About the Authors
Lee Child is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher series and the complete Jack Reacher story collection, No Middle Name. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in one hundred territories. Two blockbusting Jack Reacher movies have been made so far, based on his novels. He is the recipient of many awards, including the CWA’s Diamond Dagger for a writer of an outstanding body of crime fiction, the International Thriller Writers’ ThrillerMaster, and the Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award. He is a native of England and a former television director.
Mary Higgins Clark (1927–2020) was the author of worldwide bestsellers that sold more than one hundred million copies in the United States alone. Twenty-one of her books reached the #1 spot on the New York Times bestsellers list. She was chosen by Mystery Writers of America as Grand Master of the 2000 Edgar Awards. An annual Mary Higgins Clark Award sponsored by Simon & Schuster, to be given to authors of suspense fiction writing in the Mary Higgins Clark tradition, was launched by Mystery Writers of America in 2001. She was the 1987 president of Mystery Writers of America and, for many years, served on their board of directors. In 1988, she served as chairperson of the International Crime Congress.
Michael Cunningham is a novelist, screenwriter, and educator. His novel The Hours received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999. He has taught at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. He is a professor at Yale University.
Neil Gaiman is the author of several #1 New York Times bestsellers, including Norse Mythogy, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Anansi Boys, and others, as well as the Sandman series of graphic novels. His fiction has received Newbery, Carnegie, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. His novel American Gods aired as a TV series in 2017. Originally from England, he lives in the United States, where he is a professor at Bard College.
Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including the Practical Magic series and the Oprah’s Book Club selection Here on Earth, among others. Eight of her novels have made the New York Times bestsellers list.
Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was given the 2020 National Book Award’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy Award, a PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Robert Kirsch Award, numerous Edgar Awards, and several NAACP Image Awards. His work is translated into twenty-five languages. As an executive producer, he adapted his novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, for AppleTV+ and serves as a writer and executive producer for FX’s “Snowfall.”
Joyce Carol Oates, an award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, short stories, plays, and novellas, is the author of some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including two New York Times bestsellers. Her books have won the National Book Award, O. Henry Award, the Jerusalem Prize, and the National Humanities Medal, among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize several times. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
Richard Russo is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, two collections of stories, and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody’s Fool, won multiple awards for its screen adaptation, and in 2023 his novel Straight Man was adapted into the television series Lucky Hank. In 2017, he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine.
Alice Walker is a distinguished author and activist who has written dozens of books, including novels, poems, essays, short stories, and children’s books. She was the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Color Purple, which also won the National Book Award in 1983. Walker’s other books include The Third Life of Grange Copeland, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy. More than fifteen million copies of her books have been sold, and her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages. As an activist, she focuses on issues of inequality, poverty, and social injustice.
Tim Campbell, winner of AudioFile Earphones Awards, is a narrator and actor based in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the University of California and earned a BA in music and theater and a certification from the prestigious Great Books program at Pepperdine University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He is also a classically trained singer and performs regularly with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Los Angeles Opera Chorus, as well as on studio soundtracks for film and television.
About the Narrators
Candace Thaxton is an actress and audiobook narrator. She has starred in several films and television shows, including Ghost Town and Law & Order.
Christian Barillas is an Earphones Award–winning audio narrator and actor based in Los Angeles with credits in theater, film, and television. His professional career began with Center Theater Group’s A Very Old Man with Enourmous Wings, a short story by Gabriel García Márquez. He then appeared in several productions in and around Los Angeles including As You Like It, Sonia Flew, and A Christmas Carol. On television, he is perhaps most recognizable as Ronaldo on Modern Family, where he appears opposite Tony winner and Emmy nominee Nathan Lane.
Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.
François Chau is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.
Candace Thaxton is an actress and audiobook narrator. She has starred in several films and television shows, including Ghost Town and Law & Order.
Jonathan Santlofer is an artist and author of five novels. His novel Anatomy of Fear won the Nero Award for best novel of 2009. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. He is the director of New York City’s Crime Fiction Academy, the only program devoted exclusively to crime writing in all of its forms. He also teaches crime fiction writing in Pratt Institute’s Creative Writing program. He is a well-known artist whose work is in such collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Tokyo’s Institute of Contemporary Art.
Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of The Sympathizer, which was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Edgar Award for First Novel, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. He is also the author of the nonfiction books Nothing Ever Dies and Race and Resistance. He teaches English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.
Kiff VandenHeuvel, voice talent and audiobook narrator, is originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is an alumni of the Second City comedy theater. He is an accomplished improviser and sketch comedy director, and he teaches voice-over, improv, and directing at Second City Hollywood. He has appeared in hundreds of television and radio commercials and is well known in the video game community as the voice of Zachary Hale Comstock in Bioshock: Infinite.