Crime Fiction: 11 Authors Discuss the Genre

An In-Depth Roundtable Chat with Giveaway

Hosted by Meg Walker

Crime fiction is one of the most popular genres in literature today. With many sub genres — including thrillers, whodunits, police procedurals, and noir — readers flock to these books and devour them like candy. What is it about these novels that keeps us staying up late into the night flipping pages at a breakneck speed? We’ve gathered eleven authors — all with new books out or soon-to-be-released — to talk to us all about the ins and outs of crime fiction. Please welcome our rockstar lineup of authors: Megan Abbott, Greg Galloway, Julie Clark, Lisa Scottoline, Kaira Rouda, Ruth Ware, Joe Pan, Eli Cranor, Karin Slaughter, Randy Wayne White & Richard Armitage.

And don’t forget to ENTER our giveaway! One lucky winner will walk away with all 11 of these hot new books! The giveaway is open now for entries. One entry per person. The deadline to enter is midnight Eastern on Tuesday, July 22nd. We will announce the winner live on the air during our LIVE episode of The Friends & Fiction Show with guest Lisa Scottoline on Wednesday, July 23rd. So mark your calendars for that episode and be sure to tune in at 7pm ET on F&F’s Facebook page & YouTube channel to see if you’ve won!

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In a sentence or two, give us a quick description of what your most recent novel is about.

Megan Abbott: El Dorado Drive is about three sisters—all in their forties and facing financial challenges—who join The Wheel, a women’s club that promises its members a way to make their own money, fast. Soon, however, the Wheel’s success—and their own addiction to it—leads to greater and greater risks and a shocking death that threatens to expose them.

Greg Galloway: All We Trust is a novel about tested loyalties. Two brothers have spent years laundering money for a larger criminal organization and they begin to suspect that each might be turning on the other - one brother suspects the other might be providing evidence to the district attorney, while the other thinks his brother has stolen from him. This small family squabble escalates into an international conflict between rival criminal factions.

Julie Clark: The Ghostwriter is about a down-on-her-luck ghostwriter is called to Ojai to ghostwrite literary legend, Vincent Taylor’s, memoir of what happened that night in 1975 when his brother and sister were brutally murdered in their home. The catch: The ghostwriter is his estranged daughter, and Vincent remains the only suspect in the crime. After 50 years of silence, he’s finally ready to tell his daughter – and the world -- the truth.

Karia Rouda: Jill is Not Happy, an instant USA Today bestseller, is Bonfire of the Vanities meets War of the Roses in which an ill-fated road trip resurrects a married couple’s darkest secrets.

Ruth Ware: In The Woman in Suite11, Lo Blacklock is back — living in New York with her husband and two kids, trying to re-enter the travel journalism career she paused years before. When she gets an opportunity to attend the opening of an exclusive Swiss hotel on the shores of lake Geneva she jumps at the chance — but what she finds there is much darker than she ever expected!

Lisa Scottoline: The Unraveling of Julia is about a woman who inherits a villa in Tuscany from a mysterious stranger, who may be her birth grandmother.

Joe Pan: In Florida Palms, at the height of the Great Recession, a group of poor young Florida boys are coerced into a drug-running biker gang.

Eli Cranor: Mississippi Blue 42 is Justified meets Friday Night Lights set around a fictional federal investigation into big-money college football. I played quarterback in college, then went on to coach for a few seasons after that. This book is straight from the heart.

Karin Slaughter: We Are All Guilty Here is about two girls who go missing in a small town and everything that unravels after that event.

Randy Wayne White: My two newest Doc Ford novels, One Deadly Eye, and Tomlinson’s Wake, have much to do with the category five hurricane that hit our home on Sanibel Island. My wife and I rode out the storm on the barrier on which we live, a profound experience in terms that it gave me the opportunity to write a factually accurate, specific, and detailed account about a storm of that intensity. Layered into the plot line are elements that include post hurricane theft, insurance corporation, and it also includes very funny third person chapters regarding Doc Ford’s best friend, the unrepentant hipster, Tomlinson. These are not just thrillers, they are also carefully crafted character studies and also historical documents.

Richard Armitage: The Cut is about how the scars of childhood trauma manifest into adulthood. A group of teenagers at their graduation face tragedy. A girl dies and her classmate goes to prison. 30 years later he is due for parole and a film maker arrives in the village to make a horror movie, but it’s not quite what it seems.

Tell us where your new book is set and why you chose this location.

Megan Abbott: El Dorado Drive is set in Grosse Pointe, a pretty, serene suburb of Detroit. It’s my hometown and the first time I’ve set a novel there, but it was perfect for the story as a place of relative affluence during the heyday of the auto industry. As the industry collapses and the money disappears, everything changes.

Greg Galloway: Most of my books are set in an unidentified part of the country, but I do incorporate elements of where I live (NW Connecticut), including the road where I walk our dog every morning (the road and the dog both have important roles in All We Trust). The novel also takes place in San Francisco and a small town in Mexico — I chose San Francisco as a nod to its noir tradition (Hammett, Out of the Past, Point Blank, etc.), and Mexico because I wanted to put the characters in unfamiliar territory as their relationship becomes more strained (but still with a family connection).

Julie Clark: The Ghostwriter is set in Ojai California in present time as well as in 1975. I chose Ojai because of the rural location in the 70’s and how much freedom kids had at that time to get into trouble. Or commit murder.

Kaira Rouda: The beginning of Jill is Not Happy is set in the magnificent, and scary at sunset, Utah National Parks, including Bryce Canyon where there are hoodoos — sandstone sculptures that take on an eerie, humanlike appearance. That’s all I needed to see. It’s also set in Southern California where I live.

Ruth Ware: The Woman in Suite11 is set in a super fancy hotel — which I chose partly because I adore hotels and love the sense of luxury you get from having someone take care of your every whim. But although hotels are some of the places I’ve felt most pampered, they’re also some of the places I’ve felt most scared. There’s nothing like waking in the night to hear a shout from close by and wondering where you are and what’s happened to get your heart racing — and something too about knowing you’re sleeping in a place dozens of strangers have a key to! In The Woman in Suite11 I tried to convey both the joy and the terror of a hotel room.

Lisa Scottoline: I chose Tuscany for The Unraveling of Julia because I would be crazy not to LOL. The real question is why is any book not set in Tuscany. Tuscany is everything you think it is, and I know because I ate my way through all of its pasta and drank too much Chianti. All in the name of research.

Joe Pan: Florida Palms is set along the Space Coast of Florida, where I grew up. I know the place intimately and the characters truly belonged there.

Eli Cranor: Mississippi Blue 42 is set in Mississippi. Though I’m from Arkansas, I was born thirty minutes from the state line. Things are different in the south, and there’s no place more southern than Mississippi. Down here, people talk about “faith, family, and football,” but on Saturdays, football comes first.

Karin Slaughter: We Are All Guilty Here is set in the fictional town of North Falls, Georgia, which is inspired by a specific part of the Flint River. After writing so many stories set in Atlanta, I wanted to take my characters back to a small town setting, where everyone seemingly knows everyone.

Randy Wayne White: One Deadly Eye and Tomlinson’s Wake take place in South Florida, and also Mesoamerica, specifically Honduras and Quintana Roo where I’ve spent a lot of time. I’m fascinated by the previous civilizations that arrived to this area long before Europeans.

Richard Armitage: The Cut is set in the fictional village of Barton Mallet in the rural midlands of England. It’s loosely based on the place I grew up. A place where we would walk to school and disappear on our bikes for the day during the summer, a small community where everyone knows each other…but do they really?

Thriller, noir, caper, whodunit, hardboiled, police procedural. The crime fiction genre has many sub genres. Do these labels matter much to you? Do you think your work fits squarely into any one category?

Megan Abbott: The labels or genre distinctions don’t matter much to me as a writer or a reader. While I most identify with “noir,” I’m happy to see my books fall under any of these categories. I get that it’s a kind of shorthand, but, to me, it’s all about the story, the characters, the voice. That’s what we’re responding to, not genre checkboxes.

Greg Galloway: I think the labels are helpful, if for no other reason than to set expectations with the reader. Anyone expecting a “thriller” from me is going to be disappointed (or at least more disappointed). I’m firmly in the “noir” camp (or “neo-noir”), which intimates characters getting pulled deeper into bad behavior, desperate situations, and questions about identity, morality, and agency, with a nice dose of cynicism. I like to remind everyone that both Camus and Sartre were big fans of noir fiction — Camus loved James M. Cain (esp. The Postman Always Rings Twice) and Sartre loved Dashiell Hammett (think Red Harvest), although both could also be included in the “hardboiled” camp - and it’s easy to see its influence on Camus’s The Stranger and Sartre's Nausea.

Julie Clark: I would categorize my books as literary suspense. I think my publisher calls them mystery/thriller, but all of my books have strong female protagonists and are very character driven. It’s not just about figuring out the question behind the plot, but in the emotional growth of the characters along the way.

Kaira Rouda: I’m not a fan of labels and I suppose my books have been placed in thriller and domestic suspense, but my first novels were labeled women’s fiction — a label I’m not fond of either. Women are the majority of readers, so in a sense we are all writing fiction for women.

Ruth Ware: I think my books sit somewhere between psychological thriller and whodunit — and actually on my own website, where I get to invent my own nomenclature, I describe them as psychological crime thrillers, which I think ticks both boxes. But I don’t worry too much about that side of things. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to write a story I enjoy and that readers will hopefully like, too.

Lisa Scottoline: I have no problem with categories, but I think any good novel will encompass a few. This novel is a psychological thriller, which I have never written before, but it’s also a straight up thriller and even a spiritual thriller, and I love to extend myself in new directions, because it keeps everything fresh for me and my readers.

Joe Pan: These labels matter mostly for marketing, which is a necessity for readers, who face an overabundance of options now. But I think the best works elevate and often subvert such categories, branching out into hybrid forms. The crime genre is so vast, though, it can include works by John Le’Carre, Harper Lee, Philip K Dick, Dostoyevsky, depending on how you center the book’s themes and perspective. Are crimes of the heart the stuff of crime novels? Surely. Crimes without murders? Yes. Is Charlotte’s Web a crime novel? From the pig’s perspective, he’s on the chopping block, a death sentence, and is saved by the quick thinking of a child and a spider. It freaked the hell out of me as a kid.

Eli Cranor: I’m not too big on labels. People who are seem to have trouble classifying my books. I take a little pride in saying that Mississippi Blue 42 doesn’t fit neatly into any category. I honestly hope it’s unlike anything you’ve ever read.

Karin Slaughter: These labels don’t mean much to me but they can sometimes be useful. When I told people that my book This is Why We Lied is a locked-room mystery, they understood what that meant.

Randy Wayne White: I’ve never attempted to make my novels fit squarely into any genre. Why would I?

Richard Armitage: I can get into a bit of a pickle when I try to shoehorn my story too much into a specific genre. I like the term psychological thriller as applied to the way my storytelling mind works, they may or may not be a crime in there somewhere, there will definitely be a mystery to be solved or revelations to be had.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about mysteries/thrillers?

Megan Abbott: That they’re escapist fare. While I think they can be an escape, they also tackle the most universal and yet often taboo experiences, particularly female ones, e.g., of domestic abuse, troubled family lives, conflicted feelings about motherhood, partner violence, and the many ways the justice system can fail women.

Greg Galloway: I suppose that some people still dismiss genre fiction as somehow “less than” literary fiction, less interesting, less important, less inventive, less varied. It is, of course, anything but that. The best of genre fiction (no matter which genre) is equal to any literary fiction, as important, and as varied and inventive. Crime fiction endures (as does all fiction) because it deals with some of the most important issues of the human condition while also entertaining. There are plenty of examples of genre novels that are masterpieces, but The Great Gatsby (1925) was dismissed by some critics as an unsuccessful crime novel (and it sold poorly), which few people probably would probably tag it is that now, and its reputation has improved that it’s now considered one of the greatest American novels ever written.

Julie Clark: That they all have to be at a cut-throat pace, or that they only need plot to drive the story forward. All books need characters a reader will care about, so bringing them to life is as important as creating unexpected twists or a surprise ending.

Kaira Rouda: I’m honestly not sure! I love mysteries and thrillers and always have. I think if you try one, you might find you love them, too. In my stories I try to incorporate dark humor — so hopefully you’ll laugh a little along the way, too.

Ruth Ware: I think the idea that the genre is somehow limiting — I’m often asked if I’ll ever write a “real” novel, or if I’d expand out of crime. My answer is usually yes, if I wanted to write about a topic that couldn’t be encompassed in crime. But that hasn’t happened yet. From cozy to sexy, from historical to speculative, from violent to cerebral, almost any type of novel or subject matter can fit into the crime genre. It’s incredibly capacious and that’s one of the things I love about it.

Lisa Scottoline: That’s a really good question. Maybe people think that they’re easy to write, but the truth is I think they’re really, really hard to write. Because I always adhere to the real law of the setting and the real criminal procedure and the real police procedure, so whatever plot I come up with has to be real. I do that because I think there’s an obligation of authenticity when you’re a former lawyer and also because so many people get their ideas about real law and justice from fiction.

Joe Pan: That they have to be a constant car chase, that they can’t be a slow burn, that slow burns are somehow less satisfying, when in fact they tend to give you more access to a character’s inner life and more intimate and varied relationships.

Eli Cranor: That they’re light reading. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with escapism, but some of the most important books being published today are mysteries/thrillers. The “crime” genre has a way of holding a mirror to our culture, and we don’t always like what we see staring back at us.

Karin Slaughter: A lot of people think mysteries and thrillers aren’t as sophisticated as, say, literary fiction. I’d say that is just a gross generalization and that you can have very sophisticated books in this category.

Randy Wayne White: That they follow a formula. Even with the dangerous embracing of so-called artificial intelligence (which is actually purloined or stolen intelligence) there is no formula that I know of.

Richard Armitage: That the plot will carry everything. I do think a strong plot is essential, but it’s the characters that will keep the readers’ attention. I usually find my characters first and then devise a plot which will test them the most, give them something to fight for and push against.

When it comes to crime fiction, who do you consider to be the absolute master of the genre?

Megan Abbott: Patricia Highsmith. The Ripley series, yes, but also all the glorious, pitch-black standalones: Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt, The Blunderer, A Tremor of Forgery, Cry of the Owl, etc.

Greg Galloway: I still look to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but would have to give the “absolute master” award to Hammett, if for no other reason than his “batting average” — Hammett wrote 5 novels, all of which are great, 4 have been named as the top mysteries of all time, and Red Harvest was listed on the 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005 by Time magazine.

Julie Clark: Lisa Jewel, Tana French, and Michael Connelly!

Kaira Rouda: That’s a tough one as there are so many superior authors at work today — I’d hate to name names and leave someone out! It’s such a wonderful community that readers really can’t go wrong picking up a novel in the thriller/suspense category.

Ruth Ware: I don’t think there’s a single master but I will say, from Christie to du Maurier, to Highsmith and Sayers, crime fiction is a genre where women punch above their weight, both historically and right up to writers today like Donna Tartt, Paula Hawkins, and Gillian Flynn. So maybe the default term should be mistress of the genre!

Lisa Scottoline: For my new novel, I was really inspired by the great Daphne du Maurier, because I wanted to go with in a psychological direction, which I’ve never done before. That said, there is no one master, just like there is no single Great American novel or anything like that. I love the genre generally, and I love historical thrillers, psychological thrillers, and all kinds of thrillers. Bottom line I just like the book that keeps me engaged and that isn’t even necessarily a thriller.

Joe Pan: Richard Stark aka Westlake. Chester Himes. Agatha Christie. Conan Doyle.

Eli Cranor: Elmore Leonard, hands down.

Karin Slaughter: For me it is Patricia Highsmith.

Randy Wayne White: John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, and John Sanford.

Richard Armitage: Well obviously I’m a fan of Harlan Coben, but Lisa Jewel, Louise Candlish, Claire McDonald and David Fennell spring to mind.

An unsung hero or an up-and-comer—name a crime fiction author that you wish more people knew about.

Megan Abbott: Kellye Garrett (who is well known but should be more so!), Clémence Michallon (Quiet Tenant, Our Last Resort) and Alexis Soloski (Here in the Dark)

Greg Gallowy: Elliott Chaze’s Black Wings Has My Angel (1953) deserves more attention (New York Review Books reprinted it in 2016), Dolores Hitchens — who was prolific under her own name, co-writing with her husband (a railroad detective), and under a number of pseudonyms. She also wrote Fool’s Gold (1958), which Jean-Luc Godard loosely adapted into Bande à part (1964). Jean-Patrick Manchette is a terrific writer who has about a dozen novels translated into English and pays homage to Hammett and the crime novel, while also subverting it and expanding its style and themes.

Julie Clark: Rachel Koller Croft! Not only is she an exceptional writer, she can come up with some truly bonkers ideas. Always a fun ride!

Kaira Rouda: On our bimonthly interview show, Killer Author Club, every episode we celebrate books written by authors who aren’t yet household names! See www.killerauthorclub.com for suggestions!

Ruth Ware: I love historical crime and never understand why it’s hived off in its own little genre. So, I’m going to nominate Laura Shepherd Robinson. Her latest, The Art of the Lie, is a delicious concoction set in Regency England, which combines heist, whodunit, and psychological thriller.

Lisa Scottoline: Honestly, my beloved daughter Francesca Serritella. She has written two books and her most recent one, Full Bloom, is about a woman whose life changes, not necessarily for the better, when she is gifted a bespoke perfume. The story has elements of a psychological thriller and I just love it. And I’m saying so despite the fact that I gave birth to its author.

Joe Pan: I’m gonna name a filmmaker instead: John Patton Ford.

Eli Cranor: Everybody and their dog should be reading Michael Koryta. He published his first book at 21 years old and now has over twenty novels under his belt. He doesn’t miss. A few other recent favorites are The Slip by Lucas Schaefer, The House on Buzzards Bay by Dwyer Murphy, and Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle.

Karin Slaughter: I wish more people would talk about Connie Briscoe’s thrillers. Her thriller Chloe is a terrific reimagining of Rebecca that is worth the read.

Randy Wayne White: Tim Dorsey

Richard Armitage: He’s not up and coming or unsung but I’m a huge fan of Matthew Blake who wrote Anna O, a dark and twisting psychological crime thriller about a woman who murdered two of her friends whilst sleepwalking. It’s a mesmerizing novel with a brilliant rug pull at the end that the reader will not see coming.

Do you have an all-time favorite crime novel—one you consider the gold standard, or that inspired you to become an author, or return to again and again, or wish you could experience again for the first time?

Megan Abbott: In a Lonely Place (1947) by Dorothy B. Hughes—funny, chilling, revelatory and a masterpiece of voice, tone, mood.

Greg Galloway: The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond Chandler is one of my all-time favorite novels. There is an emotional gravity to the book that pulls me back to it over and over — it is sad and brooding and full of a struggle to find something good or true in a world that doesn't value goodness or truth (I’m also a big fan of Robert Altman’s 1973 film). The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970) by George V. Higgins is another touchstone for me, and I frequently go back to The Erasers (1953 — must be something about that year for me) by Alain Robbe-Grillet, which takes the crime novel and turns it upside down and inside out in ways that are confounding and entertaining at the same time.

Julie Clark: I would say The Likeness by Tana French. It is, hands-down, my favorite book by her, and the way she accomplishes something that seems absolutely impossible and makes it completely believable is breathtaking.

Kaira Rouda: The Great Gatsby

Ruth Ware: I guess any novel with a massive twist — you can only get that experience once. So perhaps And Then There Were None or Gone Girl.

Lisa Scottoline: I honestly don’t have a single favorite novel of any kind. And I think reading is like eating. I just love to read and eat, preferably at the same time. I don’t have a favorite novel because I don’t have a favorite food. I just love food. My favorite genre is carbohydrates.

Joe Pan: Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson. Most of the crimes are against the Self, and they’re devastating.

Eli Cranor: The first novel I read by Elmore Leonard was Tishomingo Blues. It’s about a high diver who witnesses a murder while up on the perch, and so much more. It’s Leonard’s style that moved me most. Every line is pure jazz.

Karin Slaughter: I think it would be impossible to choose just one because there are just so many great stories out there.

Richard Armitage: Crime and Punishment by Piotr Dostoyevsky. It’s not really a crime fiction novel, it’s a classic epic that transcends the genre. But I’ve never forgotten the description of the pivotal moment when Raskolnikov commits the crime and seals his fate, its terrifyingly atmospheric and loaded with brutal imagery. It’s a masterpiece.

Is there a particular setting or subject you haven’t written about yet but really want to?

Megan Abbott: I’d love to write a true-crime book.

Greg Galloway: There’s always something I haven’t written about but really want to, too much, in fact — it’s what keeps me writing, and trying to narrow the focus is the challenge.

Julie Clark: I’m playing around with writing a speculative thriller. So stay tuned!

Kaira Rouda: I would like to set a book in Europe, possibly Italy or Portugal. I’d love to be “on vacation” in my mind while writing!

Ruth Ware: Of course! But like any good crime writer, I’m excellent at keeping secrets. So, you’ll have to wait to find out . . .

Lisa Scottoline: I swear to God this is that book. Almost 40 years ago, I went to a channeler and she told me that I wanted to be a storyteller and that is what got me started writing. I never talked about it before but it’s absolutely true. And I’ve always thought about writing a thriller that can have a spiritual angle, like a spiritual thriller, and I think this is that book. Buckle up.

Joe Pan: Hollywood

Eli Cranor: Mississippi Blue 42 is the first novel in a series featuring rookie federal agent Raider Indigo Johnson. Rae is a former collegiate pole vaulter, just like my wife. I’m excited to see what sort of sports-themed shenanigans she gets up to in books to come.

Karin Slaughter: Yes, and that is what I’m exploring right now while I work on the next book in the North Falls series. I’ve never really written about a family as large yet disparate as the Cliffton family. I’m going to explore that theme much further.

Richard Armitage: I’m drafting a third book and the itch that I have been dying to scratch is about the split male psyche. The alter ego potentially manifesting as a doppelgänger. Many of my favorite authors have written about this subject and I’ve been inspired to do the same. R.L. Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dostoyevsky’s The Double. Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson

Remember to tune in to the Friends & Fiction Show where Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey, and Patti Callahan Henry interview the authors of some of the year’s most buzzed-about books every Wednesday at 7pm ET on Facebook and YouTube. Subscribe to our podcast where our weekly interviews are published every Friday. Join our Facebook group now and follow us on Instagram so you never miss a thing.

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About the Contributors

Megan Abbott is the Edgar award-winning author of eleven crime novels, including You Will Know Me, Give Me Your Hand and the New York Times bestseller The Turnout, the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and the Wall Street Journal. Dare Me, the series she adapted from her own novel, now streaming on Netflix. Her latest novel, Beware the Woman, is now in paperback.

Greg Galloway is the author of Just Thieves, The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand and the Alex Award-winning As Simple As Snow. His short stories have appeared in the Rush Hour and Taking Aim anthologies. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently resides in Connecticut.

Julie Clark is the New York Times bestselling author of The Lies I Tell and The Last Flight, both of which were also #1 international bestsellers and have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and a goldendoodle with poor impulse control.

Lisa Scottoline is a #1 bestselling and Edgar Award-winning author of 37 novels. She also wrote and a series of humorous memoirs, co-authored with her daughter, novelist Francesca Serritella. Lisa is President of Mystery Writers of America and she reviews fiction for the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. A former trial lawyer, she graduated magna cum laude in three years from the University of Pennsylvania and cum laude from its law school, where she taught Justice & Fiction. There are 30 million copies of her books in print, and she is published in 35 countries. She lives on a Pennsylvania farm with an array of disobedient pets, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

Kaira Rouda is an award-winning, USA Today and Amazon Charts bestselling author of contemporary fiction that explores what goes on beneath the surface of seemingly perfect lives. She is a founding member of the Killer Author Club, a bi-monthly live show supporting authors. She is also a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Women's Fiction Author Association, and the International Thriller Writers Association. She lives in Southern California with her family.

Ruth Ware worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language, and a press officer before settling down as a full-time writer. She now lives with her family in Sussex, on the south coast of England. She is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail (Toronto) bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood; The Woman in Cabin 10; The Lying Game; The Death of Mrs. Westaway; The Turn of the Key; One by One; The It Girl; Zero Days; One Perfect Couple; and The Woman in Suite 11. Visit her at RuthWare.com or follow her on socials @RuthWareWriter.

Joe Pan is the author of five poetry books and founder of Brooklyn Arts Press, one of the smallest independent houses ever honored with a National Book Award in Poetry, and publisher of Augury Books, honored with a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. His writing has appeared in the Boston Review, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, and Poets & Writers, and he’s been profiled by Publishers Weekly, The Rumpus, and The Wall Street Journal. He grew up along the Space Coast of Florida and now lives in Los Angeles. With his wife he cofounded BAH, an activist group that serves unhoused populations with sleeping bags and goods. Florida Palms is his debut novel.

Eli Cranor is a nationally bestselling, Edgar Award–winning author who played quarterback at every level: peewee to professional. These days, he serves as the “Writer in Residence” at Arkansas Tech, where he also lends his eye—and sometimes, his arm—to the university’s football team. Eli’s column, “Where I’m Writing From,” appears weekly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His previous works include Don’t Know Tough, Ozark Dogs, and Broiler.

Karin Slaughter is one of the world’s most popular storytellers. She is the author of more than twenty instant New York Times bestselling novels, including the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and standalone novels The Good Daughter and Pretty Girls. An internationally bestselling author, Slaughter is published in 120 countries with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. Pieces of Her is now a #1 Netflix original series, Will Trent is now on ABC and streaming on Hulu, The Good Daughter will soon be a limited series starring Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy, and further projects are in development. Karin Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta.

Randy Wayne White is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Doc Ford series. In 2011, White was named a Florida Literary Legend by the Florida Heritage Society. A fishing and nature enthusiast, he has also written extensively for National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal, Playboy and Men's Health. He lives on Sanibel Island, Florida, where he was a light-tackle fishing guide for many years, and spends much of his free time windsurfing, playing baseball and hanging out at Doc Ford's Rum Bar & Grille. Sharks Incorporated is his middle grade series, including Fins and Stingers.

Richard Armitage, author of Geneva, is a multi-award winning stage, screen, and voice actor best known for his roles in Peter Jackson's trilogy of The Hobbit, Captain America, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Ocean's 8. The Cut is his second novel. Richard divides his time between London and New York.

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