It Was A Dark And Stormy Book Club

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.Ch

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

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

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 hunt

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 Mu

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 mot

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 Independ

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 h

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 glob

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

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, 202018 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 fascin

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 win

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 h

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 slowes

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

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 cybercri

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, contin

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 de

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 imaginatio