February 4, 7 PM ET
Join authors Rachel Howzell Hall, Laurie King, Ritu Mukerji, and Jonathan Santlofer along with Back Room hosts Karen Dionne and Hank Phillippi Ryan for an evening of great conversation!
The Authors
Rachel Howzell Hall is the critically acclaimed author and a two-time Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist of the Amazon Charts- and Wall Street Journal bestseller, We Lie Here and And Now She’s Gone, which was also nominated for the Lefty-, Barry- and Anthony Awards. A New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister with James Patterson, Rachel is an Anthony-, International Thriller Writers- and Lefty Award nominee and the author of They All Fall Down, Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series as well as the author of the bestselling Audible Original, How It Ends.
Rachel is a former member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America and has been a featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers Programs.
She lives in L.A. with her husband and daughter. Learn more at rachelhowzell.com.
Laurie King is the New York Times bestselling author of 30 novels and other works, including the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was named one of the “20th Century’s Best Crime Novels” by the IMBA, and Laurie has won the Agatha, Anthony, Creasey, Edgar, Lambda, Macavity, Wolfe, and Romantic Times Career Achievement awards, as well as having an honorary doctorate in theology and being a Baker Street Irregular.
In 2022, she was named Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America. She co-edited (with Lee Child) the Mystery Writers of America handbook, How to Write a Mystery, and has a new contemporary series with SFPD Inspector Raquel Laing. The Lantern’s Dance is the eighteenth in the Russell and Holmes series.
Learn more at laurierking.com.
Ritu Mukerji was born in India and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. From a young age, she has been an avid reader of mysteries, from Golden Age crime fiction to police procedurals and the novels of PD James and Ruth Rendell.
She received a BA in history from Columbia University and a medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. She completed residency training at the University of California, Davis and has been a practicing internist for fifteen years.
She lives in Marin County, California, with her husband and three children.
Learn more at ritumukerji.com.
Jonathan Santlofer is the author of the bestselling “The Last Mona Lisa,” and six other novels, among them the international bestseller “The Death Artist,” and the Nero award-winning “Anatomy of Fear.” His memoir “The Widower’s Notebook” appeared on over a dozen ‘Best Books of 2018’ lists and was a featured segment on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
He is the editor of seven anthologies, including The New York Times notable book “It Occurs to Me that I Am America.” His short stories have appeared in numerous story collections. Santlofer created and co-founded Crime Fiction Academy at New York’s Center for Fiction, the only writing program devoted exclusively to crime writing. For many years he has taught Creative Writing, Crime Fiction Writing, and the Illustrated Novel at Pratt Institute.
He is the recipient of two National Endowment for Arts grants, has been a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, the Vermont Studio Center, and serves on the board of Yaddo, the oldest arts community in the U.S. His latest novel “The Lost Van Gogh” will be published in January 2024. He lives in NYC where he is at work on a new novel. Learn more at jonathansantlofer.com.
Authors’ Books
The Last One by Rachel Howzell Hall
The Witcher meets N.K. Jemisin in a new series from NYT bestselling author Rachel Howzell Hall where a young woman awakens in a field with no memory and learns that the world is dying—and that she is the only one who can save it from an evil, destructive force…herself.
Purchase online at www.bookshop.org.
The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie King
After their recent adventures in Transylvania, Russell and Holmes look forward to spending time with Holmes’ son, the famous artist Damian Adler, and his family. But when they arrive at Damian’s house, they discover that the Adlers have fled from a mysterious threat. Holmes rushes after Damian while Russell, slowed down by a recent injury, stays behind to search the empty house. In Damian’s studio, she discovers four crates packed with memorabilia related to Holmes’ granduncle, the artist Horace Vernet. It’s an odd mix of treasures and clutter, including a tarnished silver lamp with a rotating shade: an antique yet sophisticated form of zoetrope, fitted with strips of paper whose images dance with the lantern’s spin.
In the same crate is an old journal written in a nearly impenetrable code. Intrigued, Russell sets about deciphering the intricate cryptograph, slowly realizing that each entry is built around an image–the first of which is a child, bundled into a carriage by an abductor, watching her mother recede from view. Russell is troubled, then entranced, but each entry she decodes brings more questions. Who is the young Indian woman who created this elaborate puzzle? What does she have to do with Damian, or the Vernets–or the threat hovering over the house?
The secrets of the past appear to be reaching into the present. And it seems increasingly urgent that Russell figure out how the journal and lantern are related to Damian–and possibly to Sherlock Holmes himself. Could there be things about his own history that even the master detective does not perceive?
Purchase online at www.bookshop.org.
Murder by Degrees by Ritu Mukerji
Philadelphia, 1875: It is the start of term at Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lydia Weston, professor and anatomist, is immersed in teaching her students in the lecture hall and hospital. When the body of a patient, Anna Ward, is dredged out of the Schuylkill River, the young chambermaid’s death is deemed a suicide. But Lydia is suspicious and she is soon brought into the police investigation.
Aided by a diary filled with cryptic passages of poetry, Lydia discovers more about the young woman she thought she knew. Through her skill at the autopsy table and her clinical acumen, Lydia draws nearer the truth. Soon a terrible secret, long hidden, will be revealed. But Lydia must act quickly, before she becomes the next target of those who wished to silence Anna.
Purchase online at www.bookshop.org.
The Lost Van Gogh by Jonathan Santlofer
For years, there have been whispers that, before his death, Van Gogh completed a final self-portrait. Curators and art historians have savored this rumor, hoping it could illuminate some of the troubled artist’s many secrets, but even they have to concede that the missing painting is likely lost forever.
But when Luke Perrone, artist and great-grandson of the man who stole the Mona Lisa, and Alexis Verde, daughter of a notorious art thief, discover what may be the missing portrait, they are drawn into a most epic art puzzles. When only days later the painting disappears again, they are reunited with INTERPOL agent John Washington Smith in a dangerous and deadly search that will not only expose secrets of the artist’s last days but draws them into one of history’s darkest eras.
Beneath the paint and canvas, beneath the beauty and the legend, the artwork has become linked with something evil, something that continues to flourish on the dark web and on the shadiest corridors of the underground art world.
Purchase online at www.bookshop.org.
Your Hosts
Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of two psychological suspense novels set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness, The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister, both published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the US and in dozens of other languages.
Praised by The New York Times Book Review as “subtle, brilliant, and mature,” The Marsh King’s Daughter is now a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn.
Visit Karen at www.karen-dionne.com
Karen’s newest novel is The Wicked Sister. “Dionne paints a haunting portrait of a family hurtling toward the tragic destiny they can foresee but are powerless to stop.”–Publishers Weekly (starred review; best book of 2020)
Purchase The Wicked Sister online at www.bookshop.org.
Hank Phillippi Ryan is the USA Today bestselling author of 15 psychological thrillers, winning the genre’s most prestigious awards: five Agathas, five Anthonys, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. She’s also investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV, winning 37 EMMYs for her groundbreaking journalism. National book reviewers call her “a superb and gifted storyteller.”
Hank is the co-host of The Back Room and First Chapter Fun, as well as host of her CRIME TIME interview show on A Mighty Blaze. She lives with her husband, a criminal defense and civil rights attorney, in Boston.
Learn more at www.HankPhillippiRyan.com.
Her newest is the page-turning standalone ONE WRONG WORD – taut and tense psychological drama exploring gossip, rumor, greed and revenge. Two smart women face off in a high-stakes psychological cat and mouse game to prove their truth about a devastating betrayal—but which woman is the cat, and which woman is the mouse? Publishers Weekly says “Ryan is a master of suspense!”
Purchase One Wrong Word online at www.bookshop.org.
