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.
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Alafair Burke
Alafair Burke is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of over twenty novels.
In addition to the standalone novels that have earned her a reputation as “a genius for plot” (Oprah Magazine) and “a virtuoso” of domestic suspense (Minneapolis Star Tribune), she authors “two power house series” (Sun-Sentinel) featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and Portland Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid. Alafair is also the co-author of the “Under Suspicion” series with Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark.
Her 2025 release “The Note”, is a new thriller about a prank played by three women on vacation in the Hamptons causes them to get caught up in a police investigation over a missing person.
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K.J. Howe
K.J. Howe
Born in Toronto, Canada, KJ enjoyed a nomadic lifestyle during her early years, living in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Caribbean, which gave her an insider’s view into many different cultures. While abroad, she read every book she could find, which triggered in her a desire to create her own stories.
She attended Salzburg International Preparatory School, Neuchâtel Junior College, and Albert College before earning a Specialists Degree in Business from the University of Toronto. KJ found success in the corporate world, but her passion for travel, adventure, and stories drew her back to school where she earned a Masters in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She is a Thriller and Barry Award nominee, and she has won several writing awards, including three Daphne du Maurier Awards for Excellent in Mystery and Suspense.
While honing her fiction skills, KJ worked as a medical, health, and fitness writer. She then became involved with the International Thriller Writers as the Executive Director of ThrillerFest, the organization’s annual conference held every July in New York City.
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Otto Penzler
Otto Penzler
is the president and CEO of MysteriousPress.com.
He is also the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and is regarded as the world’s foremost authority on crime, mystery and suspense fiction.
Penzler founded The Mysterious Press in 1975, which he later sold to Warner Books (1989). He reacquired the imprint in 2010 and it now publishes original books as an imprint at Grove/Atlantic, and both original works and classic crime fiction through MysteriousPress.com, in partnership with Open Road Integrated Media.
Penzler has won two Edgar Awards, for Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection in 1977 and The Lineup in 2010. The Mystery Writers of America awarded him the prestigious Ellery Queen Award in 1994 and the Raven–the group’s highest non-writing award–in 2003.
