Cynthia Swanson
Cynthia Swanson writes psychological thrillers, often using historical settings. Cynthia’s debut novel, The Bookseller, was a New York Times bestseller, an Indie Next selection, the winner of the 2016 WILLA Award for Historical Fiction, and is slated to be a motion picture produced by Julia Roberts. The Bookseller was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award and is translated into 18 languages. Cynthia’s second novel, The Glass Forest, was a USA Today bestseller, a CAL Award finalist, has been noted in Forbes as being one of “Five Novels With a Remarkably Strong Sense of Place” and is translated into 7 languages. Her third novel, Anyone But Her, won the 2025 Colorado Book Award (Thriller), was a finalist for the 2025 WILLA Award (Mystery/Th
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M.J. Rose
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New York Times Bestseller, M.J. Rose grew up in New York City mostly in the labyrinthine galleries of the Metropolitan Museum, the dark tunnels and lush gardens of Central Park and reading her mother's favorite books before she was allowed. She believes mystery and magic are all around us but we are too often too busy to notice... books that exaggerate mystery and magic draw attention to it and remind us to look for it and revel in it.
Her most recent novel, The Last Tiara, will be published Feb 2, 2021
Rose's work has appeared in many magazines including Oprah Magazine and she has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, WSJ, Time, USA Today and on the Today Show, and NPR radio. Rose graduated from Syracuse University, spent the '80s -
R. Garcia y Robertson
Rodrigo Garcia y Robertson (born 1949) is an American writer of historical and fantasy fiction. He holds a Ph.D in history and taught at UCLA and Villanova University before becoming a full-time writer. In addition to his eight novels, he has had numerous short stories published in fantasy and science fiction anthologies. He lives in Mount Vernon, Washington.
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Laurie R. King
Edgar-winning mystery writer Laurie R. King writes series and standalone novels. Her official forum is
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THE LRK VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB here on Goodreads--please join us for book-discussing fun.
King's 2018 novel, Island of the Mad, sees Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes travel from London's Bedlam to the glitter of Venice's Lido,where Young Things and the friends of Cole Porter pass Mussolini's Blackshirts in the streets. The Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series follows a brilliant young woman who becomes the student, then partner, of the great detective. [click here for an excerpt of the first in the series, The Beekeeper's Apprentice] The Stuyvesant and Grey series (Touchstone; The Bones of Paris) takes place in Europe between the Wars. The Kate -
Martin Cruz Smith
AKA Simon Quinn, Nick Carter.
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Martin Cruz Smith was an American writer of mystery and suspense fiction, mostly in an international or historical setting. He was best known for his series featuring Russian investigator Arkady Renko, ten novels as of 2025, who was introduced in 1981 with Gorky Park and appeared in Independence Square (2023) and Hotel Ukraine (2025). -
Joe Meno
Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, the Great Lakes Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Society of Midland Author's Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the Story Prize, he is the author of seven novels and two short story collections. He is also the editor of Chicago Noir: The Classics. A long-time contributor to the seminal culture magazine, Punk Planet, his other non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times and Chicago magazine. He is a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago.
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Michael Ruhlman
Michael Ruhlman (born 1963 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American writer. He is the author of 11 books, and is best known for his work about and in collaboration with American chefs, as well as other works of non-fiction.
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Ruhlman grew up in Cleveland and was educated at University School (a private boys' day school in Cleveland) and at Duke University, graduating from the latter in 1985. He worked a series of odd jobs (including briefly at the New York Times) and traveled before returning to his hometown in 1991 to work for a local magazine.
While working at the magazine, Ruhlman wrote an article about his old high school and its new headmaster, which he expanded into his first book, Boys Themselves: A Return to Single-Sex Education (1996).
For hi -
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (BA, Classics, 1975), the American School of Classical Studies (1978-79) and received his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University in 1980. He lives and works with his family on their forty-acre tree and vine farm near Selma, California, where he was born in 1953.
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Ann Hood
Ann Hood is the editor of Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting and the bestselling author of The Book That Matters Most, The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread, Comfort, and An Italian Wife, among other works. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, a Best American Spiritual Writing Award, a Best American Food Writing Award, a Best American Travel Writing Award, and the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Neal Pollack
Neal Pollack’s first book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, was published in 2000, becoming an (almost) instant cult classic. His debut novel, Never Mind the Pollacks, hit shelves in 2003, and was shamelessly promoted by his band, The Neal Pollack Invasion. In 2007, he published Alternadad, a best-selling memoir. In 2010, Pollack became a certified yoga teacher and published Stretch, a nonfiction account of his adventures in American yoga culture. He has contributed to The New York Times, Wired, Slate, Yoga Journal, and Vanity Fair, among many other publications. Thomas & Mercer published his historical noir novel Jewball in March 2012, and debuted his "yoga detective" novel, Downward-Facing Death, in serialized fiction fo
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Constance O'Day-Flannery
Constance O'Day-Flannery is a best-selling American author of romance novels.
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Constance O'Day-Flannery has never taken a writing course or attended college. She began writing in 1986 when her son entered school. While reading romance novels during her recovery from a hysterectomy, O'Day-Flannery began to think about the type of book she would want to read. She finished her manuscript 18 months later and sold it quickly. Since then, she has published over twenty novels, all of which have appeared on a national best-seller list. Many of her novels are paranormal or time-travel romances. She has been awarded the Romantic Times BookClub Award for Best Time Travel for Timeswept Lovers and the Romantic Times BookClub Award for Best Contemporary Fa -
Gary Phillips
GARY PHILLIPS has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. He’s published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including South Central Noir and the Anthony award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was also a writer/co-producer on FX’s Snowfall (streaming on Hulu), about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Recent novels include One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem. He lives with his family in the wilds of Los Angeles.
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Peter Heller
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Peter Heller holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in both fiction and poetry. An award-winning adventure writer and longtime contributor to NPR, Heller is a contributing editor at Outside magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure, and a regular contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek. He is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Kook, The Whale Warriors, and Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River. He lives in Denver, Colorado. -
Patricia Raybon
A newspaper journalist right out of the gate, Patricia turned to writing historical mystery novels during the pandemic and hasn't looked back. Her first fiction is the award-winning Annalee Spain Mystery series whose debut, “All That Is Secret,” won a Christy Award for First Novel. The series' second installment, “Double the Lies,” won the Christianity Today Book Award for Fiction. The third in the series, “Truth Be Told,” was a New York Times' pick among "4 Great Fictional Detectives."
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“...[M]ystery novels that incorporate religion in a significant way aren’t all that common. Thankfully, the inspiring Patricia Raybon, a veteran nonfiction writer and novelist, has been threading the needle in just the right way with her Annalee Spain series, -
R. Garcia y Robertson
Rodrigo Garcia y Robertson (born 1949) is an American writer of historical and fantasy fiction. He holds a Ph.D in history and taught at UCLA and Villanova University before becoming a full-time writer. In addition to his eight novels, he has had numerous short stories published in fantasy and science fiction anthologies. He lives in Mount Vernon, Washington.
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J. Richard Gott III
John Richard Gott III is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. He is known for developing and advocating two cosmological theories with the flavour of science fiction: Time travel and the Doomsday argument.
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Kaira Rouda
Kaira Rouda is a USA TODAY and #1 Amazon and Amazon Charts bestselling author of contemporary fiction exploring beneath the surface of seemingly perfect lives. Her suspense novels include BEST DAY EVER, THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER, ALL THE DIFFERENCE, THE NEXT WIFE, SOMEBODY'S HOME, THE WIDOW, BENEATH THE SURFACE, UNDER THE PALMS, THE SECOND MRS STROM, WHAT THE NANNY SAW and JILL IS NOT HAPPY. Her next novel, WE WERE NEVER FRIENDS, is out February 3, 2026.
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She lives in Southern California with her family and is at work on her next novel. Visit her webiste, KairaRouda.com for more. Connect with her on Instagram and Pinterest: @KairaRouda; and on Facebook at Kaira Rouda Books.
If you'd like to host Kaira at your book club, please reach out through h -
Oliver Pötzsch
Oliver Pötzsch is a German writer and filmmaker. After high school he attended the German School of Journalism in Munich from 1992 to 1997. He then worked for Radio Bavaria. In addition to his professional activities in radio and television, Pötzsch researched his family history. He is a descendant of the Kuisle, from the 16th to the 19th Century a famous dynasty of executioners in Schongau.
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Attica Locke
Attica Locke is a writer whose first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, a 2010 NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for an Orange Prize in the UK.
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Attica is also a screenwriter who has written movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, Dreamworks and Silver Pictures. She was also a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University.
A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter. -
Mary Robinette Kowal
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award winning alternate history novel The Calculating Stars, the first book in the Lady Astronaut series which continues in 2025 with The Martian Contingency. She is also the author of The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, The Spare Man and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette has also worked as a professional puppeteer, is a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses, and performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and Neal Stephenson.
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Maaza Mengiste
Maaza Mengiste is a novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, was selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books and named one of the best books of 2010 by Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe and other publications. Her fiction and nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, the Guardian, the New York Times, BBC Radio,and Lettre International, among other places. She was the 2013 Puterbaugh Fellow and a Runner-up for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Both her fiction and nonfiction examine the individual lives at stake during migration, war, and exile, and consider the intersections of photography and violence. She was a writer on the social-activist documentary film, Girl Ris
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Sherry D. Ficklin
Sherry is the author of over a dozen novels for teens and young adults including the best selling Stolen Empire series. She can often be found browsing her local bookstore with a large white hot chocolate in one hand and a towering stack of books in the other. That is, unless she's on deadline at which time she, like the Loch Ness monster, is only seen in blurry photographs.
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Sherry also writes contemporary romance under the pen name SJ Noble. You can find her at her official website, www.sherryficklin.com, or stalk her on her Facebook page www.facebook.com/sherry.ficklin. -
Simon Stålenhag
Konstnären och författaren Simon Stålenhag är mest känd för sina digitala målningar som ofta visar vardagliga scener med fantastiska inslag. Efter sitt genombrott 2013 har Stålenhag publicerat två böcker om ett alternativt 1980- och 90-tal på Mälaröarna utanför Stockholm. Ur varselklotet (2014) och Flodskörden (2016) har hyllats både i Sverige och utomlands. Den ansedda tidningen The Guardian korade Ur varselklotet till en av tidernas bästa dystopier, i sällskap med Franz Kafkas Processen och Andrew Niccols Gattaca.
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Simon Stålenhags evokativa och filmlika bildspråk har väckt uppmärksamhet även i film- och datorspelsvärlden. Han har verkat som konceptillustratör och manusförfattare i ett flertal projekt. Stålenhag har medverkat i Searching fo -
Alexander Boldizar
Alexander Boldizar was the first post-independence Slovak citizen to graduate with a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. Since then, he has been an art gallery director in Bali, an attorney in San Francisco and Prague, a pseudo-geisha in Japan, a hermit in Tennessee, a paleontologist in the Sahara, a porter in the High Arctic, a consultant on Wall Street, an art critic out of Jakarta and Singapore, and a police-abuse watchdog and Times Square billboard writer in New York City. He now lives in Vancouver, Canada.
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Boldizar’s writing has won the PEN/Nob Hill prize, a Somerset Award for literary fiction, and other awards, including a Best New American Voices nomination. His novel, The Ugly, was a best-seller among small presses in the U -
Jasmine Guillory
Jasmine Guillory is a New York Times bestselling author of nine novels including The Wedding Date, the Reese's Book Club selection The Proposal, and Flirting Lessons. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appetit, and Time, and she is a frequent book contributor on The Today Show. She lives in Oakland, California.
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Chris McKinney
Chris McKinney is a Korean, Japanese, Scottish American writer born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the author of the Water City trilogy. Book one was named a Best Mystery of 2021 by Publisher's Weekly and a Best Speculative Mystery of 2021 by CrimeReads. All three books received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, and Booklist called book three a "satisfying conclusion to a magnificent trilogy (that) offers a real treat for sf fans." In 2024, Honolulu Magazine named McKinney "Author of the Year" for his Water City trilogy.
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Chris has written six other novels: The Tattoo, The Queen of Tears, Bolohead Row, Mililani Mauka, Boi No Good, and Yakudoshi: Age of Calamity.
In 2011, Chris was appointed Visiting Distinguished Writer at the University of -
Mary Anna King
Mary King was born in southern New Jersey and grew up in Oklahoma City, OK, where she was adopted at the age of ten. After studying English Literature at Colgate University she moved to Los Angeles where she lives and writes. Her memoir, Bastards– the story of how she and her six biological siblings were separated and reunited– is forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Co in June of 2015.
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Maaza Mengiste
Maaza Mengiste is a novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, was selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books and named one of the best books of 2010 by Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe and other publications. Her fiction and nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, the Guardian, the New York Times, BBC Radio,and Lettre International, among other places. She was the 2013 Puterbaugh Fellow and a Runner-up for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Both her fiction and nonfiction examine the individual lives at stake during migration, war, and exile, and consider the intersections of photography and violence. She was a writer on the social-activist documentary film, Girl Ris
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Hannah Nordhaus
Hannah Nordhaus is a journalist and bestselling nonfiction author of The Beekeeper’s Lament and American Ghost. She writes about history, science and the natural world for National Geographic, Scientific American and many other publications.
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Hannah’s first book, The Beekeeper’s Lament, released in 2011, is a non-fiction portrait of a fourth-generation beekeeper in the middle of a strange and sobering honey bee die-off. The Beekeeper’s Lament was a PEN Center USA Book Awards finalist, a Colorado Book Awards finalist, and a National Federation of Press Women Book Award winner.
Her second book, American Ghost, released in 2015, untangles the complicated legend of Hannah’s great-great-grandmother, Julia Staab, who traveled the Santa Fe Trail to -
J. Richard Gott III
John Richard Gott III is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. He is known for developing and advocating two cosmological theories with the flavour of science fiction: Time travel and the Doomsday argument.
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Gary Phillips
GARY PHILLIPS has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. He’s published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including South Central Noir and the Anthony award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was also a writer/co-producer on FX’s Snowfall (streaming on Hulu), about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Recent novels include One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem. He lives with his family in the wilds of Los Angeles.
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Miquel Reina
Barcelona-born Miquel Reina defines himself as a dreamer and a fighter; from a young age, he was drawn to the creative life, studying design and cinema before building his reputation as a filmmaker and graphic artist. His work in advertising won him several awards, including the prestigious Bronze Sun at Spain’s Festival de San Sebastián in 2011, and in 2014, his music video “Dead in the Water” was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. Reina has lived in Vancouver, Canada, since 2016, working for a video production studio and dedicating his free time to his most gratifying passion: writing. Lights on the Sea is his debut novel, translated in 5 different languages. You can find more of his work at miquelreinabooks.com
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Kaylie Jones
Kaylie was born in Paris, France and attended French schools until she returned with her family to the U.S. in 1974. Her father was the novelist James Jones.
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Kaylie began to study Russian as her third language at age 8, and continued to study the language and literature through her four undergraduate years at Wesleyan University and her two years at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she received her MFA in Writing.
Kylie Jones has published six books, the most recent a memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me. Her novel A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries was adapted as a Merchant Ivory film in 1998.
Jones has been teaching for more than twenty-five years, and is a faculty member in the Stony Brook Southampton MFA in Creative Writing & -
Curt Colbert
Author of the Jake Rossiter and Miss Jenkins Mystery series set in 1940s Seattle.
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Terri Savelle Foy
For years, Terri Savelle Foy’s life was average. She had no dreams to pursue. Each passing day was just a repeat of the day before. Finally, with a marriage in trouble and her life falling apart, Terri made a change. She began to pursue God like never before, develop a new routine and discovered the power of having a dream and purpose.
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As Terri started to recognize her own dreams and goals, she simply wrote them down and reviewed them consistently. This written vision became a road map to drive her life. As a result, those dreams are now a reality.
Terri has become the CEO of an international Christian ministry. She is an author, a conference speaker, and a success coach to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. Her best-selling