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Mystery Mayhem Author Spotlight

Mystery lovers know --- there's nothing more fun than solving a mystery. Legends in this genre include Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Well-known authors include Ruth Rendell, P.D. James and Marcia Muller. To help you unravel the endless question of "what mystery authors should I read next?" we bring you our Mystery Mayhem feature. It's a chance to get to know a group of authors who sleuth, track clues, and captivate readers by bringing fictitious characters to justice. We call them "Authors Who Keep You Guessing." We hope you enjoy exploring their work as much as we did tracking them down.

Livia J. Washburn, author of Killer on a Hot Tin Roof: A Delilah Dickinson Literary Tour Mystery, Book 3

Delilah Dickinson is finally looking forward to a nice, relaxing time leading her literary travel agency’s latest tour at the annual Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans.

William Kent Krueger, author of Vermilion Drift

William Kent Krueger’s gripping tale of suspense begins with a recurring nightmare, a gun, and a wound in the earth so deep and horrific that it has a name: Vermilion Drift.

Joanne Fluke, author of Plum Pudding Murder

The yuletide season in Lake Eden, Minnesota, guarantees a white Christmas, delectable holiday goodies from Hannah Swensen's bakery, The Cookie Jar --- and murder.

Dorothy Howell, author of Handbags and Homicide: A Haley Randolph Mystery

Witty, smart, and always chic, Haley Randolph has it all: Gucci, Prada, Chanel, Coach, Burberry, and she’d kill for the newest Louis Vuitton handbag... but it seems she’s not the only one.

Tana French, author of The Likeness

Six months after the events of IN THE WOODS, Detective Cassie Maddox is still trying to recover. She’s transferred out of the Murder squad and started a relationship with Detective Sam O’Neill, but she’s too badly shaken to make any commitment either to him or to her career.

Christopher Fowler, author of The Victoria Vanishes

It’s a case tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. A lonely hearts killer is targeting middle-aged women at some of England’s most well-known pubs --- including one torn down eighty years ago.

M. C. Beaton, author of A Spoonful of Poison: An Agatha Raisin Mystery

When Agatha Raisin goes to the remote hamlet of Comfrey Magna to politely turn down a public relations job, she encounters the stunning green eyes of handsome widower George Selby, and promptly agrees to do whatever PR work the village needs.

Tana French, author of In the Woods

In the mid-1980s in a small suburban Dublin neighborhood, two boys and a girl enter the woods surrounding the neighborhood on a warm summer day. As dusk approaches and their mothers call them home, the woods remain silent.

Joanne Fluke, author of Key Lime Pie Murder

It's Tri-County fair time and Lake Eden, Minnesota, is buzzing with more than mosquitoes. Hannah Swensen, owner of The Cookie Jar, is hot on the trail of a killer whose perfect carnival prize would be getting away with murder…

William Kent Krueger, author of Thunder Bay

The promise, as I remember it, happened this way.

And so begins Cork O’Connor’s tale of a hopeless love affair between a young Ojibwe guide and a white woman, an affair that ended in treachery, betrayal, and murder.