June 4, 7 PM ET
Join authors Andrea Bartz, Mark Greaney, Katherine Reay, and Nick Medina along with Back Room hosts Karen Dionne and Hank Phillippi Ryan for an evening of great conversation!
The Authors
Andrea Bartz is a Brooklyn-based journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of We Were Never Here, The Lost Night, The Herd, and the forthcoming novel The Spare Room.
Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, Vogue, and many other outlets, and she’s held editorial positions at Glamour, Psychology Today, and Self, among other publications.
Learn more at andreabartz.com.
Mark Greaney is the #1 New York Times bestseller of the Gray Man series, the most recent of which, Burner, was released in 2023.
He is also the author or coauthor of seven Tom Clancy Jack Ryan novels, as well as the coauthor of Red Metal, with Hunter Ripley Rawlings, and the author of Armored, a Josh Duffy novel.
Mark lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee . Learn more at MarkGreaneyBooks.com.
Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels, including The Printed Letter Bookshop, The London House, and A Shadow in Moscow. She has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books and brings that love to her stories.
Katherine has also written one full-length nonfiction work, Awful Beautiful Life. She holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University and — after living all across the country and abroad — currently resides outside Chicago, IL.
When not writing, Katherine hosts the What the Dickens Book Club on Facebook and weekly chats with authors and booksellers at The 10 Minute Book Talk on Instagram. But if she’s really lucky, you’ll find her fly fishing and hiking in Montana. Learn more at www.katherinereay.com.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Nick Medina has gone in search of Resurrection Mary, the “Italian Bride,” the “Devil Baby,” and other Windy City ghosts. An enthusiast of local and Native lore, his debut novel, Sisters of the Lost Nation, features several supernatural myths and legends.
In addition to exploring haunted cemeteries, he enjoys playing guitar, reading, listening to classic rock, and spending time with family.
Learn more at nickmedina.net.
Authors’ Books
The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz
Kelly’s new life in Philadelphia has turned into a nightmare: She’s friendless and jobless, and the lockdown has her trapped in a tiny apartment with the man she gave up everything for, who’s just called off their wedding. The only bright spot is her newly rekindled friendship with her childhood friend Sabrina–now a glamorous bestselling author with a handsome, high-powered husband.
When Sabrina and Nathan offer Kelly an escape hatch, volunteering the spare room of their remote Virginia mansion, she jumps at the chance to run away from her old life. There, Kelly secretly finds herself falling for both her enchanting hosts–until one night, a wild and unexpected threesome leads the couple to open their marriage for her.
At first, Kelly loves being part of this risqué new world. But when she discovers that the last woman they invited into their marriage is missing, she starts to wonder if they could be dangerous . . . and if she might be next.
Purchase online at www.bookshop.org.
Burner by Mark Greaney
When you kick over a rock, you never know what’s going to crawl out.
Alex Velesky is about to discover that the hard way. He’s stolen records from the Swiss bank that employs him, thinking that he’ll uncover a criminal conspiracy. But he soon finds that he’s tapped into the mother lode of corruption. Before he knows it, he’s being hunted by everyone from the Russian mafia to the CIA.
Court Gentry and his erstwhile lover, Zoya Zakharova, find themselves on opposites poles when it comes to Velesky. They both want him but for different reasons.
That’s a problem for tomorrow. Today they need to keep him and themselves alive. Right now, it’s not looking good.
Purchase online at www.bookshop.org.
A Shadow in Moscow by Katherine Reay
Vienna, 1954
After losing everyone she loves in the final days of World War II, Ingrid Bauer agrees to a hasty marriage with a gentle Soviet embassy worker and follows him home to Moscow. But nothing deep within the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime is what it seems, including her new husband, whom Ingrid suspects works for the KGB. Upon her daughter’s birth, Ingrid risks everything and reaches out in hope to the one country she understands and trusts–Britain, the country of her mother’s birth–and starts passing along intelligence to MI6, navigating a world of secrets and lies, light and shadow.
Washington, DC, 1980
Part of the Foreign Studies Initiative, Anya Kadinova finishes her degree at Georgetown University and boards her flight home to Moscow, leaving behind the man she loves and a country she’s grown to respect. Though raised by dedicated and loyal Soviet parents, Anya soon questions an increasingly oppressive and paranoid Soviet regime at the height of the Cold War. When the KGB murders her bestfriend, Anya picks sides and contacts the CIA. Working in a military research lab, Anya passes along Soviet military plans and schematics in an effort to end the 1980s arms race.
Alternating points of view keep readers on their toes as the past catches up to the present when an unprecedented act of treachery in 1985 threatens all undercover agents operating within the Soviet Union, and both Ingrid and Anya find themselves in a race for their lives against time and the KGB.
Purchase online at www.bookshop.org.
Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina
Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation’s casino…and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step–an ancient tribal myth come-to-life, one that’s intent on devouring her whole.
With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she’s sure lies in the legends of her tribe’s past.
When Anna’s own little sister also disappears, she’ll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation–both ancient and new–are strong, and sometimes, it’s the stories that never get told that are the most important.
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 soon to be 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 14 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. 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 The House Guest – a story of psychological manipulation exploring the dark heart of marriage and friendship—it’s Gaslight meets Thelma & Louise. Publishers Weekly says, “Ryan is a master of suspense!” and the Library Journal starred review calls it “Binge-worthy.”
Purchase The House Guest online at www.bookshop.org.
