William Kent Krueger
William Kent Krueger
Location-Minnesota
His novel This Tender Land is a Roaming the Arts favorite of 2020.
His Cork O’Connor series continued in 2022 with Fox Creek and his latest stand-alone in 2023, The River We Remember.
Joe R. Lansdale
Hap and Leonard series and Stand-alones.
Locations in Texas
Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale has written novels and stories in many genres, including Western, horror, science fiction, mystery, and suspense. As of 2018, he has written 45 novels and published 30 short-story collections along with many chapbooks and comic-book adaptations. He has been inducted into The Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and several of his novels have been adapted to film.
His Hap and Leonard series of ten novels, four novellas, and three short-story collections feature two friends, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, who live in the fictional town of Laborde, in East Texas, and find themselves solving a variety of often unpleasant crimes. The characters themselves are an unlikely pairing; Hap is a white, working-class laborer in his mid-forties who once protested against the war in Vietnam and spent time in federal prison rather than be drafted; Leonard is a gay, black Vietnam vet. Both of them are accomplished fighters, and the stories (told from Hap’s narrative point of view) feature a great deal of violence, profanity, and sex. Lansdale paints a picture of East Texas which is essentially “good” but blighted by racism, ignorance, urban and rural deprivation, and government corruption. Some of the subject matter is extremely dark, and includes scenes of brutal violence. These novels are also characterized by sharp humor and “wisecracking” dialogue. These books have been adapted into a TV series for the SundanceTV channel and a series of graphic novels began publication in 2017. Season 2 of the television series is based on the second Hap and Leonard novel, Mucho Mojo, and season 3, which premiered on 3/7/18, is based on the third novel, The Two-Bear Mambo. Much of Lansdale’s work has been issued and re-issued as limited editions by Subterranean Press and as trade paperbacks by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Publications. His current new-release publisher is Mulholland Books. Lansdale also publishes with Dark Regions Press and Tachyon Publications, and with his daughter Kasey he has started a new publishing company called Pandi Press to control the re-issue and publishing of his older works.
Eric Brace
Eric Brace (and Last Train Home)
Eric Brace runs Red Beet Records and makes music on his own, with Last Train Home and as a trio with Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz. In 2003, he founded the label and he and his band, Last Train Home moved to East Nashville from the Washington DC area. Brace had been a journalist at the Washington Post and had run the Top Records label.
Eric returns to the DC area with some frequency, playing clubs where he built his loyal following and participating, as in the embedded video, in numerous BandhouseGigs productions, including the recent live stream “From BandHouse to Your House.”
Robert Crais
Location – Los Angeles
Robert Crais is an American author of detective fiction. Crais began his career writing scripts for television shows such as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice and L.A. Law. His writing is influenced by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker and John Steinbeck. Wikipedia
Jason Pinter
Jason Pinter
is the bestselling author of Hide Away, the first Rachel Marin novel, as well as five novels in his Henry Parker thriller series and the standalone novel The Castle, which have over one million copies in print worldwide and have been published in over a dozen countries, the Middle Grade adventure novel Zeke Bartholomew: SuperSpy, and the children’s picture book Miracle. He has been nominated for the Thriller Award, Strand Critics Award, Barry Award, RT Reviewers Choice Award, Shamus Award and CrimeSpree Award. Two of his books—The Fury and The Darkness—were chosen as Indie Next selections, and The Mark, The Stolen and The Fury, were named to The Strand’s Best Books of the Year list. The Mark and The Stolen both appeared on the ‘Heatseekers’ bestseller list in The Bookseller (UK). The Mark was optioned to be a feature film.
Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and author who performs and records with the Royal City Band. Ritter is known for his distinctive Americana style and narrative lyrics. In 2006 he was named one of the “100 Greatest Living Songwriters” by Paste magazine. Wikipedia
Josh Ritter is also an author. Check out his novel Bright’s Passage
