Janet Dawson & Wendy Hornsby Literary Salon

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for an evening Literary Salon in Berkeley (CA) with mystery authors Janet Dawson and Wendy Hornsby.

When: Thursday, April 19, 7 p.m.

Where: Berkeley. RSVP by making comment below with your email
 
Janet Dawson is the author of twelve novels featuring Oakland private investigator Jeri Howard. She was the winner of the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America contest for best first private eye novel and has been nominated for the Shamus, Macavity and Anthony Awards. Her latest novel is The Ghost in Roomette Four, the third in her California Zephyr mystery series.

Edgar Award-winning author Wendy Hornsby has written thirteen mystery novels and many, many short stories. She taught ancient and Medieval history at Long Beach City College for 38 years. Her latest mystery featuring filmmaker Maggie MacGowen takes the intrepid investigative filmmaker across Europe in Number 7, Rue Jacob.

Literary Salon June 2: Janet Dawson, J.J. and Bette Golden Lamb, Wendy Hornsby

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for a Literary Salon on Thursday, June 2, at 7 p.m. in Berkeley, CA. To RSVP and for address, please comment below with your email address.

Janet Dawson has written two novels featuring Zephyrette Jill McLeod and eleven novels with Oakland private investigator Jeri Howard. Her first Jeri Howard book, Kindred Crimes, won the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America contest for best first private eye novel. It was nominated in the best first category for three mystery awards, the Shamus, the Macavity and the Anthony. The California Zephyr series, a historical mystery series with Zephyrette Jill McLeod, includes Death Rides the Zephyr and the latest, Death Deals a Hand. The twelfth book in the Jeri Howard series, Water Signs, will be published by Perseverance Press in spring 2017. She has written twelve short stories, including Macavity winner “Voice Mail.” Janet has also written a stand-alone suspense novel, What You Wish For.

Bette Golden Lamb and J.J. Lamb are co-authors of eight crime novels, including The Killing Vote, a taut political thriller, and Bone Crack, sixth book in the Gina Mazzio RN medical thriller series. The LAMBS have also collaborated on Sisters in Silence, a medical thriller about a fertility counselor who goes on a mercy-killing spree of barren women; and Heir Today …, a fast-paced suspense/adventure novel. Bette is a professional ceramicist, artist  and devoted gardener. J.J. is a journalist and skilled jack-of-all-trades.

Wendy Hornsby is the Edgar Award-winning creator of the Maggie MacGowen series. Her first novel, No Harm, was published in 1987, but it wasn’t until 1992 that Hornsby introduced her most famous character: Maggie MacGowen, documentarian and amateur sleuth. She has written ten MacGowen novels, most recently Disturbing the Dark. Besides her ten MacGowen novels, Hornsby has written dozens of short stories, and two novels in the earlier Kate Teague series.

Wendy Hornsby Literary Salon: Berkeley, April 16

Join Mystery Readers NorCal in Berkeley, CA, Wednesday, April 16, at 7 p.m. for an evening Literary Salon with Edgard Award Winning Author Wendy Hornsby.

Please comment below with email to RSVP.

From Wendy Hornsby:

I can’t remember ever not knowing that I was a writer. When I was in the second grade, because I was forever writing little stories, my teacher, a lovely woman named Barbara Heath, gave me her own copy of Little Women, to keep. Hardcover, illustrated, no less. The story wasn’t so much magic for me as was the character of Jo March. Somehow I knew Jo, I pretended I was her sometimes, and knew I was going to grow up to be, as she was, a writer.

When I was in fourth grade, I turned pro. My essay, “Why I love Camp Nawakwa,” won a community contest, earning me a camp scholarship, and my future was set. Sort of. Loving Camp Nawakwa was my writing pinnacle for quite a while.

When it was time for college, I headed off to UCLA, where I tried on a large number of majors before I decided on History. History, well told, has more romance, adventure, intrigue, courage, provocative mystery than any fiction that can be imagined. Besides, the process of historical research and writing mysteries have a great deal in common. One snoops through the remnants of people’s lives – real or fictional – asking the important who, what, where, and when questions and implying insight with the hope of making sense of things. The study of History is great preparation for a writer, especially a writer of mysteries.

The afternoon that I learned I had passed my comprehensive exams for the Masters degree in History at CSULB, I was hired to teach History as an adjunct at Long Beach City College. Over the next decades I taught, went to school some more, raised two beautiful babies to adulthood, acquired a full-time tenured position at LBCC, and, somehow, between school and soccer and baseball and school plays, managed to get seven mystery novels and many, many short stories published. Amazing how that happened.

When my kids, Alyson and Christopher, were of a certain age, I took them to visit The Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, where Louisa May Alcott grew up and where she wrote Little Women. I stood in her upstairs bedroom, beside the little half-moon desk where she created Jo March, and thanked her for giving a little girl a bit of courage to believe that she, too, could be a writer.

Books by Wendy Hornsby

Maggie MacGowen mysteries 
The Color of Light, 2014
The Hanging, 2012
The Paramour’s Daughter, 2010
In the Guise of Mercy, 2009
A Hard Light, 1998
77th Street Requiem, 1996
Bad Intent, 1995
Midnight Baby, 1994
Telling Lies, 1993

Collections 
Nine Sons, 2002
Two of the Deadliest Shaken – Stories for Japan

Kate Teague series 
Half a Mind, 1991
No Harm, 1989