The books you read shape the books you write, and nothing has influenced me more than mysteries, right from the very start. The first books I remember reading—after the Madeline and Winnie-the-Pooh years—were mysteries. Encyclopedia Brown and Jupiter Jones were the gateway adventures leading to Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. I loved them for the…
Go on a mystery lover's pub crawl with Ellie Alexander, author of Death on Tap, and make sure to sign in and comment below for a chance to win a copy of the first Sloan Krause Mystery! I was first introduced to the mystery genre by my grandmother, who had stacks upon stacks of dusty…
Sleuth fans, we’re back again, and this time with an even longer list of the best women detectives, crime fighters, and amateur mystery solvers pop culture has to offer. When we published a round-up of 13 of the best female sleuths earlier in the month, we were delighted to see what readers had to say…
She earned a Ph.D. at 23 and had too much to say to be constrained under just one name. We're sad to share the news of the passing, at age 85, of a wonderful writer who became an MWA Grandmaster in 1998. From the Post-Tribune's obituary: Mertz wrote more than 35 mysteries under the name…
Anne Perry is one of my two most beloved contemporary authors. The second author is someone I need as a “chaser” after I finish a Perry novel. I first stumbled across Perry’s Funeral in Blue while writing a novel I set in 1888 England. I wanted to be immersed in a story but also aware…
Prolific author, historian, and MWA Grandmaster Elizabeth Peters, aka Barbara Michaels and also nonfiction’s Barbara Mertz, knows how to create a popular series. Her most famous is the one featuring 19th-century amateur Egyptologist and archaeologist Amelia Peabody, which later involves her husband, Emerson, and even her grown children’s adventures. Are fans simply desperate for another…
