LITERARY SALON ONLINE: Karen Dionne & Tori Eldridge: August 27

Literary Salon Online

When: Thursday, August 27, Noon PDT

Who: Karen Dionne & Tori Eldridge

Where: RSVP for Zoom login instructions

This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.

Zoom info will be sent when you register.
There will be a waiting room before admittance, so be sure to include your name with your email.
Space limited, as this will be an interactive salon. 

Send RSVP to janet @ mysteryreaders.org

Karen Dionne

Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of the award-winning psychological suspense novel The Marsh King’s Daughter published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the US and in 25 other languages. Her next psychological suspense, The Wicked Sister, has just been published from G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the US and Little, Brown in the UK August 4, 2020. Karen enjoys nature photography and lives with her husband in Detroit’s northern suburbs.

Tori Eldridge

Tori Eldridge is the author of The Ninja Daughter, nominated for the Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Awards for Best First Novel and named one of the "Best Mystery Books of the Year" by The South Florida Sun Sentinel. The second book in her Lily Wong series, The Ninja’s Blade, releases on September 1st. Tori has short stories published in several anthologies and a narrative poem in the inaugural reboot of Weird Tales magazine. She holds a 5th degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninjutsu and has traveled the U.S. teaching ninja arts and women’s self-protection.  

Send RSVP to janet @ mysteryreaders.org

Sharan Newman Literary Salon: Monday, February 10

Upcoming Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA

When: Monday, February 10, 7 p.m.

Who: Sharan Newman

Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)

This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.

Space is limited. Venue address sent with acceptance.

Please make a comment below with your email address.



Sharan Newman

Sharan Newman is a medieval historian and author. She took her Master’s degree in Medieval Literature at Michigan State University and then did her doctoral work at the University of California at Santa Barbara in Medieval Studies, specializing in twelfth-century France. She is a member of the Medieval Academy and the Medieval Association of the Pacific.

Rather than teach, Newman chose to use her education to write novels set in the Middle Ages, including three Arthurian fantasies and ten mysteries set in twelfth-century France. The books focus on the life of the bourgeoisie and minor nobility and also the uneasy relations between Christians and Jews at that time. They also incorporate events of the twelfth-century such as the Second Crusade and the rise of the Cathars.

The Catherine Levendeur mysteries have been nominated for many awards. Sharan won the Macavity Award for best first mystery for Death Comes As Epiphany and the Herodotus Award for best historical mystery of 1998 for Cursed in the Blood. The most recent book in the series The Witch in the Well won the Bruce Alexander award for best Historical mystery of 2004.

She has also opted to try writing in different setting such as with The Shanghai Tunnel, set in Portland in 1868 or in many of her short story collections including the newly released Golden Quest (2019).   Newman has also written several non-fiction books, including The Real History Behind the Da Vince Code (2005), the Real History Behind the Templars (2007), The Real History of the End of the World (2010), and Defending the City of God (2014).

Don't miss this special Literary Salon. Sharan Newman now lives in Ireland!

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To RSVP,  make a comment below with email address or send DM.

Tim Maleeny & Joe Clifford Literary Salon: November 7

Upcoming Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA

When: Thursday, November 7, 2019, 7 p.m.

Who: Tim Maleeny & Joe Clifford

Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)

This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.

Space is limited. Venue address sent with acceptance.

Please make a comment below with your email address.

Tim Maleeny

TIM MALEENY is the author of the award-winning Cape Weathers series of mysteries and the bestselling comedic thriller JUMP. His short fiction appears in several major anthologies and has won the prestigious Macavity Award for best story of the year.  Tim currently lives at an undisclosed location in New York City with his wife and their two daughters. Boxing The Octopus, his latest mystery, is a runaway tour of San Francisco’s underworld which reminds us that when things get out of hand, having eight arms is always better than two.

Joe Clifford

Joe Clifford is the author of several books, including Skunk Train, The One That Got Away, Junkie Love, and the Jay Porter Thriller Series, as well as editor of the anthologies Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen; Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash, and Hard Sentences, which he co-edited. Clifford lives with his wife and two sons in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Read an article by Joe Clifford that appeared here on Mystery Fanfare.

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MARK COGGINS & REECE HIRSCH LITERARY SALON: September 18

Upcoming Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA

When: Wednesday, September 18, 2019, 7 p.m.

Who: Mark Coggins & Reece Hirsch

Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)

This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.

Space is limited. Venue address sent with acceptance.

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Mark Coggins

Born in the Four Corners region of New Mexico, Mark Coggins earned two degrees and a Phi Beta Kappa Key from Stanford University. He has worked for a number of Silicon Valley computer and venture capital firms, including Netscape Communications and Hewlett Packard Company.

While at Stanford, he studied creative writing with Tobias Wolff and Ron Hansen and wrote the first story featuring his series character August Riordan in a class taught by Hansen. This story, “There’s No Such Thing as Private Eyes,” was later published in The New Black Mask, vol. 4, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.

His books have been nominated for the Shamus and the Barry crime fiction awards and have been selected for best of the year lists compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Detroit Free Press and Amazon.com, among others.

Runoff and The Big Wake-Up won the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) respectively, both in the crime fiction category. The Immortal Game was optioned for a film. His latest mystery, The Dead Beat Scroll, has just been published.

Coggins has published short fiction in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the anthology Masters of Technique, as well as nonfiction in View Camera and Distributed Object Computing magazines.

He is also a photographer. Images of his have been shown in galleries across the United States and Europe, including exhibitions jurored by acclaimed photographers and curators Amy Arbus, Elizabeth Avedon, Judy Dater, Henry Horenstein and Michael Kenna. He has won multiple awards, participated in solo and small group shows, and he has published a monograph entitled The Space Between.

REECE HIRSCH

Reece Hirsch is the author of four thrillers that draw upon his background as a privacy attorney. His first book, The Insider, was a finalist for the 2011 International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel. His next three books, The Adversary, Intrusion, and Surveillance, all feature former Department of Justice cybercrimes prosecutor Chris Bruen. His thriller Black Nowhere was just published.


Hirsch is a partner in the San Francisco office of an international law firm and cochair of its privacy and cybersecurity practice. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation (www.valentinoachakdeng.org).

Reece earned his law degree from the University of Southern California and a B.S. degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Prior to law school, Reece worked as a journalist in Atlanta for several years, including a stint as an assistant editor of a business magazine. He also edited and published an arts and entertainment magazine in Atlanta.

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NAOMI HIRAHARA LITERARY SALON: Sunday, August 25

Upcoming Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA

When: Sunday, August 25, 3:00 p.m.

Who: Naomi Hirahara

Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)

This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.

Space is limited. Venue address sent with acceptance.

Please make a comment below with your email address.

Naomi Hirahara

Naomi Hirahara writes about the lives of the Nisei and Kibei (Americans of Japanese descent), many of whom lived through the catastrophe of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or were detained in interment camps in the United States during World War II. Stories of the Nisei (Japanese Americans born in the United States) and Kibei (Japanese Americans born in the United States who later removed to Japan) incorporate members of Hirahara's own family: her "father, Isamu … [was] born in California, but was taken to Hiroshima, Japan, as an infant. He was only miles away from the epicenter of the atomic-bombing in 1945, yet survived." Naomi's mother, Mayumi, or 'May,' was born in Hiroshima and lost her father in the blast."

Hirahara is known to a broader audience through her mystery fiction: novels featuring a septuagenarian Nisei gardener named Mas Arai. As in her nonfiction, Hirahara uses elements drawn from both her personal his

tory and her research. "Mas is inspired by my father," she told Hartlaub, "who also happens to be a gardener and an atomic-bomb survivor." Arai has become popular among readers and critics alike, and the author has featured him as an unlikely sleuth in a series of stories that, as with her nonfiction, help reveal the inner workings of Japanese-American society to readers. She also writes the Officer Ellie Rush series.

Iced in Paradise: a Leilani Santiago Hawai'i Mystery is her latest mystery: Leilani Santiago is back in her birthplace, the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, to help keep afloat the family business, a shave ice shack. When she goes to work one morning, she stumbles across a dead body, a young pro surfer who was being coached by her estranged father. As her father soon becomes the No. 1 murder suspect, Leilani must find the real killer and somehow safeguard her ill mother, little sisters, and grandmother while also preserving a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend in Seattle. (Prospect Park Books)

To RSVP,  make a comment below with email address or send DM.

HALLIE EPHRON: Lit Salon 8/21

Upcoming Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA

When: Wednesday, August 21, 7:00 p.m.

Who: Hallie Ephron

Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)

This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.

Space is limited. Venue address sent with acceptance.

Please make a comment below with your email address.

Hallie Ephron

HALLIE EPHRON (http://hallieephron.com) is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven suspense novels that reviewers call “deliciously creepy” and “Hitchcockian.” Her books are rooted in reality, and it’s no coincidence that her new novel, Careful What You Wish For, is about a professional organizer married to a man who can’t pass a yard sale without stopping.

She is a five-time finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel (Writers Digest Books) was an Edgar Award finalist. For twelve years she wrote an award-winning crime-fiction book review column for the Boston Globe. Her Never Tell a Lie was made into a Lifetime movie. A popular speaker and writing teacher, Hallie lives near Boston with her husband.

Read Hallie's essay on "Finding My Way to Crime Fiction" on Mystery Fanfare

To RSVP, send an email to janet @ mysteryreaders (dot) org

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Upcoming Literary Salons: Mark your Calendar

August 25: Naomi Hirahara, 3 p.m. Berkeley
September 18: Mark Coggins & Reece Hirsch

KAY KENDALL & TERRY SHAMES: LIT SALON IN BERKELEY 6/12

Upcoming Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA

When: Wednesday, June 12, 7:00 p.m.

Who: Kay Kendall, Terry Shames

Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)
This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.
Space is Limited. Address of venue sent with acceptance. 
Please make a comment below with your email address

Kay Kendall

Before Kay Kendall began to write books, she was an award-winning international public relations executive, working in the US, Canada, the Soviet Union, and Europe. She has graduate degrees in Russian history and was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Because of her degrees in Russian history, Kay often brings Cold War elements into her tales. She takes great pains in her books to get historical settings and details right—no anachronisms allowed.

Kay Kendall has written three historical mysteries. Her second book, Rainy Day Women (2015), won for best mystery and best book at Killer Nashville in August 2016. It is the second in her Austin Starr mystery series. The first was Desolation Row (2013), published by Stairway Press. Her latest mystery, After You’ve Gone, is an Austin Starr prequel. Kay and her husband live in Houston, Texas. They’ve rescued abandoned pet bunnies for twenty years and currently have three rabbits and a bemused spaniel.

Kay is president of the Southwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and is a member of the national board of MWA.

Terry Shames

Terry Shames writes the award-winning, critically acclaimed Samuel Craddock series, set in the fictitious town of Jarrett Creek, Texas. From an early age, Terry Shames wrote stories based on the small town in Texas where her grandparents lived, a fictional version of the town that sparked her imagination. 

Her mysteries have been finalists for numerous awards, including The Strand Critics Award, The Lefty Award, and the Macavity Award. A Killing at Cotton Hill won the Macavity for Best First Mystery, 2013. The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake won the RT Reviews Critics Award for Best Contemporary Mystery of 2016. The latest in the series is A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary. 

Raised in Texas and a University of Texas alum, Terry has lived in Berkeley, CA for many years. She is a member of the Northern California chapter of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. 

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Be sure and RSVP to janet @ mysteryreaders (dot) org
 

Lit Salon in Berkeley 4/17: Ona Russell, Craig Faustus Buck, Tom Rosenstiel

Upcoming Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA

When: Wednesday, April 17, 7:00 p.m.

Who: Ona Russell, Craig Faustus Buck, 

Tom Rosenstiel 

Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)
This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.
Space is Limited. Address of venue sent with acceptance.Please make a comment below with your email address

Ona Russell

Ona Russell is the author of three 1920s historical mysteries, including The Natural Selection, a 2009 CA Commonwealth Club book award finalist. She also has been published in literary and law magazines, and her essay “The (O)ther Kahn,” about her grandfather and brother of architect Louis Kahn, was included in The Best of Philadelphia Stories anthology. She holds a PhD in literature from UCSD, where she also taught for many years. She just finished her fourth novel and is working on a fifth.

CRAIG FAUSTUS BUCK

Craig Faustus Buck has earned numerous awards and nominations for his neo-noir romp of a novel, Go Down Hard and for his short stories, many of which are available free at CraigFaustusBuck.com. He is also a screenwriter, having written and/or produced network series, pilots, movies, and miniseries for more years than he cares to admit. Some highlights include the seminal miniseries V: The Final Battle, the Oscar-nominated short film, Overnight Sensation (starring Louise Fletcher and Robert Loggia), and the famous episode where The Incredible Hulk dropped acid. He began his writing career as a journalist and his work has appeared in hundreds of publications from The New York Times to Sports Illustrated to Le Monde.  He has co-authored six non-fiction books, including two New York Times number one bestsellers. 

He is a former president

 of the Mystery Writers of America's Southern California chapter and he makes a killer chocolate-rosemary brisket.

TOM ROSENSTIEL

Tom Rosenstiel, the author of the political thrillers The Good Lie (2019 Ecco) and Shining City (2017 Ecco), is a journalist, media critic and non-fiction author who has recently become a novelist. He is executive director of the American Press Institute in Washington, a think tank on media, and a senior non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previously, he was a co-founder of the Pew Research Center and for 16 years directed its media research. He was press critic at the Los Angeles Times for a decade, chief congressional correspondent at Newsweek and a press critic for MSNBC. He is the author of seven books of nonfiction, including the Elements of Journalism, which has been translated into more than 25 languages and was winner of the Goldsmith Book Award from Harvard University.

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RSVP, please

JEFFREY SIGER LITERARY SALON: April 4

Jeffrey Siger Literary Salon: 
An Evening in Greece
Thursday, April 4, 7 p.m.  
Berkeley, CA

RSVP in a comment below for address and directions. Be sure and leave your email.

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for an evening with award winning mystery writer Jeff Siger in Berkeley.

Jeffrey Siger practiced law at a major Wall Street law firm and while there served as Special Counsel to the citizens group responsible for reporting on New York City's prison conditions. He left Wall Street to establish his own New York City law firm and continued as one of its name partners until giving it all up to write full-time among the people, life and politics of his beloved Mykonos, his adopted home of more than 30 years. The City and County of San Francisco awarded him the Certificate of Honor citing that his "acclaimed books have not only explored modern Greek society and its ancient roots but have inspired political change in Greece." When not in Greece, he enjoys his other home, a farm outside New York City. He has written 10 books in the Inspector Andreas Kaldis series. His latest is The Mikonos Mob. Jeff served as Chair of the National Board of Bouchercon, the world's largest mystery convention, and as Adjunct Professor of English at Washington & Jefferson College, teaching mystery writing.

LIterary Salon: Matt Coyle, Patricia Smiley, Paul Charles: January 17

Join Mystery Readers NorCal in Berkeley for an evening Literary Salon with mystery authors Matt Coyle, Patricia Smiley, and Paul Charles

When: Thursday, January 17, 7 p.m.
Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)
This is a free evening, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend. Address sent with acceptance. Space limited.
RSVP: janet @ mysteryreaders . org

MATT COYLE

Matt Coyle is the author of the best-selling Rick Cahill crime novels. Writing at night for over a decade his debut novel, Yesterday’s Echo, was finally published in 2013. The wait was almost worth it as it won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the San Diego Book Award for Best Mystery, the Ben Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Fiction. Matt’s second book, Night Tremors, was a Bookreporter.com Reviewers’ Favorite Book of 2015 and was an Anthony, Shamus, and Lefty Award finalist. Dark Fissures, the third book in the Rick Cahill crime series, was a finalist for the Macavity and Lefty awards and was a 2016 Top Pick for Bookreporter.com. Blood Truth was a Shamus, Lefty Award finalist, a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Silver Award winner for Thriller/Suspence, and a top pick by Bookreporter.com for Best Mysteries of 2017. Wrong Light, Matt’s fifth Rick Cahill novel, was published in December.

PATRICIA SMILEY

Patricia Smiley is the Los Angeles Times bestselling author of four novels featuring amateur sleuth Tucker Sinclair. The three books in her latest series are hard-boiled police procedurals about LAPD homicide detective Davie Richards (Pacific Homicide, Outside the Wire, The Second Goodbye). The novels are based on her fifteen years as a volunteer and a Specialist Reserve Officer for the Los Angeles Police Department. Patty’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Two of the Deadliest, an anthology edited by Elizabeth George. She has taught writing at various conferences in the U.S. and Canada and also served as vice president for the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America and as president of Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles.

PAUL CHARLES

A native of Magherafelt, Northern Ireland, Paul Charles has been managing bands since he was 15 and writing detective novels since 1996. His most recent novel, A Day in the Life of Louis Bloom, is the second to feature semi-retired Belfast police detective Brendy McCusker. A short story featuring his first fictional protagonist, London Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy, appeared in the September/October 2018 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Paul divides his time between London and Santa Monica.

LIT SALON 11/7: TIMOTHY HALLINAN, NANCY TINGLEY & WENDALL THOMAS

Join Mystery Readers NorCal in Berkeley for an evening Literary Salon with mystery authors Tim Hallinan, Nancy Tingley, and Wendall Thomas

When: Wednesday, November 7, 7 p.m.
Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)
This is a free evening, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend. Address sent with acceptance. Space limited.
RSVP: janet @ mysteryreaders . org

TIMOTHY HALLINAN

Award winning author Timothy Hallinan has lived, on and off, in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years. He began writing books while enjoying a successful career in the television industry. Over the past seventeen years he has been responsible for a number of well-reviewed novels and a nonfiction book on Charles Dickens.Hallinan has been nominated for the Edgar, Nero, Shamus, Macavity, and Silver Dagger awards. He is the author of twenty novels, including For the Dead, The Hot Countries, Crashed, Little Elvises, The Fame Thief, King Maybe, and Herbie's Game, which won the Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery. Tim currently maintains a house in Santa Monica, and apartments in Bangkok, Thailand; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

NANCY TINGLEY

Nancy Tingley is an independent art historian and consultant with a specialty in Asian art. She has worked extensively in the art world and as a museum curator. Most recently, she curated Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea, jointly organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Asia Society, New York. She is the author of The Jenna Murphy Mystery series - A Head in Cambodia and A Death in Bali.



WENDALL THOMAS

Wendall Thomas teaches in the Graduate Film School at UCLA, lectures internationally on screenwriting, and has worked as an entertainment reporter, script consultant, and film and television writer. Her short fiction has appeared in the crime anthologies Ladies Night and Last Resort. Her novel Lost Luggage was nominated for the Lefty and Macavity Awards for Best Mystery of 2017.

Lou Berney Literary Salon: October 24

Join Mystery Readers NorCal in Berkeley for an evening with award winning author Lou Berney

When: Wednesday, October 24, 7 p.m.
Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)
This is a free evening, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend. Address sent with acceptance. Space limited.
RSVP: janet @ mysteryreaders.org

LOU BERNEY
Lou Berney is the author of November Road (October 8), The Long and Faraway Gone (winner of the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Macavity, and ALA awards), Whiplash River, and Gutshot Straight, all from William Morrow. He’s also written a collection of stories, The Road to Bobby Joe, and his short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He teaches in the MFA program at Oklahoma City University.

November Road is my favorite book of the year, so I'm thrilled to have Lou Berney as our Literary Salon guest on October 24. November Road is smart, edgy, historical but of today. Berney's characters are well formed, his writing amazing, and his setting so real. I especially love his intro with a salute to his mother. You're going to love this book!

November Road:
Set against the assassination of JFK, a poignant and evocative crime novel that centers on a desperate cat-and-mouse chase across 1960s America – a story of unexpected connections, daring possibilities, and the hope of second chances. Frank Guidry’s luck has finally run out. A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it’s his turn – he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Within hours of JFK’s murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is turning up dead, and Guidry suspects he’s next. 

With few good options, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas, to see an old associate – a dangerous man who, maybe, hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish. Guidry knows that the first rule of running is “don’t stop,” but when he sees a young housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car, two little girls, and a dog in the back seat, he sees the perfect cover for his escape from the hit man on his trail. Posing as an insurance man, Guidry offers to help Charlotte reach her destination, California. If she accompanies him to Las Vegas, he can help her get a new car. For her, it’s more than a car – it’s an escape. She’s on the run too, from a stifling existence in small-town Oklahoma and a husband who’s a hopeless drunk. 

It’s an American story: two strangers meet to share the open road west, a dream, a hope – and find each other on the way. Charlotte sees that Frank is open-minded and kind; he discovers that she’s smart and witty. He learns that she’s determined to give herself and her daughters a new life; she can’t know that he’s desperate to leave his old one behind. Another rule: fugitives shouldn’t fall in love, especially with each other. A road isn’t just a road, it’s a trail, and Guidry’s ruthless and relentless hunter is closing in on him. But now Guidry doesn’t just want to survive, he wants to really live, maybe for the first time. Everyone’s expendable, but now Guidry can’t just throw away the woman and children he’s come to love. And it might get them all killed. 

LISA BRACKMANN & DAVID CORBETT LITERARY SALON 9/26

Join Mystery Readers NorCal in Berkeley for an evening with award winning mystery authors Lisa Brackmann & David Corbett

When: Wednesday, September 26, 7 p.m.
Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)
This is a free evening, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend. Address sent with acceptance.
RSVP: janet @ mysteryreaders.org

LISA BRACKMANN
Lisa Brackmann has worked as an executive at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and was the singer/songwriter/bassist in an LA rock band. Her debut novel, Rock Paper Tiger, set on the fringes of the Chinese art world, made several "Best of 2010" lists, including Amazon's Top 100 Novels and Top 10 Mystery/Thrillers, and was nominated for the Strand Magazine Critics Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel, Getaway, won the Los Angeles Book Festival Grand Prize and was nominated for the T. Jefferson Parker SCIBA award. Hour of the Rat, #2 in the Ellie McEnroe series, was short-listed for Left Coast's World Mystery award, as was Ellie #3, Dragon Day (and was a Seattle Times Top 10 Mystery Pic). Lisa lives in San Diego with a couple of cats, far too many books, and a bass ukulele.  

Black Swan Rising
Sarah Price who wants a career in politics. But she has a secret past that won’t stay past, threatening her job on a San Diego congressman’s reelection campaign. Casey Cheng wants a story. An ambitious local television reporter, Casey needs to get her career back on track after being seriously injured in a mass shooting. When she investigates the man who nearly killed her, she finds a connection to a group of online harassers called #TrueMen–and realizes her shooter may not be the only killer they have inspired. Casey’s investigation and Sarah’s secret put them both in the crosshairs of a hate group that targets anyone they’ve deemed to be against their cause, including Sarah’s boss, the congressman. Now Sarah and Casey have a choice to make–do they hide? Or do they fight back?

DAVID CORBETT
David Corbett worked for the San Francisco private investigation firm of Palladino & Sutherland, and played a significant part in a number of high-profile criminal and civil litigations, Ballantine purchased David's first novel, The Devil's Redhead. Widely praised, it was nominated for both the Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Novel of 2002. His follow-up, Done for a Dime, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and was nominated for the Macavity Award for Best Novel of 2003. He followed up with 2007's Blood of Paradise and was selected one of the Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers of 2007 by The Washington Post. His fourth novel, Do They Know I'm Running?, arrived in bookstores on March 1, 2010. He's also penned numerous articles and stories—one of which, "It Can Happen," from San Francisco Noir, was nominated for the Macavity Award for Best Short Story of 2005, and another, "Pretty Little Parasite" from Phoenix Noir, was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2009. He also contributed chapters to The Chopin Manuscript and The Copper Bracelet, serial audio thrillers that now have been combined in a single hard cover version titled Watchlist. He continues to reside in Northern California.

The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday 
The most notorious love letters in American history—supposedly destroyed a century ago—mysteriously reappear, and become the coveted prize in a fierce battle for possession that brings back to life the lawless world evoked in the letters themselves. Lisa Balamaro is an ambitious arts lawyer with a secret crush on her most intriguing client: former rodeo rider and reformed art forger, Tuck Mercer. In his newfound role as expert in Old West artifacts, Tuck gains possession of the supposedly destroyed correspondence between Doc Holliday and his cousin and childhood sweetheart, Mattie—who would become Sister Mary Melanie of the Sisters of Mercy.