killed--and Dessa's bullied co-worker is arrested for murder. Dessa can't be sure who's guilty. But it doesn't take a psychic to discover that everyone from Charlie's much-abused staff to his long-suffering younger wife had multiple reasons to want him dead. And as Dessa follows a trail of lies through blackmail, dead-end clues, and corruption, she needs to see the truth fast--or a killer will bury her deep down with it.


Trouble Is What I Do (Leonid McGill #6) by Walter Mosley
Leonid McGill's spent a lifetime building up his reputation in the New York investigative scene. His seemingly infallible instinct and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip Worry comes knocking.

Phillip "Catfish" Worry is a 92-year-old Mississippi bluesman who needs Leonid's help with a simple task: deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. Unsurprisingly, the opportunity to do a simple favor while shocking the prevailing elite is too much for Leonid to resist.

But when a famed and feared assassin puts a hit on Catfish, Leonid has no choice but to confront the ghost of his own felonious past. Working to protect his client and his own family, Leonid must reach the heiress on the eve of her wedding before her powerful father kills those who hold their family's secret.

Joined by a team of young and tough aspiring investigators, Leonid must gain the trust of wary socialites, outsmart vengeful thugs, and, above all, serve the truth -- no matter the cost.

This is a continuation of our conversation with Dr. Mark Aldridge. In this one hear all about Christies abilities to cement characters and We discuss her top ten list of all her books in 1972.

Dr Mark Aldridge is a senior lecturer at Solent University, Southampton. He was awarded his PhD at the University of Southampton in 2009, and previously wrote the definitive book about the film and television adaptations of Agatha Christie’s work, Agatha Christie on Screen, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. Originally from Devon, he now lives in Hampshire with his partner, James.


Hercule Poirot has had a near-permanent presence in the public eye ever since the 1920 publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The detective who solves diabolical crimes using his “little grey cells” has enamored audiences not only in the original novels, short stories, and plays, but also across radio, television, and movies.

From Agatha Christie’s earliest conceptions and publication history, to forays on the stage and screen, the story of Poirot is as fascinating as it is enduring. Mark Aldridge tells this story decade-by-decade, exploring and analyzing Poirot’s many and often wildly different appearances, following the detective to present day when he is enjoying a worldwide renaissance.

Packed with original research, never-before-published correspondence, and images from the Agatha Christie archives, Agatha Christie's Poirot will delight fans of Hercule Poirot and mystery lovers alike.

SPECIAL ROMANTIC SUSPENSE EPISODE
Colleen Coble - https://colleencoble.com/
TWO REASONS TO RUN- #2 in the Pelican Harbor Series
Sandra Brown - https://sandrabrown.net/
THICK AS THIEVES
Ellen Hart- http://www.ellenhart.com/
A WHISPER OF BONES #25 Jane Lawless series

New York Times bestseller author, Ellery Adams, has written over thirty novels and can’t imagine spending a day away from the keyboard. Ms. Adams, a Native New Yorker, has had a lifelong love affair with stories, food, rescue animals, and large bodies of water. When not working on her next novel, she bakes, gardens, spoils her three cats, and wastes far too much time on Pinterest. She lives with her husband and two children (aka the Trolls) in central North Carolina.

Ink and Shadows - Nora Pennington is known for her window displays, and as Halloween approaches, she decides to showcase fictional heroines like Roald Dahl's Matilda and Madeline Miller's Circe. A family-values group disapproves of the magical themes, though, and wastes no time launching a modern-day witch hunt. Suddenly, former friends and customers are targeting not only Nora and Miracle Books, but a new shopkeeper, Celeste, who's been selling CBD oil products.

Nora and her friends in the Secret, Book, and Scone Society are doing their best to put an end to the strife--but then someone puts an end to a life. Though the death is declared an accident, the ruling can't explain the old book page covered with strange symbols and disturbing drawings left under Nora's doormat, a postcard from an anonymous stalker, or multiple cases of vandalism.

The only hope is that Nora can be a heroine herself and lead the Secret, Book, and Scone Society in a successful investigation--before more bodies turn up and the secrets from Celeste's past come back to haunt them all . . .

We hope you enjoy our full book review of The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

Stuart lives in London with his amazing wife and daughter. He drinks lots of tea.

What else?

​When he left university he went travelling for three months and stayed away for five years. Every time his parents asked when he’d be back he told them next week, and meant it.

Stuart is not to be trusted. In the nicest possible way.

He’s got a degree in English and Philosophy, which makes him excellent at arguing and terrible at choosing degrees.

Having trained for no particular career, he has dabbled in most of them. He stocked shelves in a Darwin bookshop, taught English in Shanghai, worked for a technology magazine in London, wrote travel articles in Dubai, and now he’s a freelance journalist. None of this was planned, he just kept getting lost on his way to other places.

He likes a chat. He likes books. He likes people who write books and people who read books. He doesn’t know how to write a biography, so should probably stop before he tells you about his dreams or something. It was lovely to meet you, though.

Stuart's debut novel is called The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in the UK and The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in the US. They're the same book. Don't fret.


The Devil and the Dark Water
by Stuart Turton

A murder on the high seas. A detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.

It's 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Travelling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.

But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered.

And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel.

Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger onboard. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.

The breathtaking new novel from Stuart Turton, author of the The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, winner of the Costa Best First Novel Award.

The books we discuss on this episode are:

Death, Diamonds, and Deception (A Gilded Age Mystery #5)
by Rosemary Simpson

All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16)
by Louise Penny

Never Look Back (Criminal Profiler #5)
by Mary Burton

A Pretty Deceit (Verity Kent #4)
by Anna Lee Huber

Crooked River (Pendergast #19)
by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

Edwin is the Edgar- and Agatha-award nominated author of Little Comfort, The Missing Ones, and Watch Her.

He was born in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and spent most of his childhood obsessing over The Famous Five, Agatha Christie, and somehow finding a way into C.S. Lewis’s wardrobe. His parents were fond of taking his sister and him on month-long family camping trips across the U.S. and Canada, and one of his best memories is of finishing a copy of The Seven Dials Mystery while the rest of the family visited Mount Rushmore. Growing up when VHS tapes were new meant that watching Alien, Jaws, The Shining, or Halloween whenever he wanted seemed luxurious, and still does today. Like Hester Thursby, he watched these movies – and others like them – a lot.

After attending Wesleyan University and graduating with a B.A. in American Studies, he headed west to San Francisco for the dotcom boom. Later, he returned to Boston, earned an MFA from Emerson College, and switched gears to work in educational publishing. He served as the vice president and editorial director for Bedford/St. Martin's, a division of Macmillan Learning for many years before turning to writing full time.

He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner Michael and his favorite reviewer, their lab Edith Ann, who likes his first drafts enough to eat them.

A lot of people helped him create this series, and he is a big believer in paying forward. Don't be a stranger.


WATCH HER While attending a gala at Prescott University's lavish new campus, Hester Thursby and fellow guest, Detective Angela White, are called to the home of the college's owners, Tucker and Jennifer Matson. Jennifer claims that someone broke into Pinebank, their secluded mansion on the banks of Jamaica Pond. The more Hester and Angela investigate, the less they believe Jennifer's story, leaving Hester to wonder why she would lie.

When Hester is asked by the college's general manager to locate some missing alumni, she employs her research skills on the family and their for-profit university. Between financial transgressions, a long-ago tragedy, and rumors of infidelity, it's clear that the Matsons aren't immune to scandal or mishap. But when one of the missing students turns up dead, the mystery takes on new urgency. Hester is edging closer to the truth, but as a decades-old secret collides with new lies, a killer grows more determined to keep the past buried with the dead...

We hope you enjoy one of our all time favorite episodes of this past year. We will return next week with fresh content. HAPPY NEW YEAR. Here's to a year of great mysteries!!!

18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics by Bruce Goldfarb

The story of the Gilded Age Chicago heiress who revolutionized forensic death investigation. As the mother of forensic science, Frances Glessner Lee is the reason why homicide detectives are a thing. She is responsible for the popularity of forensic science in television shows and pop culture. Long overlooked in the history books, this extremely detailed and thoroughly researched biography will at long last tell the story of the life and contributions of this pioneering woman.

We are taking a much deserved winter break. We hope you enjoy our most listened to episode of this past year. Robert was a delight. We will be back after the first or year with fresh and exciting content.

Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)
by Robert Bryndza
Kate Marshall was a promising young police detective when she caught the notorious Nine Elms serial killer. But her greatest victory suddenly turned into a nightmare. Traumatized, betrayed, and publicly vilified for the shocking circumstances surrounding the cannibal murder case, Kate could only watch as her career ended in scandal.

Fifteen years after those catastrophic events, Kate is still haunted by the unquiet ghosts of her troubled past. Now a lecturer at a small coastal English university, she finally has a chance to face them. A copycat killer has taken up the Nine Elms mantle, continuing the ghastly work of his idol.

Enlisting her brilliant research assistant, Tristan Harper, Kate draws on her prodigious and long-neglected skills as an investigator to catch a new monster. Success promises redemption, but there’s much more on the line: Kate was the original killer’s intended fifth victim…and his successor means to finish the job.

Smith Henderson is the recipient of the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award in fiction. He was a 2011 Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University, a 2011 Pushcart Prize winner, and a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. He currently works at the Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency. His fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, One Story, New Orleans Review, Makeout Creek, and Witness. Born and raised in Montana, he now lives in Portland, Oregon.

Jon Marc Smith teaches English at Texas State University and lives in San Marcos, Texas. Make Them Cry is their first novel.

Make Them Cry - It’s hard to make Diane Harbaugh flinch. A former prosecutor notorious for her aggressive tactics, she’s now a DEA agent who interrogates witnesses so effectively, she has them confessing in tears. But when she hears from Gustavo, a high-ranking cartel member with an invaluable secret about the international black market, she’s thrown for a loop. She heads to Mexico to meet him, and her entire understanding of justice and duty is thrown into question.

Gustavo sends her down a rabbit hole that leads to a criminal conspiracy more pervasive than anything she and the DEA ever suspected. She teams up with Ian Carver, a disillusioned CIA agent, and begins to unravel layers of deceptions, grifts, and schemes that date back to the beginnings of the Afghanistan War. As they learn more, they become the target of cartel assassins, embittered spies, and even their own government. They are at the center of an international manhunt with world-changing consequences—and the only way out is for Diane to do the one thing she promised herself she’d never do. Stylishly written and relentlessly plotted, Make Them Cry is an action-packed thriller of unimaginable stakes.

We cover some Winter Holiday Mysteries in one of our Roundup episodes.

Murder at an Irish Christmas (Irish Village Mystery #6)
by Carlene O'Connor

The Gift of the Magpie (Meg Langslow #28)
by Donna Andrews

A Christmas Carol Murder (A Dickens of a Crime #3)
by Heather Redmond

A Page Marked for Murder (Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery, #5)
by Lauren Elliott

Dr. Ian Smith is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling books, SHRED: THE REVOLUTIONARY DIET, SUPER SHRED: The Big Results Diet, BLAST THE SUGAR OUT, The Clean 20, THE ANCIENT NINE, CLEAN & LEAN and eleven other books with millions of copies in print. His newest novel--THE UNSPOKEN, the first installment of his Ashe Cayne mystery series, is now available. Look for his next revolutionary diet plan FAST BURN!, on sale April 13, 2021.

He is currently the solo host of the nationally syndicated, Emmy award-winning television show
THE DOCTORS, and a longtime medical contributor to Emmy award-winning The Rachael Ray Show.

He also served as the medical/diet expert for six seasons on VH1's highly-rated Celebrity Fit Club. He is the creator and founder of the national health initiatives The 50 Million Pound Challenge and The Makeover Mile. Dr. Smith is the former medical correspondent for NBC News Network and NewsChannel 4 in New York, where he filed reports for NBC Nightly News and The Today Show as well as WNBC's various news broadcasts. He has appeared extensively on numerous broadcasts, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The View, Dr. Oz, Steve Harvey Show, The Talk, Larry King Live, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, MSNBC, and many more. He has written for various publications including Time, Newsweek, Men's Fitness, and the New York Daily News. He has been featured in several other publications including, People, Redbook, Details Magazine, Essence, Ebony, Cosmopolitan, and Black Enterprise.

A highly sought-after speaker, Dr. Smith's work has been honored by several organizations, including the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for his coverage on the momentous events of September 11th, 2001. He is also very active in charitable causes. Dr. Smith has also served on the boards of the American Council on Exercise, the New York Mission Society, the Prevent Cancer Foundation, The New York Council for the Humanities, and The Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity.

Dr. Smith graduated from Harvard College with an AB and received a master's in science education from Teachers College of Columbia University. He attended Dartmouth Medical School and completed the last two years of his medical education and graduated from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

THE UNSPOKEN Former Chicago detective Ashe Cayne is desperate for redemption. After refusing to participate in a police department cover-up involving the death of a young black man, Cayne is pushed out of the force. But he won’t sit quietly on the sidelines: he’s compelled to fight for justice as a private investigator…even if it means putting himself in jeopardy.

When a young woman, Tinsley Gerrigan, goes missing, her wealthy parents from the North Shore hire Cayne to find her. As Cayne looks into her life and past, he uncovers secrets Tinsley’s been hiding from her family. Cayne fears he may never find Tinsley alive.

His worries spike when Tinsley’s boyfriend is found dead—another black man murdered on the tough Chicago streets. Cayne must navigate his complicated relationships within the Chicago PD, leveraging his contacts and police skills to find the missing young woman, see justice done, and earn his redemption.

Leslie Rule's true crime debut, A Tangled Web, covers a frightening Omaha love triangle murder. "I chose this case because I want to warn readers that the female sadistic sociopath may be the most dangerous killer of all."

A veteran author for over three decades, Rule's works include two suspense novels and five nonfiction books on the paranormal, including Coast to Coast Ghosts, True Stories of Hauntings Across America. Rule was only seventeen when she started attending murder trials with her mother, author Ann Rule. "It was my job to shoot the killers, not with a gun, but with my camera," says Leslie. Many of her courtroom photographs have appeared in her mother's books.


A Tangled Web - It was a bleak November in 2012 when Cari Lea Farver vanished from Omaha, Nebraska. Cari, thirty-seven, was a devoted mother, reliable employee, and loyal friend--not the type to shirk responsibilities, abandon her son, and run off on an adventure while her dying father took his last breaths. Yet, the many texts from her phone indicated she had done just that.

It appeared that Cari had dumped her new boyfriend, quit her job, and relinquished custody of her son to her mother--all by text. While Cari's boyfriend, Dave Kroupa, and her supervisor were bewildered by her abrupt disappearance, they accepted the texts at face value. Her mother, Nancy Raney, however, was alarmed and reported Cari missing. Police were skeptical of her claims that a cyber impostor had commandeered her daughter's phone and online identity.

While Nancy was afraid for Cari, Dave Kroupa was growing afraid of her, for he believed Cari was stalking him. Never seen or heard, the stalker was aware of his every move and seemed obsessed by his casual girlfriend, Shanna "Liz" Golyar, often calling her "a fat whore" in the twelve thousand emails and texts he received in a disturbing three-year deluge.

How did the stalker know Dave's phone numbers immediately after he changed them, the names of his lady friends, even what he wore as he watched TV? He and Liz reported death threats, vandalism, and burglaries, but the stalker remained at large. The threats were vicious, vile and often obscene, sent mostly via text and always in Cari's name. There was some truth in the messages, but all of them contained one big lie. The culprit was not Cari -- but had killed and planned to kill again.

With mesmerizing detail and compelling narrative skill, Leslie Rule tracks every step of the heart-pounding path to long-awaited justice--from a sociopath's twisted past to the deadly deception and the high-tech forensics that condemned the killer to prison, where the tangled web of manipulations still draws trusting souls into danger.

Allen Eskens is the USA Today-bestselling author of The Life We Bury, The Guise of Another, The Heavens May Fall, the Deep Dark Descending and The Shadows We Hide. He is the recipient of the Barry Award, Rosebud Award, Minnesota Book Award, and the Silver Falchion Award and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, Thriller Award, and Anthony Award. His work had been published in 21 languages and his debut novel, The Life We Bury is being developed for a feature film.

Allen lives with his wife, Joely, in greater Minnesota and is represented by Amy Cloughley of Kimberley Cameron and Associates, and is published by both Seventh Street Books and Mulholland/Little Brown.
To learn more about Allen, go to www.alleneskens.com.

Nothing More Dangerous - After fifteen years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. The new kid at St. Ignatius High School, if he isn’t being pushed around, he is being completely ignored. Even his beloved woods, his playground as a child and his sanctuary as he grew older, seem to be closing in on him, suffocating him.

Then Thomas Elgin moves in across the road, and Boady’s life begins to twist and turn. Coming to know the Elgins--a black family settling into a community where notions of “us” and “them” carry the weight of history--forces Boady to rethink his understanding of the world he’s taken for granted. Secrets hidden in plain sight begin to unfold: the mother who wraps herself in the loss of her husband, the neighbor who carries the wounds of a mysterious past that he holds close, the quiet boss who is fighting his own hidden battle.

But the biggest secret of all is the disappearance of Lida Poe, the African-American woman who keeps the books at the local plastics factory. Word has it that Ms. Poe left town, along with a hundred thousand dollars of company money. Although Boady has never met the missing woman, he discovers that the threads of her life are woven into the deepest fabric of his world.

As the mystery of her fate plays out, Boady begins to see the stark lines of race and class that both bind and divide this small town, and he is forced to choose sides

We each reviewed a different True Crime book

The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands
by Jon Billman
These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks. These are the missing whose situations are the hardest on loved ones left behind. The cases that are an embarrassment for park superintendents, rangers and law enforcement charged with Search & Rescue. The ones that baffle the volunteers who comb the mountains, woods and badlands. The stories that should give you pause every time you venture outdoors.
Through Jacob Gray's disappearance in Olympic National Park, and his father Randy Gray who left his life to search for him, we will learn about what happens when someone goes missing. Braided around the core will be the stories of the characters who fill the vacuum created by a vanished human being. We'll meet eccentric bloodhound-handler Duff and R.C., his flagship purebred, who began trailing with the family dog after his brother vanished in the San Gabriel Mountains. And there's Michael Neiger North America's foremost backcountry Search & Rescue expert and self-described "bushman" obsessed with missing persons. And top researcher of persons missing on public wildlands Ex-San Jose, California detective David Paulides who is also one of the world's foremost Bigfoot researchers.
It's a tricky thing to write about missing persons because the story is the absence of someone. A void. The person at the heart of the story is thinner than a smoke ring, invisible as someone else's memory. The bones you dig up are most often metaphorical. While much of the book will embrace memory and faulty memory -- history -- The Cold Vanish is at its core a story of now and tomorrow. Someone will vanish in the wild tomorrow. These are the people who will go looking.

If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen
After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.
For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad
by Baynard Woods, Brandon Soderberg
When Baltimore police sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer--one that he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America's greatest problems: guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation.

In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them. When the federal government finally arrested the GTTF for robbery and racketeering in 2017, the stories of victims began to come out, revealing a vast criminal enterprise operating within the Baltimore Police Department.

Cops planted heroin to cover up a fatal crash that resulted from a botched robbery. They stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, faked video evidence, and forged a letter trying to break up the marriage of one of their victims to keep his wife from paying a lawyer. And a homicide detective was killed the day before he was scheduled to testify against the crooked cops.

I Got a Monster is the shocking history of the rise and fall of the most corrupt cops in America from Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg

Susan Spann is the award-winning author of CLIMB (Prometheus Books, 2020) and the Hiro Hattori mystery novels (Minotaur / Seventh Street Books), featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo.

Susan began reading precociously and voraciously from her preschool days in Santa Monica, California, and as a child read everything from National Geographic to Agatha Christie. In high school, she once turned a short-story assignment into a full-length fantasy novel (which, fortunately, will never see the light of day).

A yearning to experience different cultures sent Susan to Tufts University in Boston, where she immersed herself in the history and culture of China and Japan. After earning an undergraduate degree in Asian Studies, Susan diverted to law school. She returned to California to practice law, where her continuing love of books has led her to specialize in intellectual property, business and publishing contracts.

In 2017, Susan made the bold decision to face her fears and climb 100 Japanese mountains in a single year, but while preparing to leave the United States, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She chronicles her fight to overcome cancer and fear, while learning what it means to “live your dream” in CLIMB: Leaving Safe & Finding Strength on 100 Summits in Japan (Prometheus Books, August 2020).

Susan’s interest in Japanese history, martial arts, and mystery also inspired her to write the Shinobi Mystery series featuring Hiro Hattori, a sixteenth-century ninja who brings murderers to justice with the help of Father Mateo, a Portuguese Jesuit priest.

Susan’s first novel, Claws of the Cat: A Shinobi Mystery (Minotaur Books, 2013) was named a Library Journal mystery debut of the month and was a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award for Best First Novel.

Ghosts of the Bamboo Road - January 1566: En route to Edo, Master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo spend the night in a rural mountain village whose inhabitants live in terror of a legendary vengeful ghost. When the innkeeper's wife is murdered and Father Mateo's housekeeper, Ana, is blamed for a crime she did not commit, Hiro and Father Mateo are forced to investigate and reveal the truth. But when another woman turns up murdered in the snow, the detectives must face the shocking truth that the vengeful yūrei the villagers fear might be more than just a legend after all.

Here are some Spooky recommendations for some Halloween Cozy's

Witch Hunt (A Full Moon Mystery#1)by Cate Conte
Violet Mooney owns The Full Moon crystal shop in quaint North Harbor, Connecticut. Still grieving her beloved grandmother’s recent unexpected death, she takes comfort in her fat orange cat Monty and her work. Not everyone in town is thrilled with her business, however. When disagreeable town councilwoman Carla Fernandez picks a fight over Violet’s "voodoo shop," the two have a very public confrontation. Of course, when Carla turns up dead, Violet gets little sympathy from the police as suspect #1.

But the shock of two policemen showing up at her door pales in comparison to the sudden appearance of her estranged mother Fiona and a surprise sister, Zoe. What Fiona reveals will rock her world and her sense of self—and reawaken her long-dormant mysterious power. Good thing. She’s gonna need it . . .

Death of a Wicked Witch (Hayley Powell Mystery Book 13) By Lee Hollis
Bar Harbor, Maine, is quieter in the off-season, but the population has just increased a bit with the arrival of Ted and Trudy Lancaster. Ted’s taking over for a retiring minister, and Trudy runs a food truck called Wicked ’Wiches. When she stops in at the Island Times office to place an ad, Hayley happily devours the sample sub Trudy offers—and the two become fast friends.

When Trudy tragically dies in her truck while catering a Halloween party, suspicion falls on a cranky, competitive caterer who’d made veiled threats to Trudy. But the case becomes more complicated when Hayley’s husband admits he’d seen someone dressed as a witch hurrying away from the food truck—not very helpful when countless women at the party wore the same costume. Now Hayley finds herself sandwiched between witches and witnesses as she considers a smorgasbord of suspects. If she finds the killer, she’ll be a local hero . . .

What Not to Wear to a Graveyard (A Resale Boutique Mystery) By Debra Sennefelder
A socialite’s missing dog has made front page news in Lucky Cove—complete with a hefty reward. But between renovating the consignment shop, planning her costume for a 1970s themed Halloween party, and scouting a location for a fashion shoot, Kelly doesn’t have time to search. Yet a visit to the local colonial-era cemetery—ideal for the moody atmosphere she’s after—soon turns up the precious pooch. Kelly’s looking forward to collecting the check—until she makes a gruesome discovery in an abandoned farmhouse: The dog’s owner, stabbed through the heart.

Kelly can’t help wondering why Constance Lane was traipsing around the farmhouse in stilettos. But as Kelly gets decked out in a vintage disco caftan, that isn’t the only fashion misstatement spooking her. Hidden in the dead woman’s past is a secret that could be the motive for the murder. And as the Halloween party gets started, even a menacing clown and a threatening bearded lady can’t keep Kelly from trick or treating for the truth—even if it means her last dance . . .

The Last Seance: Tales of the Supernatural By Agatha Christie
For lovers of the supernatural and the macabre comes this collection of ghostly and chilling stories from legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie. Fantastic psychic visions, specters looming in the shadows, encounters with deities, a man who switches bodies with a cat—be sure to keep the light on whilst reading these tales.

The Last Séance gathers twenty stories, some featuring Christie’s beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, in one haunting compendium that explores all things occult and paranormal, and is an essential omnibus for Christie fans.

Michelle Cox is the author of the multiple award-winning Henrietta and Inspector Howard series as well as "Novel Notes of Local Lore," a weekly blog dedicated to Chicago's forgotten residents. She suspects she may have once lived in the 1930s and, having yet to discover a handy time machine lying around, has resorted to writing about the era as a way of getting herself back there. Coincidentally, her books have been praised by Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and many others, so she might be on to something. Unbeknownst to most, Michelle hoards board games she doesn't have time to play and is, not surprisingly, addicted to period dramas and big band music. Also marmalade.

A CHILD LOST-When Clive, anxious to distract a depressed Henrietta, begs Sergeant Frank Davis for a case, he is assigned to investigating a seemingly boring affair: a spiritualist woman operating in an abandoned schoolhouse on the edge of town who is suspected of robbing people of their valuables. What begins as an open and shut case becomes more complicated, however, when Henrietta―much to Clive’s dismay―begins to believe the spiritualist's strange ramblings.

Meanwhile, Elsie begs Clive and Henrietta to help her and the object of her budding love, Gunther, locate the whereabouts of one Liesel Klinkhammer, the German woman Gunther has traveled to America to find and the mother of the little girl, Anna, whom he has brought along with him. The search leads them to Dunning Asylum, where they discover some terrible truths about Liesel. When the child, Anna, is herself mistakenly admitted to the asylum after an epileptic fit, Clive and Henrietta return to Dunning to retrieve her. This time, however, Henrietta begins to suspect that something darker may be happening. When Clive doesn’t believe her, she decides to take matters into her own hands . . . with horrifying results.

Funeral for a Friend: A Jonathan Stride Novel (Jonathan Stride series, Book 10) (The Jonathan Stride Series, 10)
Brian Freeman is a New York Times bestselling author of psychological thrillers, including the Jonathan Stride and Frost Easton series. His books have been sold in 46 countries and 22 languages. He is widely acclaimed for his "you are there" settings and his complex, engaging characters and twist-filled plots. Brian was also selected as the official author to continue Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne series, and his new Bourne novel THE BOURNE EVOLUTION was released in 2020.

His novel THE NIGHT BIRD, the first in the Frost Easton series set in San Francisco, was one of the top 20 Kindle bestsellers of 2017. His latest releases include two standalones, the #1 Amazon Kindle bestseller THIEF RIVER FALLS and the #1 bestselling Audible Original THE DEEP, DEEP SNOW.

Brian's seventh novel SPILLED BLOOD won the award for Best Hardcover Novel in the annual Thriller Awards given out by the International Thriller Writers organization, and his fifth novel THE BURYING PLACE was a finalist for the same award. His debut thriller, IMMORAL, won the Macavity Award for Best First Novel and was a nominee for the Edgar, Dagger, Anthony, and Barry Awards. IMMORAL was named an International Book of the Month, a distinction shared with authors such as Harlan Coben and Lisa Unger.

All of Brian's books are also available in audiobook editions. His novels THE BONE HOUSE and SEASON OF FEAR were both finalists for Best Audiobook of the Year in Thriller/Suspense.


“You’re safe, Stride. I found the body at the Deeps. I buried him.”

Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull.

Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps … but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him?

Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won’t tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police.

His only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter’s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget.

Someone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive … is Stride.

Mark Billingham is one of the UK's most acclaimed and popular crime writers. A former actor, television writer and stand-up comedian, his series of novels featuring D.I. Tom Thorne has twice won him the Crime Novel Of The Year Award as well as the Sherlock Award for Best British Detective and been nominated for seven CWA Daggers. His standalone thriller IN THE DARK was chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by the Times and his debut novel, SLEEPYHEAD was chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 books that had shaped the decade. Each of his novels has been a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller.

A television series based on the Thorne novels is screening in the USA on Encore in June 2012, starring David Morrissey (from "The Walking Dead") as Tom Thorne and series based on the standalone thrillers RUSH OF BLOOd and IN THE DARK are currently in development with the BBC.

CRY BABY In the summer of 1996, two boys run from a playground into the adjoining woods, but only one comes out. DS Tom Thorne takes on a case that quickly spirals out of control when two people connected with the missing boy are murdered. As London prepares to host the European Soccer Championships, Thorne fights to keep on top of a baffling investigation while also dealing with the ugly fallout of his broken marriage.

A prequel to Billingham’s acclaimed debut Sleepyhead―which the Times voted “one of the 100 books that had shaped the decade”―this compelling novel highlights the case that shaped the career of one of British crime fiction’s most iconic characters.

A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Murder(Countess of Harleigh Mystery #3)
by Dianne Freeman

London is known for its bustle and intrigues, but the sedate English countryside can host--or hide--any number of secrets. Frances, the widowed Countess of Harleigh, needs a venue for her sister Lily's imminent wedding, away from prying eyes. Risings, George Hazleton's family estate in Hampshire, is a perfect choice, and soon Frances, her beloved George, and other guests have gathered to enjoy the usual country pursuits--shooting, horse riding, and romantic interludes in secluded gardens.

But the bucolic setting harbors a menace, and it's not simply the arrival of Frances's socially ambitious mother. Above and below stairs, mysterious accidents befall guests and staff alike. Before long, Frances suspects these "accidents" are deliberate, and fears that the intended victim is Lily's fianc�, Leo. Frances's mother is unimpressed by Lily's groom-to-be and would much prefer that Lily find an aristocratic husband, just as Frances did. But now that Frances has found happiness with George--a man who loves her for much more than her dowry--she heartily approves of Lily's choice. If she can just keep the couple safe from villains and meddling mamas.

As Frances and George search for the culprit among the assembled family, friends, and servants, more victims fall prey to the mayhem. Mishaps become full-blooded murder, and it seems that no one is safe. And unless Frances can quickly flush out the culprit, the peal of wedding bells may give way to another funeral toll.

The Corpse at the Crystal Palace(Daisy Dalrymple #23)
by Carola Dunn

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it―bringing her cousins, her 3-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies’ room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

Meanwhile, Belinda and the cousins spot Mrs. Gilpin chasing after yet another nanny. Intrigued, they trail the two through the vast Crystal Palace and into the park. After briefly losing sight of their quarry, they stumble across Mrs. Gilpin lying unconscious in a small lake inhabited by huge concrete dinosaurs.

When she comes to, Mrs. Gilpin can't remember what happened after leaving the twins in the nurserymaid's care. Daisy's husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the murdered nanny. Worried about her children's own injured nanny, Daisy is determined to help. First she has to discover the identity of the third nanny, the presumed murderer, and to do so, Daisy must uncover why the amnesic Mrs. Gilpin deserted her charges to follow the missing third nanny.

The Art of Deception (The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes Mysteries #4)
by Leonard Goldberg

USA Today bestselling author Leonard Goldberg returns with another puzzling case for the daughter of Sherlock Holmes to unravel in this exciting mystery, The Art of Deception, sure to be enjoyed by fans of Sherlock Holmes as well Laurie R. King and Charles Finch.

In the west end of London, an apparently crazed individual is on the loose, breaking into art galleries and private homes to slash valuable paintings of women. Despite Scotland Yard’s best efforts, the criminal remains at large and continues on his destructive path.

When Joanna and the Watsons are called in to solve the mystery, they soon discover that although the canvases have been slashed, their backings remain pristine, with no cuts or scratches. The criminal, it seems, is no mere vandal—he's searching for something hidden behind the portraits.

Suspicion soon falls on two skilled art restorers who previously worked at the gallery where all the vandalized art was purchased. When Joanna finds the body of one in a bricked off fireplace at the gallery, the other is left as the prime suspect. But then he's discovered dead as well. Luckily, Joanna has a plan for ensnaring the criminal once and for all. But it must not fail, or more paintings—and lives—will be lost.

The Hour of the Fox (Brother Chandler #1)
by Cassandra Clark

London. July, 1399. As rumours spread that his ambitious cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, has returned from exile in France, King Richard's grip on the English throne grows ever more precarious. Meanwhile, the body of a young woman is discovered at Dowgate sluice. When it's established that the dead woman was a novice from nearby Barking Abbey, the coroner calls in his friend, Brother Chandler, to investigate.

Who would cut the throat of a young nun and throw her remains in the river? And what was she doing outside the confines of the priory in the first place? Secretly acting as a spy for Henry Bolingbroke, Chandler is torn by conflicting loyalties and agonising self-doubt. As the king's cousin marches towards Wales and England teeters on the brink of civil war, Chandler's investigations will draw him into affairs of state - and endanger not only himself but all those around him.

The King's Justice (Maggie Hope #9)
by Susan Elia MacNeal

London. December, 1942. As the Russian army repels German forces from Stalingrad, Maggie Hope, secret agent and spy, takes a break from the Special Operations Executive division to defuse bombs in London. But Maggie herself is like an explosion waiting to happen. Shaken by a recent case, she finds herself living more dangerously--taking more risks than usual, smoking again, drinking gin and riding a motorcycle--and the last thing she wants is to get entangled in another crime. But when she's called upon to look into a stolen Stradivarius, one of the finest violins ever made, Maggie finds the case too alluring to resist.

Meanwhile, there's a serial killer on the loose in London and Maggie's skills are in demand. Little does she know that in the process of investigating this dangerous predator, she will come face to face with a new sort of evil...and discover a link between the precious violin and the murders no one could ever have expected.

The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne
by Elsa Hart

London, 1703. In a time when the old approaches to science coexist with the new, one elite community attempts to understand the world by collecting its wonders. Sir Barnaby Mayne, the most formidable of these collectors, has devoted his life to filling his cabinets. While the curious-minded vie for invitations to study the rare stones, bones, books, and artifacts he has amassed, some visitors come with a darker purpose.

For Cecily Kay, it is a passion for plants that brings her to the Mayne house. The only puzzle she expects to encounter is how to locate the specimens she needs within Sir Barnaby’s crowded cabinets. But when her host is stabbed to death, Cecily finds the confession of the supposed killer unconvincing. She pays attention to details—years of practice have taught her that the smallest particulars can distinguish a harmless herb from a deadly one—and in the case of Sir Barnaby’s murder, there are too many inconsistencies for her to ignore.

To discover the truth, Cecily must enter the world of the collectors, a realm where intellect is distorted by obsession and greed. As her pursuit of answers brings her closer to a killer, she risks being given a final resting place amid the bones that wait, silent and still, in the cabinets of Barnaby Mayne.

International bestselling author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His novels have been translated into 15 languages and have won critical acclaim across the globe, including stars from every major pre-publication review outlet. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Parks is a former journalist with The Washington Post and The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger. He is now a full-time novelist living in Virginia with his wife and two school-aged children.

Interference - Quantum physicist Matt Bronik is suffering from strange, violent seizures that medical science seems powerless to explain—much to the consternation of his wife, Brigid.

Matt doesn’t think these fits could be related to his research, which he has always described as benign and esoteric. That, it turns out, is not quite true: Matt has been prodding the mysteries of the quantum universe, with terrible repercussions for his health. And perhaps even for humanity as a whole.

Then, in the midst of another seizure, Matt disappears. When foul play is feared, there is no shortage of suspects. Matt’s research had gained the attention of Chinese competitors, an unscrupulous billionaire, and the Department of Defense, among others.

With Matt’s life in clear danger, Brigid sets out to find him. Will Matt be killed before she reaches him, or could the physics that endangered him actually be used to save his life?

A roundup of books we are currently in love with.

A BAD DAY FOR SUNSHINE (Sunshine Vicram #1)
by Darynda Jones
Sheriff Sunshine Vicram finds her cup o' joe more than half full when the small village of Del Sol, New Mexico, becomes the center of national attention for a kidnapper on the loose.

Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, strong cups of coffee - and, now, a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff - thanks to her adorably meddlesome parents who nominated her--and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of this is reminding Sunshine why she left Del Sol in the first place. Add to that the trouble at her daughter's new school, plus and a kidnapped prized rooster named Puff Daddy, and, well, the forecast looks anything but sunny

THE LAST AGENT (Charles Jenkins #2)
by Robert Dugoni

An American operative in Russia is on the run for his life in a thriller of heart-stopping betrayal and international intrigue by the New York Times bestselling author of The Eighth Sister.

Betrayed by his own country and tried for treason, former spy Charles Jenkins survived an undercover Russian operation gone wrong. Exonerated, bitter, and safe, the retired family man is through with duplicitous spy games. Then he learns of a woman isolated in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison.

If it’s Paulina Ponomayova, the agent who sacrificed her life to save his, Jenkins can’t leave her behind. But there’s no guarantee it’s her. Or proof Paulina is still alive. To find out, Jenkins must return to Russia. Next move: blackmail Viktor Federov, a former Russian officer with his own ax to grind, into helping him infiltrate Lefortovo. The enemy who once pursued Jenkins across three continents is now the only man Jenkins can trust.

NOW YOU SEE THEM (Stephens & Mephisto Mystery #5)
by Elly Griffiths
The fifth gripping Brighton-based mystery from the bestselling author of the Dr Ruth Galloway series – a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie, cosy crime and TV series such as Grantchester and Midsomer Murders. One after another, young women go missing in Brighton, but who’s to say they didn’t leave of their own free choice?

Ten years have passed since the events described in The Vanishing Box. Edgar Stephens is now a Superintendent and married to former DS Emma Holmes. Edgar’s wartime partner in arms, magician Max Mephisto, is a movie star in Hollywood, while his daughter Ruby has her own TV show, Ruby Magic.

The funeral of Stan Parks, aka Diablo, actor and wartime comrade to Edgar and Max, throws the gang back together. The reunion sparks all sorts of feelings. Bob Willis, now a DI, is dealing with the disappearance of local schoolgirl Rhonda Miles. Emma, frustrated by living the life of a housewife and mother, keeps thinking how much better she would run the case. She is helped by Sam Collins, a woman reporter also hampered by sexism at work. Sam notices a pattern with other missing girls. Edgar listens to the theory but doesn’t give it much credence. He is preoccupied with the threatened invasion of Brighton by Mods and Rockers on the May Bank Holiday.

The case takes a more sinister turn when one of the missing girls is found dead. Then Ruby fails to turn up for a rendezvous and it becomes clear that she too has disappeared. Emma takes risks to track down the killer herself while Edgar is working flat out dealing with violent clashes between rival gangs on Brighton’s seafront. With tension and anger hitting him on all sides, Edgar must keep the coolest of heads to track down the killer.

THE BONE JAR (Detective Lew Kirby, #1)
by S.W. Kane
Two murders. An abandoned asylum. Will a mysterious former patient help untangle the dark truth?

The body of an elderly woman has been found in the bowels of a derelict asylum on the banks of the Thames. As Detective Lew Kirby and his partner begin their investigation, another body is discovered in the river nearby. How are the two murders connected?

Before long, the secrets of Blackwater Asylum begin to reveal themselves. There are rumours about underground bunkers and secret rooms, unspeakable psychological experimentation, and a dark force that haunts the ruins, trying to pull back in all those who attempt to escape. Urban explorer Connie Darke, whose sister died in a freak accident at the asylum, is determined to help Lew expose its grisly past. Meanwhile Lew discovers a devastating family secret that threatens to turn his life upside down.

As his world crumbles around him, Lew must put the pieces of the puzzle together to keep the killer from striking again. Only an eccentric former patient really knows the truth—but will he reveal it to Lew before it’s too late?

THE MOLTON CITY (DI Tom Harper #8)
by Chris Nickson

Detective Superintendent Tom Harper senses trouble ahead when the prime minister plans a visit. Can he keep law and order on the streets while also uncovering the truth behind a missing child?

Leeds, September 1908. There's going to be a riot. Detective Superintendent Tom Harper can feel it. Herbert Asquith, the prime minster, is due to speak in the city. The suffragettes and the unemployed men will be out in the streets in protest. It's Harper's responsibility to keep order. Can he do it?

Harper has also received an anonymous letter claiming that a young boy called Andrew Sharp was stolen from his family fourteen years before. The file is worryingly thin. It ought to have been bulging. A missing child should have been headline news. Why was Andrew's disappearance ignored? Determined to uncover the truth about Andrew Sharp and bring the boy some justice, Harper is drawn deep into the dark underworld of child-snatching, corruption and murder as Leeds becomes a molten, rioting city

HID FROM OUR EYES
(The Rev. Clare Fergusson & Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries #9)
by Julia Spencer-Fleming
New York Times bestseller Julia Spencer-Fleming returns to her beloved Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery series with new crimes that span decades.

1952. Millers Kill Police Chief Harry McNeil is called to a crime scene where a woman in a party dress has been murdered with no obvious cause of death.

1972. Millers Kill Police Chief Jack Liddle is called to a murder scene of a woman that's very similar to one he worked as a trooper in the 50s. The only difference is this time, they have a suspect. Young Vietnam War veteran Russ van Alstyne found the body while riding his motorcycle and is quickly pegged as the prime focus of the investigation.

Present-day. Millers Kill Police Chief Russ van Alstyne gets a 911 call that a young woman has been found dead in a party dress, the same MO as the crime he was accused of in the 70s. The pressure is on for Russ to solve the murder before he's removed from the case.

Russ will enlist the help of his police squad and Reverand Clare Fergusson, who is already juggling the tasks of being a new mother to her and Russ's baby and running St. Alban's Church, to finally solve these crimes.

Originally from central Indiana, thriller and mystery author August Norman has called Los Angeles home for two decades, writing for and/or appearing in movies, television, stage productions, web series, and even commercial advertising. A lover and champion of crime fiction, August regularly attends the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference and is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the Sisters in Crime. In addition, August is a founding member and regular performer with LA's longest running improv comedy show, Opening Night- The Improvised Musical!

Caitlin Bergman's mother is dead. That's what the award-winning journalist has told everyone for the past forty years. Easier to lie than explain how Maya abandoned her only daughter before dropping off the map forever.

But when a rural sheriff invites Caitlin to the woods of coastal Oregon to identify her mother's remains, Caitlin drops everything to face the woman she's spent a lifetime hating. Unfortunately, the body--abandoned on the land of a reclusive cult, the Daughters of God--was left faceless. Instead, Caitlin finds the diary of a woman obsessed with the end of the world, one that hints the cult's spiritual leader knows the identity of Caitlin's real father. She's not the only one looking for clues in her mother's writing. Johnny Larsen, a violent white supremacist whose family runs the county, thinks the Daughters of God kidnapped his teen-aged daughter--and will do anything to get her back.

At the top of a hill, an army of women wait for the end of days. In the town below, the Larsens plot to purify their county. Caught in the middle, Caitlin must decide which is more important--learning the truth about her past, or saving Mama Maya's chosen daughters from the end of the world.

ALEX GILLY is a writer and translator and who was born in New York City and has lived in Australia, Canada, France, California, and the UK. One of his translations, Thierry Cruvellier's THE MASTER OF CONFESSIONS, was longlisted for the 2015 PEN Translation Prize. Alex holds an MA in Translation and Interpreting Studies and a BA in Linguistics and Spanish and Latin American Studies, both from the University of New South Wales. He lives in Sydney with his wife and children.

Death Rattle - When Carmen Vega's boyfriend tries to kill her, she hands over all her savings to a smuggler and sets out from Tijuana in a small, leaky boat. Within sight of the California coast, the boat starts to sink, and its passengers have to be rescued by marine interdiction agents.

Soon, Carmen turns up dead in a privately-operated migrant detention center. Neither Nick Finn, the agent who saved Carmen from drowning, nor his wife, migrants-rights lawyer Mona Jimenez, are satisfied with the prison's account of what happened to Carmen.

Trouble is, the company that runs the prison is on the verge of signing a billion-dollar procurement contract with Homeland Security. And there are people in this world for whom a billion dollars is worth a whole lot more than one human life. Or even three.

Joseph James DeAngelo, better known as the Golden State Killer, has been sentenced to 26 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, four decades after he terrorized the suburbs of Sacramento and stalked neighborhoods in southern California, breaking into homes to rape and torture women and girls, and killing couples and young women in their beds. Before the sentencing the judge heard three days of victim impact statements.

In May of 2019 soon after the Best Selling I'LL BE GONE IN THE DARK was published we had the honor of interviewing Paul Haynes: Michelle McNamara's researcher and then after Michelle's untimely death, he along with others helped finish the book that meant so much to her.
We then asked Paul to join us for an update right before the sentencing.

C. M. Gleason is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling and award-winning author. She lives with her family and two dogs in the Midwest, where she is hard at work on the next Lincoln White House Mystery.

On Independence Day, the citizens of Washington, DC, are celebrating as if there isn’t a war on. But the city is teeming with green Union recruits while President Lincoln and his War Department are focused on military strategy to take Richmond in Secessionist Virginia in order to bring the conflict to a swift end. Manassas, Virginia, near Bull Run Creek, is in their sights.

The very next morning, as Congress convenes once more, a dead body is found on the marble floor of the Rotunda beneath the unfinished dome of the Capitol. Lincoln’s close confidante, Adam Speed Quinn, is called upon to determine whether the man fell, or was pushed to his death.

With the help of Dr. George Hilton and journalist Sophie Gates, Quinn investigates what turns out to be murder. But the former scout is about to be blindsided, for a Southern sympathizer in the city is running a female spy network reporting to the Confederacy, and she has an insidious plot to get to Lincoln himself through Quinn—by employing the charms of one Constance Lemagne…

MICHAEL ELIAS was born and raised in upstate New York. He has worked in motion pictures, television and stage as an actor, writer, producer, and director in New York, Los Angeles, and London.
He was a member of The Living Theatre and acted in The Brig by Kenneth Brown in New York and London.
At WarnerBros he and Rich Eustis created and produced the award-winning series "Head of the Class" that ran for five seasons on ABC starring Howard Hesseman and Billy Connolly.

Elias wrote and directed the acclaimed jazz drama "Lush Life" starring Forest Whitaker, Jeff Goldblum, Don Cheadle, and Cathy Baker. Mr. Elias was nominated as Best Director in the Cable Ace Awards.
His produced screenplays include "The Jerk", "The Frisco Kid", "Serial", "Envoyez les Violons", and "Young Doctors in Love".

His play "The Catskill Sonata" about blacklisted artists premiered in Los Angeles directed by Paul Mazursky. The LA Weekly named it number one in its list of ten best plays of the year.

His new novel YOU CAN GO HOME NOW will be published by HarperCollins on June 23, 2020.

Elias is a member of Writer's Branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and serves on its Foreign Language Committee. He is also a member of the WGA, the DGA, and PEN.
He graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland with a degree in mathematics and philosophy.
Michael Elias lives in Los Angeles and Paris.

YOU CAN GO HOME NOW - Nina is a tough Queens detective with a series of cold case homicides on her desk – men whose widows had the same alibi: they were living in Artemis, a battered women’s shelter, when their husbands were killed.

Nina goes undercover into Artemis. Though she is playing the victim, she’s anything but. Nina knows about violence and the bullies who rely on it because she’s experienced it in her own life.

In this heart-pounding thriller Nina confronts the violence of her own past in Artemis where she finds solidarity with a community of women who deal with abusive and lethal men in their own way.

For the women living in Artemis there is no absolute moral compass, there is the law and there is survival. And, for Nina, who became a cop so she could find the man who murdered her father, there is only revenge.

Ellen Kirschman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, volunteer clinician at the First Responder Support Network, and sought-after speaker and workshop facilitator. Dr. Kirschman is a recipient of the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Police and Public Safety Psychology from the Police and Public Safety section of Division 18 (Psychologists in Public Service) of the American Psychological Association and the Distinguished Contribution to Psychology award from the California Psychological Association. She is coauthor of a book for mental health professionals, Counseling Cops, and author of the self-help guides I Love a Cop, Third Edition, and I Love a Fire Fighter, as well as the mystery novels Burying Ben, The Right Wrong Thing, and The Fifth Reflection. She lives in Redwood City, California. Her website is www.ellenkirschman.com. She also blogs with Psychology Today.

She also writes fiction.Police psychologist Dr. Dot Meyerhoff series. There are three books in the series with more to come.

Kate Winkler Dawson is a seasoned documentary producer, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WCBS News and ABC News Radio, Fox News Channel, United Press International, PBS NewsHour, and Nightline. She teaches journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.

AMERICAN SHERLOCK
From the acclaimed author of Death in the Air (“Not since Devil in the White City has a book told such a harrowing tale”–Douglas Preston) comes the riveting story of the birth of criminal investigation in the twentieth century.

Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities–beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners, and hundreds upon hundreds of books–sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least two thousand cases in his forty-year career. Known as the “American Sherlock Holmes,” Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America’s greatest–and first–forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural.

Heinrich was one of the nation’s first expert witnesses, working in a time when the turmoil of Prohibition led to sensationalized crime reporting and only a small, systematic study of evidence. However with his brilliance, and commanding presence in both the courtroom and at crime scenes, Heinrich spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools that police still use today, including blood spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests, and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence. His work, though not without its serious–some would say fatal–flaws, changed the course of American criminal investigation.

Based on years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock captures the life of the man who pioneered the science our legal system now relies upon–as well as the limits of those techniques and the very human experts who wield them.

Paul W. Papa is a full-time writer and ghost writer who has lived in Las Vegas for more than thirty years. He developed a fascination with the area, and all its wonders, while working for nearly fifteen years at several Las Vegas casinos. In his role as a security officer, Paul was the person who actually shut and locked the doors of the Sands Hotel and Casino for the final time. He eventually became a hotel investigator for a major Strip casino, during which time he developed a love for writing stories about uncommon events. When not at his keyboard, Paul can be found talking to tourists on Fremont Street, investigating some old building, or sitting in a local diner hunting down his next story.

Maximum Rossi - He came to Las Vegas for a bachelor party and never left. When a game of high stakes poker turns into a boxing match, Massimo "Max" Rossi, the son of a Boston Rossi, a mob "fixer," winds up with more than he bargained for. All eyes turn to him when the police find his opponent, a hitman from Chicago, dead. And if that isn’t bad enough, his only alibi, a dancer—the dead man’s girlfriend—is missing.

Now, if the cops don’t get him, the mob will!

Rossi is in the struggle of his life, where every turn brings him closer to an untimely end. He’s got to find the dancer before his time runs out. But in fledgling Las Vegas, time is an abstract concept, and people can hide almost anywhere. Rossi came to Vegas to escape his past, but his past came with him.

Set in Las Vegas of the 1950s, Maximum Rossi takes the reader on a thrilling crime noir ride, reminiscent of tales penned by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Rossi takes his place as a true hard-boiled detective. A man who doesn’t take no for an answer, and isn’t about to let himself get pushed around by anyone...especially a dame.

D.C. Alexander is a former federal agent. His debut novel, "The Legend of Devil's Creek," was a #1 Amazon Kindle best seller. He was born and raised in the Seattle area, and now lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also a former judge for the International Thriller Writers annual Thriller Awards Competition. He welcomes and appreciates your feedback and can be contacted via email at:
authordcalexander@gmail.com

BLOOD in the BLUEGRASS - A few days before the Kentucky Derby, a rising star jockey is found murdered near Churchill Downs. Louisville homicide detective Laurel Arno's investigation takes her from the private dens of elite gamblers, to the ancestral mansions of Kentucky bourbon barons and horse breeders, to the treacherous corridors of a depraved State Capitol. Along the way, she exposes a shadowy world of political corruption, secret societies, and ancient feuds. As she closes in on a hidden killer, she discovers that a killer may also be closing in on her.

Heather is the author of two novels. Her debut, The Lost Girls, won the Strand Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for an Edgar Award. The Distant Dead was published on June 9, 2020, and was named one of the Best Books of Summer by People Magazine, Parade, and CrimeReads. A former antitrust and intellectual property litigator, she traded the legal world for the literary one and earned her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2011. She lives in Mill Valley, California, where she writes, bikes, hikes, and reads books by other people that she wishes she’d written.

THE DISTANT DEAD- A body burns in the high desert hills. A boy walks into a fire station, pale with the shock of a grisly discovery. A middle school teacher worries when her colleague is late for work. By day’s end, when the body is identified as local math teacher Adam Merkel, a small Nevada town will be rocked to its core by a brutal and calculated murder.

Adam Merkel left a university professorship in Reno to teach middle school in Lovelock seven months before he died. A quiet, seemingly unremarkable man, he connected with just one of his students: Sal Prentiss, a lonely sixth grader who lives with his uncles on a desolate ranch in the hills. The two outcasts developed a tender, trusting friendship that brought each of them hope in the wake of tragedy. But it is Sal who finds Adam’s body, charred almost beyond recognition, half a mile from his uncles’ compound.

Nora Wheaton, the middle school’s social studies teacher, dreamed of a life far from Lovelock only to be dragged back on the eve of her college graduation to care for her disabled father, a man she loves but can’t forgive. She sensed in the new math teacher a kindred spirit--another soul bound to Lovelock by guilt and duty. After Adam’s death, she delves into his past for clues to who killed him and finds a dark history she understands all too well. But the truth about his murder may lie closer to home. For Sal Prentiss’s grief seems heavily shaded with fear, and Nora suspects he knows more than he’s telling about how his favorite teacher died. As she tries to earn the wary boy’s trust, she finds he holds not only the key to Adam’s murder, but an unexpected chance at the life she thought she’d lost.

Weaving together the last months of Adam’s life, Nora’s search for answers, and a young boy’s anguished moral reckoning, this unforgettable thriller brings a small American town to vivid life, filled with complex, flawed characters wrestling with the weight of the past, the promise of the future, and the bitter freedom that forgiveness can bring.

We Highlight three cozy mysteries we have enjoyed reading
Dead in Dublin (The Dublin Driver Series #1) Catie Murphy
Death Bee Comes Her (The Oregon Honeycomb Mystery Series #1) Nancy Coco
Murder Carries a Torch (Southern Sisters #7) Anne George

Casey Cep is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her first book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and is available in hardcover, as an e-book, and as an audiobook.

A proud graduate of the Talbot County Public Schools, she has an A.B. from Harvard College and an M.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She was born and raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she still lives with her family.

Furious Hours: The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird.

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted–thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.

Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case.

Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South

Liz Freeland lives with her husband in Montreal, where she writes and astounds the locals with her makeshift French. An elderly cat or dog (or two . . . or four) can typically be found in her apartment, and during the busiest day, Liz usually finds time to sneak in an old movie.

An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen - In 1914, Hell's Kitchen is an apt name for New York City's grittiest neighborhood, as one of the city's first policewomen, Louise Faulk, is about to discover when the death of a young prostitute leads her on a grim journey through the district's darkest corners . . .

Filthy, dangerous, and deadly--Hell's Kitchen is no place for a lady, but Louise Faulk is no ordinary woman. The amateur investigator turned rookie policewoman is investigating the death of young prostitute, Ruthie, who leaves behind a baby boy. Although detectives are quick to declare it a suicide, Louise is less certain after she discovers clues implying murder while attempting to find a caretaker for Ruthie's orphaned son.

Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of 27 novels and other works, including the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories (from The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, named one of the 20th century’s best crime novels by the IMBA, to 2018’s Island of the Mad). She has won an alphabet of prizes from Agatha to Wolfe, been chosen as guest of honor at several crime conventions, and is probably the only writer to have both an Edgar and an honorary doctorate in theology. She was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars in 2010, as “The Red Circle.”

Riviera Gold - The Riviera in 1925 is a playground for the rich built on corruption and greed. It is a place where treasure can be false, where love can destroy, and where life, as Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes will discover, can be cheap—even when it is made of solid gold.

It’s summertime on the Riviera, and the Jazz Age has come to France’s once-sleepy coastline. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes find themselves immersed in the social scene of American expatriates, who spend their days on the beach and their evenings in villas filled with music and enthralling conversation. And even more enticing is the nearby Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and sometimes hidden away.

But despite the luxury and leisure, a new mystery arises. Mrs. Hudson, Russell and Holmes’ former housekeeper, hasn’t been seen since she fled England under a cloud of murder accusations. But she proves elusive, managing to avoid even the great Sherlock Holmes as he and Russell try to figure out what new trouble she is in.

For a beautiful young man has been found dead in Mrs. Hudson’s front room—making her the prime suspect in yet another murder. Russell is certain that Mrs. Hudson is innocent; Holmes is not quite so sure. But the old woman’s colorful past has been a source of tension between them before this, and now, the dangerous players who control Monte Carlo’s gilded casinos may stop at nothing to keep the pair away from the dark corners that Mrs. Hudson’s youthful history could bring to light.

Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway novels take for their inspiration Elly's husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist, and her aunt who lives on the Norfolk coast and who filled her niece's head with the myths and legends of that area. Elly has two children and lives near Brighton.

THE LANTERN MEN(Ruth Galloway #12) She has a new job, home and partner, and is no longer North Norfolk police's resident forensic archaeologist. That is, until convicted murderer Amyas March offers to make DCI Nelson a deal. Nelson was always sure that March killed more women than he was charged with. Now March confirms this, and offers to show Nelson where the other bodies are buried - but only if Ruth will do the digging.

Curious, but wary, Ruth agrees. March tells Ruth that he killed four more women and that their bodies are buried near a village bordering the fens, said to be haunted by the Lantern Men, mysterious figures holding lights that lure travellers to their deaths.

Is Amyas March himself a lantern man, luring Ruth back to Norfolk? What is his plan, and why is she so crucial to it? And are the killings really over?

Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award-nominated and Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of The Lucky One (coming in February), Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She lives in Chicago, where she is co-chair of the mystery readers’ conference Murder and Mayhem in Chicago and the national president of Sisters in Crime.

THE LUCKY ONE - As a child, Alice was stolen from her yard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a true-crime website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of missing and unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Embarking on a search for the truth, she enlists the help of some amateur sleuths from The Doe Pages to connect the dots and find her kidnapper before he hurts someone else. Then Alice crosses paths with Merrily Cruz, another woman who’s been hunting for answers of her own. Together, they begin to unravel a dark, painful web of lies that will change what they thought they knew—and could cost them everything.

Twisting and compulsively readable, The Lucky One explores the lies we tell ourselves to feel safe.

Sara Paretsky is a modern American author of detective fiction. Paretsky was raised in Kansas, and graduated from the state university with a degree in political science. She did community service work on the south side of Chicago in 1966 and returned in 1968 to work there. She ultimately completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago, entitled The Breakdown of Moral Philosophy in New England Before the Civil War, and finally earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. She has lived in Chicago since 1968.

The protagonist of all but two of Paretsky's novels is V.I. Warshawski, a female private investigator. Warshawski's eclectic personality defies easy categorization. She drinks Johnnie Walker Black Label, breaks into houses looking for clues, and can hold her own in a street fight, but also she pays attention to her clothes, sings opera along with the radio, and enjoys her sex life.

Paretsky is credited with transforming the role and image of women in the crime novels.


Chicago may be the city of broad shoulders, but its political law is “Pay to Play.” Money changes hands in the middle of the night, and by morning, buildings and parks are replaced by billion-dollar projects.

DEAD LAND - Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals through her impetuous goddaughter, Bernie Fouchard. Bernie tries to rescue Lydia Zamir, a famed singer-songwriter now living on the streets; Zamir’s life fell apart when her lover was murdered next to her in a mass shooting at an outdoor concert. Not only does Bernie plunge her and V.I. headlong into the path of some ruthless developers, they lead to the murder of the young man Bernie is dating. He’s a computer geek working for a community group called SLICK.

V.I. is desperate to find a mysterious man named Coop, who roams the lakefront in the middle of the night with his dog. She’s sure he holds the key to the mounting body count within SLICK. Coop may even know why an international law firm is representing the mass murderer responsible for Lydia’s lover’s death. Instead, the detective finds a terrifying conspiracy stretching from Chicago’s parks to a cover-up of the dark chapters in America’s meddling in South American politics. Before she finds answers, this electrifying novel pushes V.I. close to the breaking point: People who pay to play take no prisoners.

Liz Decker is the owner of Caprichos Books an independent book store in Bel Air, Maryland. These are trying times for small business owners. Liz shares how she is coping and finding ways to to keep the book store a vital part of downtown Bel Air.

Amy Engel is an American author of suspense and youth adult genres. She was born in Kansas and spent her childhood in Iran, Taiwan and in several states within the United States including Kansas, California, Missouri, and Washington D.C. Amy has a law degree and was a defense attorney before she devoted herself full time to her family and to writing. She lives in Kansas City, Missouri with her husband and two kids. She spends her free time exercising, reading or shoe shopping. She is the author of the Ivy series.

We discuss her latest book. Set in the poorest part of the Missouri Ozarks, in a small town with big secrets, The Familiar Dark opens with a murder. Eve Taggert, desperate with grief over losing her daughter, takes it upon herself to find out the truth about what happened. Eve is no stranger to the dark side of life, having been rwith her family. Her next literary thriller, THE FAMILIAR DARK, will be published by Dutton in Spring 2020.aised by a hard-edged mother whose lessons Eve tried not to pass on to her own daughter. But Eve may need her mother's cruel brand of strength if she's going to face the reality about her daughter's death and about her own true nature. Her quest for justice takes her from the seedy underbelly of town to the quiet woods and, most frighteningly, back to her mother's trailer for a final lesson.

Shauna has been telling stories long before she could ride a bike, and some of them are even true! She writes for kids and teens and thinks it’s kinda the best job ever. Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers is her debut novel, and it will be released on April 23, 2019! She lives in Idaho Falls, ID with her husband, six of their seven children, and two naughty dogs.

We discuss her Agatha nominated book "Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers" Packed with high stakes mystery and tons of heart, this first installment in a new series introduces Kazu Jones-a spunky, scrappy detective who's this generation's Harriet the Spy.

When a string of dognappings grips her Denver neighborhood, Kazu Jones vows to track down the culprits. She can't stand to see more dogs go missing-especially once her neighbors' beloved pet is taken because of her gigantic mistake.

With the help of her gang-including her best friend and expert hacker, March; and her ginormous, socially anxious pup, Genki-Kazu uncovers evidence that suggests the dognapping ring is bigger than she ever imagined. But the more she digs, the more dangerous her investigation becomes. The dognappers are getting bolder, and Genki could be next.

Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, , and the BBC's SHETLAND, Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands...

THE LONG CALL For the first time in 20 years, Ann Cleeves --international bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows-- embarks on a gripping new series.
In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father’s funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.

Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.

The case calls Matthew back into the community he thought he had left behind, as deadly secrets hidden at its heart are revealed, and his past and present collide.

An astonishing new novel told with compassion and searing insight, The Long Call will captivate fans of Vera and Shetland, as well as new readers.

Gabriel Valjan lives in Boston’s South End where he enjoys the local restaurants. He is the author of two series, Roma and Company Files, with Winter Goose Publishing. The Naming Game, the second book in the Company Files series, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Historical Mystery in 2019. Dirty Old Town is the first in the Shane Cleary series for Level Best Books. You can find Gabriel on Twitter (@GValjan) and Instagram (gabrielvaljan). He is a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime.

He is nominated for Best Historical Fiction for: The Company Files: The Naming Game (Book 2 )Jack Marshall, a CIA officer, was really hoping to enjoy his vacation from work in DC and to spend some time in Malibu with his family, but a call from the LAPD’s Chief William Parker changed everything. Not only was script writer Charles Loew murdered, Jack has reason to believe FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was somehow connected to the homicide.
In post-war Hollywood, everyone lies for a living but with Senator Joe McCarthy’s hunting for Communists, even one harmless secret has the power to destroy lives. With the help of his subordinates, Walker and Leslie, they investigate the case for Jack, and quickly enter the world of Hollywood scandals and blacklisted writers, which may prove more dangerous than fighting Nazis. When Jack’s own family is threatened, time is running out.

Like her protagonist, Connie Berry was raised in the high-end antiques trade. After teaching theology for twenty-five years, she began writing mysteries featuring
antiques and the legacy of the past. Connie loves history, cute animals, travel with a hint of adventure, and all things British. Her debut novel, A Dream of Death, has been nominated for an Agatha. She lives in Ohio with her husband and adorable dog, Millie. You can find her at www.connieberry.com.

Connie is nominated for Best First Mystery Novel for A Dream of Death
(Kate Hamilton Mysteries #1) On a remote Scottish island, American antique dealer Kate Hamilton sleuths a killing that eerily replicates a murder still unsolved after 200 years.

Autumn has come and gone on Scotland's Isle of Rothsay, and the locals gather for the Tartan Ball, the annual end-of-tourist-season gala. Among the invited guests is American antique dealer Kate Hamilton. Returning to the island where her husband died is brutal, but Kate is determined to repair her relationship with her sister-in-law, Elenor Spurgeon, the proprietor of Rothsay's deluxe country house hotel.

Kate has hardly unpacked when a body turns up, murdered in an eerie recreation of an infamous unsolved murder two hundred years before. And the only clue to the killer's identity lies in a curiously embellished antique casket. When Bo Duff, the gentle handyman who had tried to save Kate’s husband's life, is taken into custody, she teams up with vacationing Detective Inspector Tom Mallory to clear Bo’s name. To accomplish that, they’ll have to unmask a killer who seems bizarrely fixated on the past…because two hundred years is an awfully long time to hold a grudge in A Dream of Death, the tantalizing series debut by Connie Berry.

Ang Pompano CAS ’95 has been writing mystery for more than 20 years. When It’s Time for Leaving, his debut novel, was launched at the Wesleyan R.J. Julia Bookstore in October. It was nominated for a Best First Novel Agatha Award.

WHEN IT'S TIME FOR LEAVING Agatha Nomination for Best 1st Novel. Al DeSantis is ready to get out of Connecticut. Suffering a recent breakup and a gnarly car crash which invokes in him a phobia of bridges, Al sets his sights on Los Angeles, only to have his plans foiled by his estranged father, Big Al, who is passing on the Blue Palmetto Detective Agency in Savannah, Ga., to his son. Begrudgingly, Al finds himself in the South and wrapped up in investigating a dead body found on the agency dock—a murder case that quickly becomes anything but straightforward.

Shawn Reilly Simmons is the author of The Red Carpet Catering Mysteries featuring Penelope Sutherland, an on-set movie caterer, and of several short stories appearing in various anthologies including "Burnt Orange" in Passport to Murder: the 2017 Bouchercon Anthology (Down & Out Books), and "The Prodigy" in Mystery Tour, the Crime Writers' Association Anthology (Orenda Books).

"The Last Word" which appears in Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Edible, was nominated for a 2019 Agatha Award for Best Short Story.

Shawn was born in Indiana, grew up in Florida, and began her professional career in New York City as a sales executive after graduating from the University of Maryland with a BA in English. Since then Shawn has worked as a book store manager, fiction editor, convention organizer, wine rep, and movie set caterer. She serves on the Board of Malice Domestic, and is an editor at Level Best Books.

Shawn is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the Crime Writers' Association in the U.K.

Cooking behind the scenes on movie sets perfectly combined two of her great loves, movies and food, and provides the inspiration for the Red Carpet Catering series.

We bring you two more Agatha Nominee interviews. Mo Moulton nominated for Best non-fiction The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women. Frances Schoonmaker for Best Middle Grade/Young Adult Mystery For the third installment of her Last Crystal Trilogy THE LAST CRYSTAL.

Dr. Mo Moulton is a historian of 20th century Britain and Ireland, interested in gender, sexuality, and colonialism/postcolonialism. They work as a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at the University of Birmingham, where they are the Director of the Modern British Studies Centre. Moulton earned their PhD from Brown University and spent several years working in the History & Literature program at Harvard University.

Frances Schoonmaker Born in Lawton, OK, Schoonmaker and her two brothers were reared on a farm. Her parents were farmers and schoolteachers. As a child, she was fascinated by stories told by pioneer grandparents and exploring the remains of the dugout where her mother was born. Books about pioneers and those that create imaginative worlds were among her favorites. Schoonmaker makes room for both fact and fancy in The Last Crystal Trilogy, historical fantasy for middle grades and above. She draws on her childhood in rural Oklahoma to furnish vivid details of place and context for all three books of the trilogy.

TARA LASKOWSKI is the award-winning author of the debut suspense novel, One Night Gone, and two short story collections, Modern Manners for Your Inner Demons and Bystanders. She has had stories published in numerous magazines and anthologies such as Mid-American Review, Barcelona Review, and the Norton anthologies Flash Fiction International and New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, among others. Her Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine story, “The Case of the Vanishing Professor,” won the 2019 Agatha Award and her Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine story, “States of Matter,” was selected by Amy Hempel for the 2017 Best Small Fictions anthology. Tara was the winner of the 2010 Santa Fe Writers Project’s Literary Awards Prize, was the longtime editor of the popular online flash fiction journal SmokeLong Quarterly, and is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. She and her husband, writer Art Taylor, write the column Long Story Short at the Washington Independent Review of Books. She earned a BA in English with a minor in writing from Susquehanna University and an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University. She grew up in Pennsylvania and lives in Virginia. Follow her on Twitter, @TaraLWrites.

Art Taylor is the author of the story collection The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense and of the novel in stories On the Road with Del & Louise, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. He won the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Short Story for “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and he has won three additional Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, three Macavity Awards, and three consecutive Derringer Awards for his short fiction. His work has also appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, and he edited Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Anthology or Collection. He is an associate professor of English at George Mason University, and he has contributed frequently to the Washington Post, the Washington Independent Review of Books, and Mystery Scene Magazine.

Todays show will feature a review of The Shaker Mystery Series by Elenor Kuhn and a review of THE OTHER GLORIA by L.A. Villafane.

We interview Lorie Lewis Ham and talk to her about the mystery podcast Mystery Rat Maze. Lorie Lewis Ham has been writing since she was a child. Her first song and poem were published when she was 13 and she has gone on to publish many articles, short stories, and poems throughout the years as well as write for a local newspaper. Four out of her 5 published mystery novels feature gospel singer Alexandra Walters.. She is currently working on the first in a new series set in the Tower District of Fresno, CA and featuring an entertainment podcaster named Roxi Carlucci which will hopefully come out the end of 2020. She has also been the publisher of the online magazine Kings River Life for the past 10 years (www.kingsriverlife.com) and launched a mystery podcast called Mysteryrat's Maze (https://mysteryratsmaze.podbean.com/) almost 2 years ago. Lorie is married to Larry Ham, and they have 2 children, Jessica and Joseph, 5 cats, 4 dogs, 2 rats & 1 rabbit.

California native Marcia Clark is the author of The Rachel Knight and Samantha Brinkman mystery series . A practicing criminal lawyer since 1979, she joined the Los Angeles District Attorney's office in 1981, where she served as prosecutor for the trials of Robert Bardo, convicted of killing actress Rebecca Schaeffer, and, most notably, O. J. Simpson. The bestselling Without a Doubt, which she cowrote, chronicles her work on the Simpson trial. Clark has been a frequent commentator on a variety of shows and networks, including Today, Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and MSNBC, as well as a legal correspondent for Entertainment Tonight.
Final Judgement- A murder investigation draws firebrand attorney Samantha Brinkman into her boyfriend's past in this novel of high-risk suspense by bestselling author Marcia Clark.When it comes to relationships and self-preservation, defense attorney Samantha Brinkman has always been cut and run. But it's different with her new lover, Niko, an ambitious and globally famous entrepreneur. Sam is putting her faith in him. She has to. He's also her new client--a suspect in the murder of an investor whose shady dealings turned Niko's good life upside down.He had the motive: revenge. As did many others who banked a fortune on the wrong man. That's a point in Niko's favor. So is his alibi for the day of the slaying. Until that alibi mysteriously disappears. As Sam's feverish search for another viable killer begins, the investigation only leads deeper into Niko's past and its secrets.From the darkest suspicions to final judgment, fighting for Niko is Sam's job. To do it, she must risk everything on a man who could make all her worst fears come true. Available April 21, 2020

Chad Dundas’ debut novel Champion of the World was a 2016 Boston Globe Best Book of the Year as well as a finalist for the David J. Langum Sr. Prize for Historical Fiction and Reading the West Book Awards. His short fiction has appeared in the Beloit Fiction Journal, Sycamore Review, Sou’Wester and Thuglit. Since 2001, he’s worked as a sportswriter for outlets such as ESPN, NBC Sports, The Sporting News, Bleacher Report and the Associated Press, among others.

The Blaze-Having lost much of his memory from a traumatic brain injury sustained in Iraq, army veteran Matthew Rose is called back to Montana after his father's death to settle his affairs, and hopefully to settle the past as well. It's not only a blank to him, but a mystery. Why as a teen did he suddenly become sullen and vacant, abandoning the activities and people that had meant most to him? How did he, the son of hippy activists, wind up enlisting in the first place?

Then on his first night back, Matthew sees a house go up in flames, and it turns out a local college student has died inside. And this event sparks a memory of a different fire, an unsolved crime from long ago, a part of Matthew's past that might lead to all the answers he's been searching for. What he finds will connect the old fire and the new, a series of long-unsolved mysteries, and a ruthless act of murder.

San Francisco native Bonnie MacBird attended Stanford University where she earned a BA in Music and an MA in Film. Her long Hollywood career includes four years as a feature film development exec at Universal, the original screenplay for the movie TRON, three Emmy Awards for documentary writing/producing, eleven Cine Golden Eagles for scripted and documentary work, numerous produced plays and musicals, and theatre credits as an actor and director.

The Devil’s Due London, 1890. A series of diabolical murders of philanthropists with shady pasts has Holmes and Watson on a dangerous hunt facing radicals and royals, mudlarks and musicians, playwrights and policemen with agendas as they race through the fog of a London winter, trying to stop the carnage as a mysterious “Lucifer” draws ever closer to home.

Bruce Goldfarb is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, USA Today, Baltimore magazine, American Archaeology, American Health and many other publications. Since 2012 Bruce has served as executive assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland. He is public information officer for the OCME and curator of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. His first book of popular nonfiction, 18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics, was released by Sourcebooks in February, 2020

18 Tiny Deaths is the story of a woman whose ambition and accomplishments far exceeded the expectations of her time, 18 Tiny Deaths follows the transformation of a young, wealthy socialite into the mother of modern forensics...
Frances Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the 1870s, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity.
Yet she developed a fascination with the investigation of violent crimes, and made it her life's work. Best known for creating the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dollhouses that appear charming―until you notice the macabre little details: an overturned chair, or a blood-spattered comforter. And then, of course, there are the bodies―splayed out on the floor, draped over chairs―clothed in garments that Lee lovingly knit with sewing pins.
18 Tiny Deaths, by official biographer Bruce Goldfarb, delves into Lee's journey from grandmother without a college degree to leading the scientific investigation of unexpected death out of the dark confines of centuries-old techniques and into the light of the modern day.
Lee developed a system that used the Nutshells dioramas to train law enforcement officers to investigate violent crimes, and her methods are still used today.
18 Tiny Deaths transports the reader back in time and tells the story of how one woman, who should never have even been allowed into the classrooms she ended up teaching in, changed the face of science forever.

Jason Pinter is the internationally bestselling author of HIDE AWAY, the first Rachel Marin novel, and the Henry Parker thriller series (THE MARK, THE GUILTY, THE STOLEN, THE FURY, and THE DARKNESS), as well as the acclaimed standalone thriller THE CASTLE, and two children's books. He has been nominated for the Thriller Award, Strand Critics Award, Barry Award, Shamus Award, and more. THE FURY and THE DARKNESS were both chosen as Indie Next selections, and THE MARK, THE STOLEN, and THE FURY were all named to The Strand's Best Books of the Year list. THE MARK was optioned to be a feature film, and there are over 1.5 million copies of Jason's books in print worldwide.

Hide Away - On the surface, Rachel Marin is an ordinary single mother; on the inside, she’s a fierce, brilliant vigilante. After an unspeakable crime shatters her life, she changes her identity and moves to a small town in Illinois, hoping to spare her children from further trauma…or worse. But crime follows her everywhere.
When the former mayor winds up dead, Rachel can’t help but get involved. Where local detectives see suicide, she sees murder. They resent her for butting in—especially since she’s always one step ahead. But her investigative genius may be her undoing: the deeper she digs, the harder it is to keep her own secrets buried.

DONIS CASEY was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A third generation Oklahoman, she and her siblings grew up among their aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents on farms and in small towns, where they learned the love of family and independent spirit that characterizes the population of that pioneering state. Donis graduated from the University of Tulsa with a degree in English, and earned a Master’s degree in Library Science from Oklahoma University. After teaching school for a short time, she enjoyed a career as an academic librarian, working for many years at the University of Oklahoma and at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
Donis left academia in 1988 to start a Scottish import gift shop in downtown Tempe. After more than a decade as an entrepreneur, she decided to devote herself full-time to writing. The Old Buzzard Had It Coming is her first book. For the past twenty years, Donis has lived in Tempe, AZ, with her husband.

"The Wrong Girl" Blanche Tucker longs to escape her drop-dead dull life in tiny Boynton, Oklahoma. Then dashing Graham Peyton roars into town. Posing as a film producer, Graham convinces the ambitious but naive teenager to run away with him to a glamorous new life. Instead, Graham uses her as cruelly as a silent-picture villain. Yet by luck and by pluck, taking charge of her life, she makes it to Hollywood. Six years later, Blanche has transformed into the celebrated Bianca LaBelle, the reclusive star of a series of adventure films, and Peyton's remains are discovered on a Santa Monica beach. Is there a connection? With all of the twists and turns of a 1920s melodrama, The Wrong Girl follows the daring exploits of a girl who chases her dream from the farm to old Hollywood, all while showing just how risky―and rewarding―it can be to go off-script.

Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than thirty books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing three cozy mystery series: the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series for Crooked Lane, the Year Round Christmas mysteries for Penguin Random House and, as Eva Gates, the Lighthouse Library series, for Crooked Lane Books.

There’s a Murder Afoot: Just in time for Sherlock Holmes’s 166th birthday, the fifth installment in national bestselling author Vicki Delany’s Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery takes Sherlockania to the max with a Holmes convention and historic 221 Baker Street.
Gemma Doyle and her friends travel to London for a Sherlock Holmes convention–but will Gemma’s father take the fall for a felonious forger’s fatality?
The 6th of January is Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, and lucky for Gemma Doyle, January is also the slowest time of the year at both the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, and Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. It’s a good time for Gemma and her friends to travel to England for a Holmes Convention. For Gemma, the trip provides an opportunity to visit her parents, Jayne Wilson is excited about seeing all the sites London has to offer, and Ryan Ashburton just wants to spend some time with Gemma. But the trip is immediately derailed when Gemma’s father Henry recognizes his brother-in-law Randolph Denhaugh, who disappeared more than thirty years ago on the night he stole a valuable painting from his own parents.
Henry, a retired detective with Scotland Yard, has been keeping tabs on the man’s career as a forger of Old Masters and he warns Randy to stay away from his family. It’s up to Gemma, with the help of her friends, to plunge into the “lowest and vilest alleys” of London to save her father from prison.

Lee Goldberg broke into television with a freelance script sale to Spenser: For Hire. Since then, his TV writing & producing credits have covered a wide variety of genres, including sci-fi (seaQuest), cop shows (Hunter, The Glades), martial arts (Martial Law), whodunits (Diagnosis Murder, Nero Wolfe), the occult (She-Wolf of London), kid’s shows (R.L. Stine’s The Nightmare Room), T&A (Baywatch, She Spies), comedy (Monk) clip shows (The Best TV Shows That Never Were) and total crap (The Highwayman, The New Adventures of Flipper).
He’s written and produced TV shows in Canada (Murphy’s Law, Cobra, Missing), England (Stick With Me Kid, She Wolf of London) and Germany (Fast Track: No Limits). His mystery writing for television has earned him two Edgar Award nominations from the Mystery Writers of America.
His two careers, novelist and TV writer, merged when he wrote the eight books in the Diagnosis Murder series of original novels, based on the hit CBS TV mystery that he also wrote and produced. He followed that up by writing fifteen bestselling novels based on Monk, another TV show that he worked on. His Monk novels have been translated and published in Germany, Poland, Thailand, Japan, Turkey, and many other countries.
In addition to his writing, he’s worked as an international TV development expert and consulting producer for production companies and major networks in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
But perhaps he’s best known for his pioneering work mapping the human genome and negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Goldberg lives in Los Angeles with his wife and his daughter and still sleeps in Man From U.N.C.L.E. pajamas.

LOST HILLS-A detective’s brutal first case could make or break her career in an exhilarating thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg.
A video of Deputy Eve Ronin’s off-duty arrest of an abusive movie star goes viral, turning her into a popular hero at a time when the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is plagued by scandal. The sheriff, desperate for more positive press, makes Eve the youngest female homicide detective in the department’s history.
Now Eve, with a lot to learn and resented by her colleagues, has to justify her new badge. Her chance comes when she and her burned-out, soon-to-retire partner are called to the blood-splattered home of a missing single mother and her two kids. The horrific carnage screams multiple murder—but there are no corpses.
Eve has to rely on her instincts and tenacity to find the bodies and capture the vicious killer, all while battling her own insecurities and mounting pressure from the media, her bosses, and the bereaved family. It’s a deadly ordeal that will either prove her skills…or totally destroy her.

Eugenia Lovett West was born in Boston. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and worked for Harper’s Bazaar and the American Red Cross. Then came marriage, four children, volunteer work, and freelancing for local papers. Eugenia divides her time between Connecticut and New Hampshire.

FIREWALL - Former opera singer Emma Streat has survived the murder of her husband and the destruction of her beautiful old house. Now a full-time single mother, she struggles to move forward and make a home for her two sons. Because of her detection skills, she has become a go-to person for help--so, when her rich, feisty, socialite godmother is blackmailed, she turns immediately to Emma. Soon, Emma founds herself thrust into the dark world of cybercrime. Mounting challenges take her to exclusive European settings where she mixes with top people in the financial and art collecting worlds and has intriguing and emotion-packed experiences with men--including her dynamic ex-lover, Lord Andrew Rodale. When she is targeted by a cybercrime network using cutting-edge technology, it takes all of Emma's resilience and wits to survive and bring the wily, ruthless criminal she's hunting to justice. Action-packed and full of twists and turns, this third book of the Emma Streat Mystery series does not disappoint!

In addition to writing crime fiction, He has published a bestselling series of romantic comedy novels. His new novel, Nine Elms, the first in my Kate Marshall private detective series has just been published. Author of the international #1 bestseller THE GIRL IN THE ICE, which is the first in his Detective Erika Foster series, and to date, it has sold over one million copies. There are six books in the Erika Foster series.

Kate Marshall was a promising young police detective when she caught the notorious Nine Elms serial killer. But her greatest victory suddenly turned into a nightmare. Traumatized, betrayed, and publicly vilified for the shocking circumstances surrounding the cannibal murder case, Kate could only watch as her career ended in scandal.
Fifteen years after those catastrophic events, Kate is still haunted by the unquiet ghosts of her troubled past. Now a lecturer at a small coastal English university, she finally has a chance to face them. A copycat killer has taken up the Nine Elms mantle, continuing the ghastly work of his idol.
Enlisting her brilliant research assistant, Tristan Harper, Kate draws on her prodigious and long-neglected skills as an investigator to catch a new monster. Success promises redemption, but there’s much more on the line: Kate was the original killer’s intended fifth victim…and his successor means to finish the job.

Rachel Monroe is a writer and volunteer firefighter living in Marfa, Texas. Her work has appeared in The Best American Travel Writing 2018, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere.

Savage Appetites - In this illuminating exploration of women, violence, and obsession, Rachel Monroe interrogates the appeal of true crime through four narratives of fixation. In the 1940s, a frustrated heiress began creating dollhouse crime scenes depicting murders, suicides, and accidental deaths. Known as the “Mother of Forensic Science,” she revolutionized the field of what was then called legal medicine. In the aftermath of the Manson Family murders, a young woman moved into Sharon Tate’s guesthouse and, over the next two decades, entwined herself with the Tate family. In the mid-nineties, a landscape architect in Brooklyn fell in love with a convicted murderer, the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis Three, through an intense series of letters. After they married, she devoted her life to getting him freed from death row. And in 2015, a teenager deeply involved in the online fandom for the Columbine killers planned a mass shooting of her own.

Each woman, Monroe argues, represents and identifies with a particular archetype that provides an entryway into true crime. Through these four cases, she traces the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. In a combination of personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the twentieth and twenty-first century, Savage Appetites scrupulously explores empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of violence.

Bella Ellis is the Brontë-esque pseudonym of an acclaimed author of numerous novels for adults and children. She first visited the former home of the Brontë sisters when she was ten years old. She first visited the former home of the Brontë sisters when she was ten years old. From the moment she stepped over the threshold she was hooked, and she embarked on a lifelong love affair with Charlotte, Emily, and Anne; their life; their literature; and their remarkable legacy.

"The Vanished Bride" Yorkshire, 1845. A young wife and mother has gone missing from her home, leaving behind two small children and a large pool of blood. Just a few miles away, a humble parson’s daughters—the Brontë sisters—learn of the crime. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë are horrified and intrigued by the mysterious disappearance.

These three creative, energetic, and resourceful women quickly realize that they have all the skills required to make for excellent “lady detectors.” Not yet published novelists, they have well-honed imaginations and are expert readers. And, as Charlotte remarks, “detecting is reading between the lines—it’s seeing what is not there.”

We would like to wish all of our listeners a very Happy New Year full of reading and discovering new authors. As we take a well deserved rest and time to spend with our family and friends. We wanted to share our favorite episode to date. Our September, 2018 interview with Alan Bradley. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Alan Bradley was born in Toronto, Ont. and grew up in the pleasant lakeside town of Cobourg, Ont. After a long career in television broadcasting, he took early retirement from the University of Saskatchewan to write full-time. He has published many children’s stories as well as lifestyle and arts columns in Canadian newspapers. His adult stories have been broadcast on CBC radio and published in various literary journals. He has also written several screenplays and taught university-level courses in screenwriting. He was the recipient of the first Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children’s Literature. After writing for several years on the Maltese island of Gozo, Alan Bradley now lives on the Isle of Man.
The first book of his Flavia de Luce series, “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” won the 2007 Debut Dagger Award of the Crime Writers Association in the UK; the 2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel; the 2010 Dilys, awarded by the International Mystery Booksellers Association; the Spotted Owl Award, given by the Friends of Mystery, and the 2010 Arthur Ellis Award, given by the Crime Writers of Canada for Best First Novel. “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” has also been nominated for an Anthony Award, a Barry Award, and a Macavity Award. Besides appearing on the New York Times bestsellers list as a Favorite Mystery of 2009, “Sweetness” was also, among other honours, an American Library Association nominee as Best Book For Young Adults; a Barnes and Noble Bestseller, and was named to the 2009 Bloomer List. The audiobook version of “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” was voted Best AudioBook by iTunes.

We dedicate this episode to Rowland, his family and friends. We miss him and wanted to take the time to re-release an episode we recorded last year.
Rowland Savage grew up in Baltimore, Maryland with his sister, Patricia; mother, Dorothea; and father, Milton. He entered the seminary as a young man and later switched to different academic pursuits. After attending St. Charles, he received his B. A. from Mount St. Mary's College in 1967; M.S. from Johns Hopkins University in 1974; and an advanced degree in C.A.S.E., Clinical Theory and Therapy from Johns Hopkins University in 1978. He began his professional career as a teacher at Towson Catholic High School. He was drawn by a need to help young people, so he pursued his licensure as a National Certified Counselor and Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. Within the Baltimore County Public Schools system, he became Department Chair, Supervisor, and then Coordinator for the Office of Guidance and Counseling Services where he provided supervision and program leadership for over 250 school counselors serving 162 schools.
Rowland was a sought-after national public speaker and an expert on many topics including youth suicide prevention, crisis management, bereavement counseling, traumatic loss, conflict resolution, peer helper training, and personality disorders. He was involved in numerous teaching roles as an adjunct instructor at Johns Hopkins University, Towson State University, Goucher College, and Loyola College. Rowland was the recipient of the Governor’s Citation for Service in Support of Youth Suicide Prevention, 1996; Excellence in Teaching Award, Johns Hopkins University, 1999; Governor’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Suicide Prevention, 2001; and the Maryland School Counselor Association’s Counseling Advocate, 2004. Upon his retirement in 2005 from his position as Coordinator for the Baltimore County Public Schools Office of School Counseling, Rowland received recognition from the County and Maryland State Department of Education commending him for his 38 years of dedicated support to their students.

In Ellison Cooper's suspense thriller Buried, an FBI neuroscientist is on the trail of a serial killer who's turned up the heat on a cold case....
Senior Special Agent Sayer Altair studies the minds of psychopaths. But even she didn't expect to uncover a killer within the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Rooting him out and exposing internal corruption got her a bullet wound and six months of desk duty. Now, she's finally back in the field, called in when an off-duty FBI agent and his cadaver dog fall into a sinkhole filled with human bones.
Found deep in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, the skeletal remains date back almost two decades, the same time a beloved local teen disappeared. The cold case quickly heats up when Sayer's team finds two fresh corpses among the bones. When a gruesome clue ties these new bodies to a woman recently kidnapped along with her young daughter, Sayer has to uncover the connection between the old bones and the new bodies before the mother and child become the next victims.
But the killer is one step ahead, attacking her team and sabotaging their efforts. With Sayer's investigation compromised and unsure of who to trust, she receives unwanted help from Subject 037, one of the anonymous psychopaths she is currently studying. She has the chilling realization that he's someone powerful in Washington DC, - and he is not about to let a mundane serial killer jeopardize his own ominous agenda for Sayer....

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Cantrell has published sixteen novels in over ten different languages. Her novels have won the ITW Thriller, the Macavity, and the Bruce Alexander awards. They have been nominated for the GoodReads Choice award, the Barry, the RT Reviewers Choice, and the APPY award.
Fluent in German, she received her high school diploma from the John F. Kennedy Schule in Berlin and studied at the Freie Universität in Berlin and the Georg August Universität in Göttingen before graduating from Carnegie Mellon University.
She and her husband and son just moved back to Hawaii from Berlin. Find Rebecca Cantrell on Facebook, Twitter, and at www.rebeccacantrell.com.

F IS FOR FRED is Rebecca's latest book. After a caviar-related disaster, Sofia Salgado races to prevent the assassination of Maloney Investigations’ greatest celebrity—Fred the seagull.
When Sofia returns from vacation, she discovers that her “pet” seagull, Fred, has become her greatest enemy: the paparazzi. Her former agent has dressed him with a tiny camera and created a wildly successful YouTube channel using his footage. To ensure his loyalty, her agent has been bribing Fred with caviar, feeding into his addiction and stoking a fire within his tiny bird heart that can only be quenched by more caviar. So he starts hitting luxurious parties. And that’s where it all goes south.

J.K. Franko was born and raised in Texas at a time when what he really wanted to do in life – writing and film – were not considered legitimate jobs. His Cuban-American parents believed there were only three acceptable career paths for a male child: doctor, lawyer, and architect.

After a disastrous first year of college pre-Med, he ended up getting a BA in philosophy (not acceptable), then he went to law school (salvaging the family name).

Franko was on law journal. His work was cited by courts, and he was recognized on the National Law Journal’s “Worth Reading” list – which for law is the equivalent to a top review in the New York Times.

We discuss the first in The Talion Trilogy EYE FOR EYE. What would you do if someone hurt a loved one? How far would you go to get revenge? The first book in the trilogy sees one couple take the law into their own hands with disastrous consequences.

Rosemary Simpson is the author of two previous historical novels, The Seven Hills of Paradise and Dreams and Shadows, and three previous Gilded Age Mysteries: What the Dead Leave Behind, Lies that Comfort and Betray, and Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and the Historical Novel Society. Educated in France and the United States, she now lives near Tucson, Arizona. We discuss her latest Gilded Age Mystery DEATH BRINGS A SHADOW

Gilly Macmillan is the internationally bestselling author of five novels including WHAT SHE KNEW, THE PERFECT GIRL, ODD CHILD OUT, I KNOW YOU KNOW and THE NANNY.

A former art historian and photographer, Gilly studied at Bristol University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She lives in Bristol, UK, with her husband and three children.

Her first novel, WHAT SHE KNEW, was a Target pick, a LibraryReads pick, an Indie Next pick, an Edgar award nominee, and an International Thriller Writers award finalist.

Gilly MacMillan novels have appeared on the New York Times, Sunday Times, Globe & Mail and Der Spiegel bestseller lists, been translated into over 20 languages and sold over one million copies worldwide. She’s been described as ‘one heck of a good writer’ (Wall Street Journal) and her novels have been praised as ‘nuanced, completely addictive’ (People), ‘riveting’ (Publishers Weekly), and ‘visceral, emotionally charged…heart-wrenchingly well told’ (The Daily Mail).

She is currently working on her sixth novel.

John Glatt's latest true crime book THE FAMILY NEXT DOOR tells the horrific story of the Turpin Family. On January 14, 2018, a seventeen-year-old girl climbed out of the window of her Perris, California home and dialed 911 with shaking fingers. Struggling to stay calm, she told the operator that she and her 12 siblings—ranging in age from 2 to 29—were being abused by their parents. When the dispatcher asked for her address, the girl hesitated. “I’ve never been out,” she stammered.
To their family, neighbors, and online friends, Louise and David Turpin presented a picture of domestic bliss: dressing their thirteen children in matching outfits and buying them expensive gifts. But what police discovered when they entered the Turpin family home would eclipse the most shocking child abuse cases in history. For years, David and Louise had kept their children in increasing isolation, trapping them in a sinister world of torture, abuse, and near starvation.
In the first major account of the case, investigative journalist and author John Glatt delves into the disturbing details and recounts the bravery of the thirteen siblings in the face of unimaginable horror.

In our next installment of "In Agatha's Footsteps" We interview one of the greats. Navada Barr. She is an award-winning novelist and New York Times best-selling author. She has a growing number of Anna Pigeon mysteries to her credit as well as numerous other books, short stories, and articles. She currently resides in New Orleans with her husband, four magical cats, and two adorable dogs. We talk about her latest stand alone mystery "What Rose Forgot" Rose Dennis wakes up in a hospital gown, her brain in a fog, only to discover that she's been committed to an Alzheimer's Unit in a nursing home. With no memory of how she ended up in this position, Rose is sure that something is very wrong. When she overhears one of the administrators saying about her that she's "not making it through the week," Rose is convinced that if she's to survive, she has to get out of the nursing home. She avoids taking her medication, putting on a show for the aides. Then stages her escape. The only problem is--how does she convince anyone that she's not actually demented? Her relatives were the ones to commit her, all the legal papers were drawn up, the authorities are on the side of the nursing home, and even she isn't sure she sounds completely sane. But any lingering doubt Rose herself might have had is erased when a would-be killer shows up in her house in the middle of the night. Now Rose knows that someone is determined to get rid of her. With the help of her computer hacker/recluse sister Marion, thirteen-year old granddaughter Mel, and Mel's friend Royal, Rose begins to gather her strength and fight back--to find out who is after her and take back control of her own life. But someone out there is still determined to kill Rose, and they're holding all the cards.

Ann gave a book report on "Murder Knocks Twice" by Susanna Calkins. The first mystery in Susanna Calkins' captivating new series takes readers into the dark, dangerous, and glittering underworld of a 1920's Chicago speakeasy.Gina Ricci takes on a job as a cigarette girl to earn money for her ailing father--and to prove to herself that she can hold her own at Chicago's most notorious speakeasy, the Third Door. She's enchanted by the harsh, glamorous world she discovers: the sleek socialites sipping bootlegged cocktails, the rowdy ex-servicemen playing poker in a curtained back room, the flirtatious jazz pianist and the brooding photographer--all overseen by the club's imposing owner, Signora Castallazzo. But the staff buzzes with whispers about Gina's predecessor, who died under mysterious circumstances, and the photographer, Marty, warns her to be careful. When Marty is brutally murdered, with Gina as the only witness, she's determined to track down his killer. What secrets did Marty capture on his camera--and who would do anything to destroy it? As Gina searches for answers, she's pulled deeper into the shadowy truths hiding behind the Third Door.

OFF THE GRID A tautly paced, impressively accomplished police procedural...” ―Kirkus Reviews
A scrap of cloth fluttering in the wind leads Hilo police Chief Detective Koa Kāne to the tortured remains of an unfortunate soul, left to burn in the path of an advancing lava flow. For Koa, it’s the second gruesome homicide of the day, and he soon discovers the murders are linked. These grisly crimes on Hawaiʻi’s Big Island could rewrite history―or cost Chief Detective Koa Kāne his career.

Rea Frey is an award-winning author of several nonfiction books. She released her debut novel, "Not Her Daughter" on Aug. 21, 2018, and followed the book's success with her second novel, "Because You're Mine," (Aug. 6, 2019, Griffin/St. Martin's). Rea lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and daughter. We discuss her latest stand alone thriller BECAUSE YOU'RE MINE. Single mother Lee has the daily routine down to a science: shower in six minutes. Cut food into perfect squares. Never leave her on-the-spectrum son Mason in someone else’s care. She’ll do anything—anything—to keep his carefully constructed world from falling apart. Do anything to keep him safe. But when her best friend Grace convinces her she needs a small break from motherhood to recharge her batteries, Lee gives in to a weekend trip. Surely a long weekend away from home won’t hurt? Noah, Mason’s handsome, bright, charismatic tutor—the first man in ages Lee’s even noticed—is more than happy to stay with him.
Forty-eight hours later, someone is dead.

We also highlighted THE PEARL DAGGER the third installment in the Art Deco Mystery Series by L.A. Chandlar. As the Great Depression loosens its grip on New York City, Mayor La Guardia and his team meet their greatest foe in the fight against organized crime.
Lane Sanders and her fiery boss, Mayor Fiorello “Fio” La Guardia have managed to contain the explosive underground conspiracies of New York’s most sinister schemers. But after a seemingly harmless pinball racket claims the life of a trusted ally, a new ringleader signals the rebirth of an all-too-familiar crime network at home and across the pond …
Spurred on by the possibility of a violent syndicate spreading like wildfire through Europe, Lane sets sail for London—the city where her parents began the undercover work that led to their tragic undoing. And this time, she won’t chase down childhood nightmares without Finn Brodie, who vows to dispel his own difficult secrets abroad …

We will be attending HallowRead this year. Because this is a new event for us we thought we would get to know some of the authors that will be attending. We interviewed Susan Viemeister, She writes the Parker Williams and Bealtown Mystery Series. Bryan Nowak whos books include THE DRAMATIC DEAD, THE REVERENT DEAD AND RIAPOKE and Melissa Caribou Annen who writes The Agent Raines Series.
This spooky book convention is Bringing Authors And Readers Together For A Hauntingly Good Time October 25th-26th 2019
Keynote Speaker New York Times and USA Today #1 Bestselling Author Kami Garcia
And Alys Arden. Go to Hallowread.com for more details

New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson’s newest book, Never Have I Ever, is available now wherever books are sold. You can check out her previous eight novels and other work here. Joshilyn’s books have been translated into a dozen languages, have won SIBA’s Novel of the Year award, have three times been #1 Book Sense Pick, have twice won Georgia Author of the Year awards, have three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and have been a finalist for the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction.
A former actor, Jackson reads the audio versions of both her own novels and the books of other writers; her work in this field has been nominated for the Audie Award, was selected by AudioFile Magazine for their best of the year list, won three Earphones awards, made the 2012 Audible All-Star list for highest listener ranks/reviews, and garnered three Listen Up awards from Publisher’s Weekly.

ABA INDIE NEXT Pick | ALA Library Reads Pick | SIBA Okra Pick | One of CrimeReads’ Most Anticipated Crime Books of Summer | Recommended Summer Read by Wall Street Journal, Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Pop Sugar, Deep South Magazine, Book Bub, Atlanta Magazine, Atlanta Intown, The Augusta Chronicle, She Reads, and Modern Mrs. Darcy.

In her first psychological thriller NEVER HAVE I EVER, Joshilyn asks the question Have you ever done something so bad, so shameful that you would do anything to keep it secret? What if your worst enemy knew . . . and was determined to expose you?
Amy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it—teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club. Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant son. And, of course, the steadfast and supportive Charlotte. But Amy’s sweet, uncomplicated life begins to unravel when the mysterious and alluring Angelica Roux arrives on her doorstep one book club night.

Lauren North writes psychological suspense novels that delve into the darker side of relationships and families. She has a lifelong passion for writing, reading, and all things books. Lauren's love of psychological suspense has grown since childhood and her dark imagination of always wondering what's the worst thing that could happen in every situation. Lauren studied psychology before moving to London where she lived and worked for many years. She now lives with her family in the Suffolk countryside. Readers can follow Lauren on Twitter @Lauren_C_North and Facebook @LaurenNorthAuthor


For almost thirty years, Desmond P. Ryan began every day of his working life with either a victim waiting in a hospital emergency room, or a call to a street corner or a blood-soaked room where someone had been left for dead. Murder, assaults on a level that defied humanity, sexual violations intended to demean, shame, and haunt the individuals who were no more than objects to the offenders: all in a day's work. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and often heartbreaking. As a Detective with the Toronto Police Service, Desmond P. Ryan wrote thousands of reports detailing the people, places, and events that led up to the moment he came along. He investigated the crimes and wrote synopses for guilty pleas detailing the circumstances that brought the accused individuals before the Courts. He also wrote a number of files to have individuals deemed either Not Criminally Responsible due to mental incapacity, or Dangerous Offenders to be held in custody indefinitely. Now, as a retired investigator with three decades of research opportunities under his belt, Desmond P. Ryan writes crime fiction. Real Detective. Real Crime. Fiction.

Anna Lee Huber is the Daphne award-winning author of the national bestselling Lady Darby Mysteries, the Verity Kent Mysteries, the Gothic Myths series, and the forthcoming anthology The Deadly Hours. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she majored in music and minored in psychology. She currently resides in Indiana with her family and is hard at work on her next novel. Visit her online at www.annaleehuber.com.

In Penny for Your Secrets The third in the Verity Kent series. The Great War may be over, but for many, there are still obstacles on the home front. Reconciling with her estranged husband makes Verity sympathetic to her friend Ada’s marital difficulties. Bourgeois-bred Ada, recently married to the Marquess of Rockham, is overwhelmed trying to navigate the ways of the aristocracy. And when Lord Rockham is discovered shot through the heart with a bullet from Ada’s revolver, Verity fears her friend has made a fatal blunder.

While striving to prove Ada’s innocence, Verity is called upon for another favor. The sister of a former Secret Service colleague has been killed in what authorities believe was a home invasion gone wrong. The victim’s war work—censoring letters sent by soldiers from the front—exposed her to sensitive, disturbing material. Verity begins to suspect these two unlikely cases may be linked. But as the connections deepen, the consequences—not just for Verity, but for Britain—grow more menacing than she could have imagined.

We highlight R.J. Lee's Grand Slam Murder The debut in A Bridge to Death mystery series. After four bridge players are poisoned, newspaper reporter Wendy Winchester sets out to catch a killer who's not playing with a full deck . . .

When the four wealthy widows who make up the venerable Rosalie Bridge Club never get up from their card table, this quiet Mississippi town has its first quadruple homicide. Who put cyanide in their sugar bowl? An aspiring member and kibitzer with the exclusive club, Wendy takes a personal interest in finding justice for the ladies.

She also has a professional motivation. A frustrated society columnist for the Rosalie Citizen, she's ready to deal herself a better hand as an investigative reporter. This could be her big break. Plus, she has a card or two up her sleeve: her sometimes boyfriend is a detective and her dad is the local chief of police.

Partnering up with the men in her life, Wendy starts shuffling through suspects and turning over secrets long held close to the chest by the ladies. But when a wild card tries to take her out of the game, Wendy decides it's time to up the ante before she's the next one to go down . . .

Faye Snowden is the author of three published mysteries with Kensington— Spiral of Guilt (1999), The Savior (2003, 2004) and Fatal Justice (2005, 2006). She has published short stories and poems in various literary journals and small presses including The African American Review, Calliope, Red Ochre Lit, Bay Area Poets Coalition and Occam’s Razor. Her new book, A Killing Fire (Flame Tree Press) will made its debut in August, 2019.
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Aside from her publications, she also managed two boys, a husband, five dogs and three writing fellowships over the years. Today, Faye works and writes from her home in Northern California.

S. A. Lelchuk holds a B.A. in English from Amherst College and a master's degree from Dartmouth College. He divides his time between Berkeley, California and Hanover, New Hampshire.

SAVE ME FROM DANGEROUS MEN is the start of a series featuring bookseller and private investigator Nikki Griffin. The series has been optioned for film and television and the foreign rights have sold in multiple countries.

S. A. Lelchuk is a member of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and International Thriller Writers (ITW). He is represented by the LGR Literary Agency in New York and the Gersh Agency.

On this episode we will focus on the factual side of mysteries. First we interview Rich Cohen and discuss his latest historical true crime. THE LAST PIRATE OF NEW YORK A GHOST SHIP, A KILLER AND THE BIRTH OF A GANGSTER NATION. The true account of Albert Hicks rise to become the man gangsters told stories about. He was the last man hung for piracy in New York.

Next we interview Anita Zannin. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Buffalo State College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Forensic Chemistry and a second Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice. She received a Master of Science degree in Forensic Science from Syracuse University. Additionally, she taught for 4 years for Syracuse University's Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute and has been named a Visiting Professor at Francisco Marroquin Law School in Guatemala. Additionally she served as the faculty advisor to Syracuse University’s Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute’s Graduate Student Organization; Forensic Science: Code Orange (FSCO). Prior to entering the Forensics field, Ms. Zannin worked and studied in the medical field for many years. We discuss her role in crime solving and whether fiction gets it right.

Ann Aguirre is an American author of speculative fiction. She writes urban fantasy, romantic science fiction, apocalyptic paranormal romance, paranormal romantic suspense, and post-apocalyptic dystopian young adult fiction.

We discuss her latest book THE THIRD MRS. DURST-Some people just need killing. Marlena Altizer Durst lives in her husband's shadow. He controls her every move--what she wears, the food she eats, and the friends she's allowed to make. If she disobeys, there are...consequences. And he has all the power. To outsiders, it seems that she leads a fairy-tale life. But nobody ever wonders if Cinderella was happy after she married the prince. Marlena has traded freedom and safety for luxurious imprisonment, and most days, that seems like a bad bargain. Death may be the only exit she's allowed. Just like his first wife. And his second. Unless she flips the script. Some people just need killing.

Edwin Hill is the author of the critically-acclaimed Hester Thursby mystery series. His first novel, LITTLE COMFORT, was nominated for an Agatha Award for best debut. The second in the series, THE MISSING ONES, will be available in September. He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner Michael and his favorite reviewer, their lab Edith Ann, who likes his first drafts enough to eat them.

Hester Thursby has given up using her research skills to trace people who don’t want to be found. A traumatic case a few months ago unearthed a string of violent crimes, and left Hester riddled with self-doubt and guilt. Caring for a four-year-old is responsibility enough in a world filled with terrors Hester never could have imagined before.
Finisterre Island, off the coast of Maine, is ruggedly beautiful and remote—the kind of place tourists love to visit, though rarely for long. But not everyone who comes to the island is welcome. A dilapidated Victorian house has become home to a group of squatters and junkies, and strangers have a habit of bringing trouble with them. A young boy disappeared during the summer, and though he was found safely, the incident stirred suspicion among locals. Now another child is missing. Summoned to the island by a cryptic text, Hester discovers a community cleaning up from a devastating storm—and uncovers a murder.

We discuss Diane Fanning’s latest true crime book DEATH ON THE RIVER

Hank Phillippi Ryan A nationally bestselling author of 11 mystery novels, Ryan has won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction: five Agathas, three Anthonys, the Daphne, two Macavitys, and for The Other Woman, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. National reviews have called her a "master at crafting suspenseful mysteries" and "a superb and gifted storyteller."
We discuss her latest stand alone thriller. Law student Rachel North will tell you, without hesitation, what she knows to be true. She's smart, she's a hard worker, she does the right things. She's successfully married to a faithful and devoted husband, a lion of Boston's defense bar. She's a rising-star intern in the prosecutor's office. Problem is—she's wrong. And if she takes one false step in this cat-and-mouse game, the battle for justice will become a battle for survival.

Samantha Downing is the author of the USA Today and #1 International Best Seller, My Lovely Wife, She was born and raised in Marin County, California, and now lives in New Orleans, where she is furiously typing away on her next thrilling standalone.

Mary Lawrence lives in Maine and writes the Bianca Goddard Mysteries set in Tudor London featuring a cast of commoners. Bianca uses her wits and a smattering of alchemy to solve murders in the slums of Southwark. Her debut, The Alchemist’s Daughter (Kensington, 2015) was named by Suspense Magazine as a “Best Book of 2015” in the historical mystery category. Her articles have appeared in several publications most notably the national news blog, The Daily Beast. The Bianca Goddard Mystery series also includes Death of an Alchemist, Death at St. Vedast, The Alchemist of Lost Souls, and the forthcoming The Lost Boys of London.

This months recipient of the IN AGATHA'S FOOTSTEPS goes to Laura Lippman. She was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working full-time and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001.
Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards.
She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association. Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade.
After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.
Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of the late Theo Lippman Jr., a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller.

Amy Stewart is the New York Times best-selling author of ten books, including Girl Waits with Gun and the rest of the Kopp Sisters series, which are based on the true story of one of America’s first female deputy sheriffs and her two rambunctious sisters. The books are in development with Amazon Studios for a television series. Her popular nonfiction titles include The Drunken Botanist, Wicked Plants, and Flower Confidential. While they have not been adapted for television, there are a few bars around the world named after The Drunken Botanist, which is even better.

Misty Simon always wanted to be a storyteller…preferably behind a Muppet. Animal was number one, followed closely by Sherlock Hemlock… Since that dream didn’t come true, she began writing stories to share her world with readers, one laugh at a time. She knows how to hula, was classically trained to sing opera, co-wrote her high school Alma Mater, and can’t touch raw wood. Never hand her a Dixie cup with that wooden spoon/paddle thing. It’s not pretty.
Touching people’s hearts and funny bones are two of her favorite things, and she hopes everyone at least snickers in the right places when reading her books. She lives with her husband, daughter, and two insane dogs in Central Pennsylvania where she is hard at work on her next novel or three. She loves to hear from readers. We discuss her lighthearted Tallie Graver Mystery Series.

Bess Carnan - 2019 Winner of the William F. Deeck – Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers. These days she and her husband live in Orlando, Florida with their rescued garbage cat, Squeaker, and an endless stream of foster kittens. In between feedings, flea baths, and snuggles she writes cozy mysteries that are really love letters to all the places she’s lived.

Makita Brottman - She is a writer, mostly of non-fiction. Her work blends memoir, history, psychoanalysis, and creative speculation. Currently, she is especially interested in reconsidering and interrogating the true crime genre. This interest is at the heart of her most recent book, An Unexplained Death (Henry Holt, 2018).

Robert Dugoni is the New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and #1 Amazon Internationally Bestselling Author of the Tracy Crosswhite Series : My Sister's Grave (2014), Her Final Breath (2015), In the Clearing (2015), The Trapped Girl (2016), Close to Home (2017) and A Steep Price (2018).

Dugoni's espionage novel, The Eighth Sister, inspired by real events, released in April 2019.

His critically acclaimed literary novel, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell (2018) won Suspense Magazine's Crimson Scribe Award as The Best Book of 2018 and has drawn comparison's to novelist John Irving's work. Dugoni also won a Golden Microphone for his narrationo that novel. Connect with him on Facebook @AuthorRobertDugoni, on Twitter @robertdugoni, and on Instagram, robertdugoni, author

Dugoni is also the author of the David Sloane series: The Jury Master, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, Murder One and The Conviction.

Dugoni is the winner of the 2015 Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction, has twice been a finalist for the Harper Lee Award for Legal Fiction, twice been a finalist for the Silver Falchion award for his mysteries, was a 2015 and 2017 International Thriller Writer's finalist for thriller of the year, and a 2017 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Finalist for his stand alone novel, The Seventh Canon. His books are sold world-wide in more than 30 countries and have been translated into dozens of languages including French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Dugoni's first in the Tracy Crosswhite series, My Sister's Grave (Nov. 2014), became a months-long #1 Amazon Bestseller in the United States, France, Italy, Germany and in the UK, as well as a New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best Seller and won the 2014 Nancy Pearl Award for fiction. Library Journal gave it a Starred Review and said it "Combines the best of a police procedural with a legal thriller, and the end result is outstanding...Dugoni continues to deliver emotional and gut-wrenching, character-driven suspense stories that will resonate with any fan of the thriller genre."

S.C. PERKINS is a fifth-generation Texan who grew up hearing fascinating stories of her ancestry and eating lots of great Tex-Mex, both of which inspired the plot of her debut mystery novel. Murder Once Removed was the winner of the 2017 Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery competition. She resides in Houston. We talk about the debut book in her genealogy mystery series, MURDER ONCE REMOVED.

Leslie Karst, now retired from the law, she spends her time cooking, singing alto in her local community chorus, gardening, cycling, and of course writing. Leslie and her wife, Robin, and their Jack Russell mix, Ziggy, split their time between Santa Cruz and Hilo, Hawai‘i. We talk about the latest in her Sally Solari culinary mystery series, MURDER FROM SCRATCH.

Susan Elia MacNeal is the author of The New York Times, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today-bestselling Maggie Hope mystery series, starting with the Edgar Award-nominated and Barry Award-winning Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, which is now in its 22nd printing. She is currently at work on The Prisoner in the Castle, the eighth novel in the series.

We discuss an opinion piece in the Boston Globe Updated June 17, 2019 by Clea Simon "He wrote/she wrote. On gender in mystery writing"

We interview Lou Berney who is the author of November Road (a Washington Post Best Book of 2018), The Long and Faraway Gone (winner of the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Macavity, and ALA awards), Whiplash River, and Gutshot Straight, all from William Morrow. He’s also written a collection of stories, The Road to Bobby Joe, and his short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He teaches in the MFA program at Oklahoma City University. His website is louberney.com

Ann Dark Highlights "The Tale of Two Murders" by Heather Redmond, In the winter of 1835, young Charles Dickens is a journalist on the rise at the Evening Chronicle. Invited to dinner at the estate of the newspaper's co-editor, Charles is smitten with his boss's daughter, vivacious nineteen-year-old Kate Hogarth. They are having the best of times when a scream shatters the pleasant evening. Charles, Kate, and her father rush to the neighbors' home, where Miss Christiana Lugoson lies unconscious on the floor. By morning, the poor young woman will be dead.

We also talk about Booklist online article by Bill Ott - The Year's Best Crime Novels : 2019 (First pub. May 1, 2019 (booklist)

Last but surely not least we give a shoutout to Art Kilmer our latest supporter on Patreon.

Steve Hockensmith is the author of more than a dozen published novels, including two Edgar finalists, a New York Times bestseller and a Foreword Reviews IndieFab Mystery Book of the Year. He's written several series, including the "Holmes on the Range" mystery/Western hybrids and three tarot-themed whodunnits. He's also a prolific writer of mystery short stories, having appeared in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock magazines dozens of times.

We also highlight two books we are currently reading. An American Family: A Gripping Contemporary Suspense Drama by Jackson Baer. and The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson. The remarkable new account of an essential piece of American mythology—the trial of Lizzie Borden—based on twenty years of research and recently unearthed evidence.

In our next installment of In Agatha's Footsteps, we interviewed Charles and Caroline Todd. Charles and Caroline are a mother-and-son writing team who live on the east coast of the United States. They write the Best selling Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford mystery series. We discuss how they write as a team and how Ian and Bess are letting Charles and Caroline know where the story will go. We talk about the latest in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series "The Black Ascot"

Paul Haynes is a Los Angeles-based writer. Known as "The Kid" in Michelle McNamara's I'LL BE GONE IN THE DARK, Paul worked closely with Michelle as her researcher and investigative partner, and helped finish the book after her death.

Originally from South Florida, Paul's work with Michelle was the culmination of a decadelong obsession with unsolved serial cases, and the Golden State Killer in particular. He has also worked as a film critic, video editor, and screenwriter, and is currently co-executive producing the HBO docuseries of Michelle's book.

We interview Hannah Dennison. British born, Hannah originally moved to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting. She has been an obituary reporter, antique dealer, private jet flight attendant and Hollywood story analyst. For many years Hannah taught mystery writing workshops at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program in Los Angeles, California.

She has served on numerous judging committees for Mystery Writers of America and is currently on the MWA board for 2018-2019.

After twenty-five years living on the West Coast, Hannah returned to the UK where she shares her life with two crazy Hungarian Vizslas. She enjoys all country pursuits, movies, and theatre, reading and seriously good chocolate.


We then welcome back Best Selling Author Ellen Butler to talk about the latest in her Karina Cardinal mystery series- "Fatal Legislation" When a senator drops dead at Karina Cardinal’s feet, her status quickly changes from “dogged DC lobbyist” to “person of interest.” Certain the FBI could change that status to “suspect” at any moment, she conducts her own back-channel investigation…which could change her status to “dead.”

We interview David Reichenbaugh and discuss his book. October 2, 2002. A bullet pierced the window of a crafts store in Maryland, just missing the cashier. But other bullets hit their targets. In Pursuit follows the hunt for the Beltway snipers during the twenty-three-day shooting spree that terrorized Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. David Reichenbaugh—the criminal intelligence operations commander for the Maryland State Police, and commanding officer at the scene during the snipers’ capture in Myersville, Maryland—played a major role in the investigation from the first day of the killing spree through its final act, as the snipers were cornered in a rest area in western Maryland. He is one of very few people who know the complete details of the investigation and capture of the snipers. Working against the clock with few clues and little evidence, hundreds of investigators from federal, state, county, and city law enforcement agencies struggled to find answers to the questions: Who were the killers? Was their choice of victims random? And most of all, Why did they kill? When the killers began leaving notes to taunt the police, investigators were finally able to begin assembling a picture, piercing the fog of uncertainty and terror that filled the region.
We also highlight two books. First Gary Allan Ruse's Murder in Deer Park Join President Grover Cleveland and his young bride as their resort honeymoon is interrupted by murder and intrigue, forcing the appealing couple to become detectives and solve the crime!

The year is 1886 and Grover Cleveland, 22nd President of the United States, has at age 49 taken a bride, the lovely 21 year old Frances Folsom. Married in the White House itself they have raced by swift carriage, with meddlesome reporters trailing their every move, to take a private train to the isolated Victorian mountain resort in Deer Park, Maryland, where they hope to share a wonderful honeymoon.

But, unbeknownst to them, besides the annoying presence of the press, there are dastardly schemes afoot and the suspicious death of one of the reporters complicates things for the happy couple, forcing them to investigate the mystery with the help of the police and others guarding them.

Written by Gary Alan Ruse, author of 5 published novels ("Houndstooth" and "A Game of Titans," published in hardcover by Prentice-Hall, "The Gods of Cerus Major," published in hardcover by Doubleday, and "Morlac: The Quest of the Green Magician" and "Death Hunt on a Dying Planet," paperback originals by NAL/Signet Books) and numerous stories in magazines and anthologies, as well as hundreds of newspaper stories for Miami's Community Newspapers and the old Miami News.
Second Staging is Murder by Grace Topping- Laura Bishop just nabbed her first decorating commission—staging for sale a 19th-century mansion that hasn’t been updated for decades. But when a body falls from a laundry chute and lands at Laura’s feet, replacing flowered wallpaper becomes the least of her duties.

To clear her young assistant of the murder and save her fledgling business, Laura’s determined to find the killer. Turns out it’s not as easy as renovating a manor home, especially with two handsome men complicating her mission: the police detective assigned to the case and the real estate agent trying to save the manse from foreclosure.

Worse still, the meddling of a horoscope-guided friend, a determined grandmother, and the local funeral director could get them all killed before Laura props the first pillow.

In our next installment of In Agatha's Footsteps we interview Anne Hillerman and talk about her latest“ Book the Tale Teller Continuing a Legacy
The Tale Teller merges parallel mysteries
When Ann took over the series that made her father, Tony, famous, she gave voice to the female characters in the series, bring­ing them into the mainstream narrative without taking anything away from the male characters upon whom the series was built. Hillerman wisely left the best parts of her father’s beloved characters’ storylines intact while creating compelling new additions. This time, in The Tale Teller (Harper, $26.99, 320 pages, 9780062391957), three paral­lel tales merge with unexpected results for each of the three protag­onists. Retired cop Joe Leaphorn is investigating a case that the local museum director would like to have cleared up before her imminent retirement, that of a priceless traditional Navajo dress that has gone missing. Leaphorn’s former colleague Jim Chee is involved in an in­vestigation of jewelry thefts, largely of Native American antiques. And Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito must, somewhat reluctantly, share the stage with the FBI in the investigation of a murder on a popular run­ning trail in the Arizona desert. As is always the case with Hillerman novels (either Tony or Anne), the supernatural is never far from the reader’s mind. Witchcraft and Na­tive American lore permeate the narrative in a way that has appealed to readers for nigh on 50 years, with no end in sight.” (From Whodunit by Bruce Tierney)

We interview award-winning author John DeDakis who is a former CNN Senior Copy Editor for the Emmy and Peabody-Award winning news program "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."
DeDakis (pronounced deh-DAY-kiss) is the author of four mystery/suspense novels -- Fast Track, Bluff, Troubled Water, and Bullet in the Chamber. The novels provide a behind-the-scenes look at real-world journalism. We discuss his latest book "Fake" available September 1, 2019.
Next we interview John Verdon, author of the Best Selling Dave Gurney Mystery Series. Including THINK OF A NUMBER, SHUT YOUR EYES TIGHT, LET THE DEVIL SLEEP, PETER PAN MUST DIE, WOLF LAKE and WHITE RIVER BURNING.

We go from one end of the mystery genre to the other. First we interview Lea Wait USA Today best-selling author and speaker who writes the Mainely Needlepoint mystery series, the Shadows Antique Print mystery series, and the Maine Murder Mystery series. We also talk about her new Post-Civil War Mystery "Justice & Mercy".

Then we interview Pulitzer prize-winning author Edward Humes and discuss his true crime book "Burned-A Story of Murder and the Crime that Wasn't". A chilling and vivid narrative of Joann Parks who is currently servinglife. A 30 year old arson-murder conviction now being reopened as the science behind it is challenged as mere guesswork.

In our last but surely not least episode of Agatha Nominees we interview Nancy J. Cohen Nominated for Best Nonfiction for Writing the Cozy Mystery (Orange Grove Press), Ben Guterson nominated for Best Children's Y/A Mystery for Winterhouse (Henry Holt), Shari Randall nominated for Best First Novel for Curses Boiled Again (St. Martin's) and Jane Ann Turzillo nominated for Best Nonfiction for Wicked Women of Ohio (History Press)

Round four of our special Agatha Nominee interviews. Ellen Byron nominated for Best Contemporary Novel for Mardi Gras Murder (Crooked Lane Books), L.A. Chandlar nominated for Best Historical Novel for The Gold Pawn(Kensington), Bruce Robert Coffin nominated for Best Contemporary Novel for Beyond the Truth (Witness Impulse) and Dianne Freeman nominated for Best First Novel for A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder (Kensington)

Help us celebrate our PODIVERSARY! Find out who some of our favorite books and guest were over this past year. We also run the numbers and let you know what were the most listened to episodes.

Round three of our special Agatha Nominee Interviews. Cindy Callaghan nominated for Best Childrens Y/A for Potion Problems (Just Add Magic) (Aladdin), Annette Dashofy nominated for Best Contemporary Novel for Cry Wolf (Henery Press) and Aimee Hix Nominated for Best First Novel for What Doesn't Kill You (Midnight Ink)

Round two of our special Agatha Nominee interviews. Edith Maxwell nominated for Best Historical Novel for Turning the Tide (Midnight Ink), Margalit Fox nominated for Best Non-Fiction for Conan Doyle for the Defense (Random House) and Keenan Powell nominated for Best First Novel for Deadly Solution (Level Best Books)

The first in the series of interview with Agatha Award Nominees. Cynthia Surrisi, nominated for Best YA Novel , Edwin Hill, nominated for Best First Novel, and Laura Thompson, nominated for Best Non Fiction, were the first group we selected.

On this installment of "In Agatha's Footsteps" We feature an interview with Rhys Bowen who is the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Royal Spyness Series, Molly Murphy Mysteries, and Constable Evans. She has won the Agatha Best Novel Award and has been nominated for the Edgar Best Novel. Rhys’s titles have received rave reviews around the globe. We discuss her new stand-alone novels "In Fairleigh Field", "The Tuscan Child" and her latest "The Victory Garden"

We first interview Wendy Tyson and talk about her latest Greenhouse Mystery "Rooted in Deceit"
Wendy is a writer, lawyer, and former therapist whose background has inspired her mysteries and thrillers. Wendy writes three mystery series, the bestselling Greenhouse Mystery Series and the popular Allison Campbell Mystery Series (Henery Press), and the Delilah Percy Powers crime series (Down & Out Books). Wendy’s short stories have appeared in literary journals, and she has short fiction in two anthologies, The Night of the Flood and Betrayed. Wendy and her family live in Vermont.

We then welcome back Desmond P. Ryan to discuss his latest Mike O'Shea mystery "Death Before Coffee" Now, as a retired detective with three decades of research opportunities under his belt, he writes crime fiction. We also talk about a new series he has in the works.

We feature an interview with Nicola Upson who is a British novelist, author of An Expert in Murder, and several other novels featuring a fictional version of Josephine Tey as the heroine and detective. The latest in the series will be released in April - "Sorry for the Dead" Nicola Upson was born in Suffolk in 1970 and has a bachelor's degree in English from Downing College, Cambridge.

On today's episode we highlighted two books. We reviewed "The Second Rider" by Alex Beer. It is a post World War I set in Vienna. Then we reviewed "Coma Dreams" by N. Lawrence Mann, a fantastical thriller with elements of addiction fiction.

We focus on two books this week the first is HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE by Kellye Garrett. Kellye's first novel, Hollywood Homicide, won Agatha, Anthony, Lefty and IPPY awards for best first novel. It was also nominated for Macavity and Barry awards. Hollywood Ending, her second book in the Detective by Day mystery series, was chosen a best mystery of 2018 by Suspense Magazine, Book Riot and CrimeReads, which called it the most fun book of the year. In addition to writing, she currently serves on the national Board of Directors of Sisters in Crime as its Publicity Liaison.

Then we highlight KINFOLK KILLERS by L.V. Nield. Prior to retiring with her husband to Vancouver Island, Canada, L.V. Nield practiced law for many years in New York State. Working primarily in Elder Law, Laura was always aware of the vulnerability of seniors.

KINFOLK KILLERS - An Olive Reader Mystery, while a work of pure fiction, incorporates potential abuses of the old and frail.

We interview Peggy Townsend she is a longtime newspaper reporter who has won multiple state and national awards for her work. She has chased a serial killer through a graveyard at midnight, panhandled with street kids, and sat on a mountaintop with a woman who counted her riches in each morning's sunrise. We discuss the amazing 1st book in her Aloa Snow mystery series SEE HER RUN and her upcoming second book THE THIN EDGE.

We have a packed episode with a revisit from one of our favorites Cathy Ace. We discuss her new stand-alone THE WRONG BOY. Cathy Ace is the author of the award-winning Cait Morgan Mysteries and the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries. Now she’s turned to the darker side of Welsh crime fiction with The Wrong Boy. Next, we highlight Ian Andrew's Wright & Tran crime trilogy. Kara Wright and Tien Tran, combat veterans of an elite intelligence unit, now make their living as Private Investigators. Often working the mundane, just occasionally they get to use all their former training.
Then we highlight Roger Johns, RIVER OF SECRETS the 2nd in the Wallace Hartman mystery series. When a controversial politician is murdered in cold blood, Baton Rouge Police Detective Wallace Hartman struggles to find the killer amid conspiracies and corruption.

This episode features an interview with Andrew Shaffer who is a New York Times bestselling author and screenwriter whose books include the parody Fifty Shames of Earl Grey and the humorous survival guide How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters. His new book, the instant national bestseller Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery is now available wherever books are sold from Quirk Books and Audible.

Our next honoree of "In Agatha's Footsteps" is Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen. Her books have been top-3 bestsellers in the United States and number one bestsellers abroad. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”.

Bookends #18 features an interview with Steven C. Levi. We discuss his book DEAD MEN DO COME BACK. Our book highlight this week is a 1920's small town mystery PAINT THE LIBRARIAN DEAD by Kenn Grimes.

We interview Brad Ricca and discuss his book-"Mrs. Holmes"it tells the incredible story of Grace Humiston, the lawyer, and detective who solved the famous cold case of Ruth Cruger, an 18-year-old girl who disappeared in 1917. Grace was an amazing lawyer and travelling detective during a time when no women were practising in the legal profession. She focused on solving cases no one else wanted and advocating for innocents. Grace became the first female US District Attorney and made ground-breaking investigations into the practice of modern slavery. In the Ruth Cruger case, Grace followed a trail of corruption that led from New York to Italy. Her work changed how the country viewed the problem of missing girls. But the victory came with a price.

Part II of our catch up with the authors we interviewed this past year included- Alice Castle, T.G. Campbell, Hilder sif Thorarensen, Ellen Butler, Nick van der Leek, Cathy Ace, Dennis Palumbo and Desmond P. Ryan.

We take the time to catch up with the amazing authors we have had the pleasure of encountering this past year. Steven Axelrod, Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli, Lauren Carr, Jana DeLeon, Karen Ellis (Katia Lief), Thomas Fincham, Celina Grace, Jane Haseldine, Ed Ifkovic, Cynthia Kuhn, Alice Loweecey and Becky Masterman. Next week we will update the authors from our bookends episodes.

Learn how DNA has changed crime scene investigations. Virginia Sladko, a forensic scientist with the Baltimore Police Department, will discuss the part DNA has played in solving cases and in overturning wrongful convictions.

D.M. Quincy is an award-winning journalist who--after covering many unsolved murders--decided to conceive her own stories in which a brilliant amateur detective always gets the bad guy (or girl). She writes about Regency England, a time of elegance and extravagance, as well as crime and poverty, is the world of amateur sleuth Atlas Catesby.

This episode focuses on the independent publishing world. From one end of the spectrum to the other. First we feature an interview with Adam Croft who is an international best-selling writer of crime fiction. He has become one of the biggest-selling self-published authors in the world and is a prominent advocate of independent publishing. His latest thriller is THE PERFECT LIE.

We then interview up and coming author Tom Reilly and we discuss his journey into the independent publishing world and we talk about his debut book GRAYSCALE.

We interview Mark Pryor who is a British mystery writer and Assistant District Attorney for Travis County, Texas. He is best known for his mystery novels featuring Hugo Marston, a former FBI agent from Texas, and now head of security at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

We had a lively interview with Desmond P. Ryan, author of "10-33 Assist PC". Ryan, an almost 30 year veteran of the Toronto, Canada police force. We also highlighted two books, "Guilt" by Amanda Robson, a dark psychological thriller. We then highlighted "Death by Diploma" by Kelley Kaye, a light hearted cozy set in a high school in Colorado.

Hank Phillippi Ryan is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston's WHDH-TV. She's won 34 EMMYs and dozens more journalism honors. The nationally bestselling author of 10 mysteries, Ryan's also an award-winner in her second profession—with five Agathas, three Anthonys, two Macavitys, the Daphne, and for The Other Woman, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. Critics call her "a master of suspense" and "a superb and gifted storyteller" and she is the only author to have won the Agatha in four different categories: Best First, Best Novel, Best Short Story and Best Non-Fiction. We discuss her latest stand-alone "Trust Me."

We feature an interview with Chris Ould who is a BAFTA award-winning screenwriter who has worked on TV shows including The Bill, Soldier Soldier, Casualty and Hornblower. We discuss his Faroes Trilogy featuring Jan Reyna.

Bookends#14 We have two interviews. First, we interview award winning Swedish Author Jessica Jarlvi and discuss her new thriller WHAT DID I DO. We then welcome back Nick Van der Leek and talk about his new book that is ripped right from the headlines about Chris Watts. We also hightlight HUNTING THE TROLL by Mark Richardson.

Chris nickson is a novelist and music journalist, the author of many books set between the 1730s and 1950s in Leeds, as well as others in medieval Chesterfield and 1980s Seattle.

Above all, though, its Leeds I love, the people, the sense of the place changing with time. Yes, I write mysteries, but ultmiateoly they're books about people and their relationships, and the crime becomes a moral framework for the story.

We feature an interview with Former Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), DENNIS PALUMBO. He is now a licensed psychotherapist and author. We highlighted USUAL SUSPECTS book club in Columbia, MD.

In the second installment of "In Agatha's Footsteps" we feature an interview with best-seller author of the Gaslight Mystery Series, Victoria Thompson.

On today's episode, we will recap a written interview with Becky Masterman. We will discuss her Brigid Quinn mystery series and discover how art imitates life.

We interview Welsh Canadian author Cathy Ace and discuss her Cait Morgan mystery series. We also highlight Levis Keltner's book "Into That Good Night"

We interview former nun turned mystery writer Alice Loweecey, author of the Driscoll and Falcone mystery series.

We have a very interesting interview with the author of "The Murder of Vincent van Gogh," Nick Van der Leek. Ann Dark highlighted "Splinter in the Blood" by Ashley Dyer.

Happy Birthday, Dame Agatha! In honor of Agatha Christie's 128th birthday. We have added a new episode we will do every once in a while called "In Agatha's Footsteps." Our first recipient is Alan Bradley well known for his Flavia de Luce mystery series. We discuss how Flavia was created and Alan has great advice for novice writers. We then get the party started with presents for each other. Check us out on these mediums
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We review "Semester of Our Discontent" by Cynthia Kuhn. A cozy in an academic setting. https://www.instagram.com/stories/darkandstormybc, https://www.facebook.com/Itwasadarkandstormybookclub/, https://twitter.com/darkstormybc
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We take a break from our normal Bookends episode. We interview Rowland Savage a clinical professional counselor to discuss Psychopaths and Sociopaths in mystery fiction. We highlight a bookclub in Berkley, CA. Mystery Readers NoCal.

We did our first face to face interview with author Jane Jensen. We discussed her Elizabeth Harris mystery series that take place in Pennsylvania's Amish community. We also discuss her other books she writes under Eli Eastman.

On our 9th Bookends episode we interview Ellen Butler and discuss her thrilling book "Isabella's Painting." The book revolves around the art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. We then highlight Mystery Lovers Book Club in Newton, Kansas.

We review "Lone Star" by Ed Ifkovic. The cast of characters is a literal whos who of 1950's Hollywood.
Edna Ferber the writer of "Giant." James Dean's last movie is our protagonist.

On today's episode we will interview Hildur Sif Thorarensen from Norway and discuss her book "Loner." We then interview Joanne Sinchuk former owner and current manager of "Murder on the Beach" mystery bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida.

We interviewed Jane Haseldine who writes the Julia Gooden Mystery Series. We reviewed her first book in the series. "The Last Time She Saw Him" We announced our next book, "Lone Star" by Ed Ifkovic.

We highlight Charles Kowalski answers the questions we sent him about his new thriller "Mind Virus." Christie Capers Book Club in Windsor Lock, CT is our highlighted bookclub.

In this, our 8th full episode, we reviewed our G Book - "Hushabye" by Celina Grace. This was the first in her Kate Redman series. The infant son of Nick and Casey Fullman is kidnapped from his nursery and his nanny has been killed. Casey, a former D list reality TV star is prostrate with grief while her husband Nick is consumed by his business and hardly misses a telephone call. He lets his assistant deal with any and all unpleasant issues.

We interview T. G. Campbell who writes The Bow Street Society Mystery Series. We also highlight Mystery Readers International

We reviewed the Thomas Fincham book, "The Silent Reporter." This introduces Hyder Ali, a Muslim man who works for the local newspaper. He discovers that his mentor, Professor Eric Freeland has committed suicide. Hyder teams up with Professor Freeland's daughter to prove that it was not a suicide but that the professor was murdered.

We interviewed Alice Castle Author of The London Murder Mystery series. We highlighted South End Slooths in Auburn, Washington. We then discussed what we are currently reading.

On today's episode we interviewed Katia Lief who wrote "A Map of the Dark" under the name Karen Ellis. We then reviewed the book. Then we announced our next book, "The Silent Reporter" by Thomas Fincham to be reviewed in two episodes. We gave a shout out to a crime fiction podcast-Partners in Crime.

On our 4th Bookends episode, we highlighted another book club located in Lisle, IL, Murder Among Friends. We then interviewed Micheal H. Rubin and talked about his books "The Cottoncrest Curse" and "Cashed Out"

We reviewed "Louisiana Longshot" by Jana DeLeon. We welcomed Kathy Night, a new club member. We announced the next book, "A Map of the Dark" by Karen Ellis.

We reported on our attendance at the Baltimore Rock Opera Society's production of "Incredibly Dead", we gave an honorable mention review to Helen Cadbury's "To Catch a Rabbit," and we highlighted another book club, Centuries and Sleuths in Forest Park, IL. We then discussed the books we are currently reading.

A lively interview with author Lauren Carr, who wrote "Ice" a Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery. It was a delightful interview with Ms. Carr who told us how she developed her storyline and also her love of animals featured in the books. Our review and announcement of the next book, "Louisiana Longshot" by Jana DeLeon.

Our second bookends mini-episode. We discussed the book, "I'll Be Gone In The Dark," by Michelle McNamara, which precluded the arrest of the Golden State Killer. We highlighted the East Bay Mystery Readers Group in Oakland, California. Finally, we discussed books we are currently reading. We reminded members to read the assigned book, "Ice" by Lauren Carr which will be reviewed in the next episode.

A review of the 2nd book in our series of A-Z author's names. "Dead Dogs and Englishmen" by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli. 4th book in the Emily Kincaid mystery series. We assigned our C book "Ice" by Lauren Carr, 1st book in the Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery Series.

Our first "Bookends" mini episode. We discussed the Edgar Award winners. We also Featured a mystery book club and talked about our field trip to see the Nutshell murder dioramas.

A review and discussion of author Steven Axelrod's Mystery "Nantucket Five Spot" and the assignment of our "B" book, "Dead Dogs and Englishmen" by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

Introducing Ann Dark and Tracey Stormy, the hosts and assignment of the first book to read for the book club discussion, "Nantucket Five Spot" by Steven Axelrod, Poisoned Pen Press, 2015

A brief introduction to the Dark and Stormy Book Club. More episodes coming soon!