KWEI QUARTEY Biography Kwei Quartey is a crime fiction writer and physician based in Pasadena, California. In 2018, having practiced medicine for more than 15 years while simultaneously working as a writer, Quartey finally retired from medical practice to become a full-time novelist. Prior to that, though, he had balanced the two professions by dedicating the early morning hours to writing before beginning each day in his clinic. Quartey was born in Ghana, West Africa, to a Ghanaian father and Black American mother, both of whom were lecturers at the University of Ghana. Quartey describes how his family’s home was full of hundreds of books, both fiction and nonfiction, which inspired him to write novellas as early as the age of eight or nine. By then, Quartey was certain he wanted to be an author. But his interests shifted by the time he was a teenager, when he decided he wanted to be a doctor. Quartey began on a science-to-medicine track in secondary school. After the death of his father, Quartey’s mother returned to the United States. By then, Quartey had already begun medical school in Ghana. Transferring to a medical school in the United States wasn’t easy, but he successfully gained admission to Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC. After graduation from his residency training in Internal Medicine, Kwei Quartey returned to his love of writing. He went to a UCLA extension course in creative writing, and wrote two novels while in a writing group that met every Wednesday evening. But it would be a few years yet before Quartey would create the Inspector Darko Dawson series. As a crime fiction writer, Kwei made the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List in 2009. The following year, the GOG National Book Club voted him Best Male Author. The five Inspector Darko Dawson novels, set in Ghana, are WIFE OF THE GODS, CHILDREN OF THE STREET, MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS, GOLD OF OUR FATHERS, and DEATH BY HIS GRACE. Two novels, KAMILA and DEATH AT THE VOYAGER HOTEL (e-book) are non-Darko books. In January 2020, Quartey’s new detective series launched to critical acclaim with THE MISSING AMERICAN, the debut of the Emma Djan Investigations and the introduction of the first West African female private eye in fiction. The second in the series, SLEEP WELL, MY LADY, was released January 12, 2021, immediately garnering attention for its unusual style of time shifts in relation to the crime. THE MISSING AMERICAN was nominated for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel, and won the 2021 Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel. LAST SEEN IN LAPAZ, the third Emma Djan novel, was released February 2023, and the fourth, THE WHITEWASHED TOMBS, is expected 2024.

Joe Hill's debut, Heart-Shaped Box, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. His second, Horns, was made into a film freakfest starring Daniel Radcliffe. His other novels include NOS4A2, and his #1 New York Times Best-Seller, The Fireman... which was also the winner of a 2016 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror Novel. He writes short stories too. Some of them were gathered together in his prize-winning collection, 20th Century Ghosts. He won the Eisner Award for Best Writer for his long running comic book series, Locke & Key, co-created with illustrator and art wizard Gabriel Rodriguez. He lives in New Hampshire with a corgi named McMurtry after a certain beloved writer of cowboy tales. His next book, Strange Weather, a collection of novellas, storms into bookstores in October of 2017.

David Corbett is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead (nominated for the Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Novel) Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book and nominated for the Macavity Award for Best Novel), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar), Do They Know I’m Running (Spinetingler Award, Best Novel—Rising Star Category 2011), The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday (nominated for the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery), and The Truth Against the World (June, 2023). David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, with two stories selected for Best American Mystery Stories. In 2012, Mysterious Press/Open Road Media re-issued his four novels plus a story collection, Thirteen Confessions, in ebook format. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage). he followed this up with The Compass of Character (Writers Digest Books). He has taught creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Project, Chuck Pahalniuk’s Litreactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, Book Passage, and at writing conference across the country. He is also a monthly contributor to Writer Unboxed, an award-winning blog dedicated to the craft and business of fiction. Before becoming a novelist, David spent fifteen years as an investigator for the San Francisco private detective agency Palladino & Sutherland, working on such high-profile civil and criminal litigations as The DeLorean Case, the Peoples Temple Trial, the Lincoln Savings & Loan Scandal, the Cotton Club Murder Case, the Michael Jackson child molestation investigation and a RICO action brought by the Teamsters against members of organized crime.

Maria Alexander is an award-winning author of YA and adult fiction. Her debut novel, MR. WICKER, won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her debut YA novel, SNOWED, both won the 2016 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel and was nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Children's/Young Adult Novel. When she’s not stabbing people with her foil, she’s being outrageously spooky or writing Doctor Who filk. She lives in Los Angeles with two ungrateful cats, a Jewish Christmas caroler, and a purse called Trog.

International bestseller author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction's most prestigious prizes. His books have earned starred reviews from every major pre-publication journal. A father of two and a husband of one, Brad lives in Virginia, where he spends four hours a day at his local Hardee's, writing his novels. When not at Hardee's, he's a slow runner and an even slower swimmer who enjoys long walks in his head. He's grateful for his readers, because otherwise he'd just be a guy who has a lot of conversations with himself and nowhere to put them. For more information—or to sign up for the newsletter written by his impertinent interns—visit his website at www.bradparksbooks.com. To find Brad on Twitter, go to www.twitter.com/Brad_Parks. And for Facebook: www.facebook.com/BradParksBooks.

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D. While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote a screenplay, "Adrift", which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson. Tess' first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels since then have been: Life Support (1997), Bloodstream (1998), Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), and The Bone Garden (2007). Her books have been translated into 31 languages, and more than 15 million copies have been sold around the world. As well as being a New York Times bestselling author, she has also been a #1 bestseller in both Germany and the UK. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon.) Critics around the world have praised her novels as "Pulse-pounding fun" (Philadelphia Inquirer), "Scary and brilliant" (Toronto Globe and Mail), and "Polished, riveting prose" (Chicago Tribune). Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the "medical suspense queen". Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.

Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television. He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

A professional writer for more than forty years, Yarbro has sold over eighty books, more than seventy works of short fiction, and more than three dozen essays, introductions, and reviews. She also composes serious music. Her first professional writing - in 1961-1962 - was as a playwright for a now long-defunct children's theater company. By the mid-60s she had switched to writing stories and hasn't stopped yet. After leaving college in 1963 and until she became a full-time writer in 1970, she worked as a demographic cartographer, and still often drafts maps for her books, and occasionally for the books of other writers. She has a large reference library with books on a wide range of subjects, everything from food and fashion to weapons and trade routes to religion and law. She is constantly adding to it as part of her on-going fascination with history and culture; she reads incessantly, searching for interesting people and places that might provide fodder for stories. In 1997 the Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman to be so honored; the Horror Writers Association gave her a Life Achievement Award in 2009. In 2014 she won a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. A skeptical occultist for forty years, she has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco. She has two domestic accomplishments: she is a good cook and an experienced seamstress. The rest is catch-as-catch-can. Divorced, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area - with two cats: the irrepressible Butterscotch and Crumpet, the Gang of Two. When not busy writing, she enjoys the symphony or opera. Her Saint-Germain series is now the longest vampire series ever. The books range widely over time and place, and were not published in historical order. They are numbered in published order. Known pseudonyms include Vanessa Pryor, Quinn Fawcett, T.C.F. Hopkins, Trystam Kith, Camille Gabor.