About the Authors
C. J. Box is the New York Times bestselling author of the Joe Pickett series, six stand-alone novels, the Cody Hoyt series, the Cassie Dewell series, and a story collection. He has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38, and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction. He has also been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His novels have been translated into twenty-seven languages. A Wyoming native, he has worked on a ranch and as a small-town newspaper reporter and editor. He is an executive producer of ABC TV’s Big Sky, which is based on his Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell novels, as well as executive producer of the upcoming Joe Pickett television series for Paramount TV.
Peter Blauner is an Edgar-winning, bestselling author of several novels, including Slow Motion Riot, The Intruder, and Sunrise Highway. His books have been translated into twenty languages. Picture in the Sand is the culmination of two decades of writing and research that took him from Brooklyn to Cairo a half-dozen times.
Jeffery Deaver is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, three collections of short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. His novels have won the Nero Wolfe Award, three Ellery Queen Readers’ Awards, a British Thumping Good Read Award, and the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and Short Story Dagger awards from the British Crime Writers’ Association. A former journalist, folksinger, and attorney, he was born outside of Chicago and has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University.
Ken Bruen received a doctorate in metaphysics, taught English in South Africa, and then became a crime novelist. The critically acclaimed author of the Jack Taylor series and The White Trilogy, he is the recipient of two Barry Awards and two Shamus Awards and has twice been a finalist for the Edgar Award. In 2016, he was awarded the Irish Books, Arts, and Music (iBAM) Literature Award. Two of his novels have also been made into feature films, and the Jack Taylor series has been adapted for a television series.
Max Allan Collins is the author of Road to Perdition, the acclaimed graphic novel that inspired the movie, and of the multiple-award-winning Nathan Heller series of historical hardboiled mysteries. One of most prolific and popular authors working in the field today, he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 2017. He is also the literary executor of Mickey Spillane.
Loren D. Estleman is an award-winning author of mainstream fiction, Westerns, criticism, and mysteries. He has written more than eighty novels, including in the Amos Walker, Page Murdock, and Peter Macklin series. He is the winner of four Shamus Awards, five Spur Awards, three Western Heritage Awards, a Barry Award, the Elmer Kelton Award, two Stirrup Awards, and a Popular Fiction Magazine Outstanding Writer Award. He has received lifetime achievement awards from the Western Writers of America, the Private Eye Writers of America, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and the Arts Alliance of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Anne Perry (1938-2023) was an English author of historical detective fiction, mysteries, young-adult fantasy, and young-adult fiction, and holiday novels, with several making the New York Times bestsellers list. Her novels were set in Victorian England, the Ottoman empire, and in Europe during WWI and WWI.
Andrew Taylor is a British author best known for his crime novels, which include the Dougal series, the Lydmouth series, the Roth trilogy, and the historical novel The American Boy. He has won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award twice.
David Bell is
an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling
Green, Kentucky. He received an MA in creative writing from Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio, and a PhD in American literature and creative writing from the
University of Cincinnati. His novels include Cemetery Girl and The
Hiding Place and he has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
Laura Lippman is a New York Times bestselling novelist who has won more than twenty awards for her fiction, including the Edgar Award—and been nominated for thirty more. Since her debut in 1997, she has published almost two dozen novels, a novella, a children’s book, and a collection of short stories. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Laura lives in Baltimore with her husband, David Simon, and their daughter.
Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) was one of the most popular authors of all time, with millions of copies of his books in print worldwide. He introduced Mike Hammer to readers in 1947 with I, the Jury. He was named a Grand Master in 1995 by the Mystery Writers of America.
Thomas H. Cook was born in Fort Payne, Alabama, in 1947. He has
been nominated for the Edgar Award seven times in five different categories. He
received the best novel Edgar for The
Chatham School Affair, the Martin Beck Award, the Herodotus Prize for best
historical short story, and the Barry Award for best novel for Red Leaves, and has been nominated for numerous other awards.
Reed Farrel Coleman, called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan, is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-three novels including six in Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone series. His new novel, Sleepless City, will be released by Blackstone Publishing later this year. He is a four-time recipient of the Shamus Award and a four-time Edgar Award nominee in three different categories. He has also won the Audie, Scribe, Macavity, Barry, and Anthony awards. Reed lives with his wife on Long Island.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.