Fall into Great Reading

October 18, 2026 at 7pm ET

Bruce Borgos
David Ellis
Heather B. Moore
Laura Joh Rowland

Oct 18 2026

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Bruce Borgos

Bruce Borgos is the author of the critically-acclaimed Porter Beck Mystery Series and two other novels. Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire mysteries, calls The Bitter Past “a crisp jolt of cask-strength, 100-proof writing.” Paula L. Woods with the LA Times says, “The Western thriller book canon expands to Nevada, with a touch of The Americans.” A Barry Award nominee, Bruce lives in Las Vegas with his wife Pam, a retired teacher and photographer.

The Riddle Maker

Porter Beck is the sheriff of Lincoln County, Nevada, a vast expanse of desert and mountains best known to the outside world for the top-secret installation called Area 51. Just down the highway sits a weathered mailbox where UFO believers leave messages for aliens. But this time, the message is for Beck.

It’s a riddle. And when Beck and his team decipher it, the answer leads them to the shrinking waters of Lake Mead and an oil drum chained to the bottom. Inside are the remains of someone missing for more than fifty years, someone tied to Beck by a thread of DNA stretching deep into his own past.

Enter Jett Lowell, a pint-sized but fearless FBI profiler who believes Beck’s riddle is connected to one she received seventeen years earlier, shortly before the disappearance of someone close to her.

Convinced they are hunting a serial killer, Beck and Jett follow a trail of riddles from the deserts of Nevada to the mountains of Arizona, and finally to the red rock wilderness of Utah, racing to uncover a chain of murders spanning generations before the killer unleashes a final, horrendous act decades in the making.

David Ellis

David Ellis is the Edgar-winning, bestselling author of 12 thrillers plus another 10 co-written with James Patterson. As a lawyer, he once served as the impeachment prosecutor who tried and convicted Governor Rod Blagojevich. He now serves as a Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court.

Keep Them Close

Siblings Allison and Luke have been through a lot together. They’ve always stood by each other. They’d do anything for each other.

Or so it seems.

When Allison’s husband, Finley, is murdered, the investigation threatens to expose the siblings’ darkest secrets. An illicit affair. A decades-old accident. A stunning deception. How do these events explain Finley’s death? How far will Allison and Luke go to keep their secrets buried? And can the siblings even trust one another anymore?

As the investigation winds tighter and past and present collide, the most shocking betrayal might lie a little too close to home…

Heather B. Moore

Heather B. Moore is a USA Today bestseller and award-winning author of more than ninety publications. Heather writes primarily historical and #herstory fiction about the humanity and heroism of the everyday person. Publishing in a breadth of genres, Heather dives into the hearts and souls of her characters, meshing her love of research with her love of storytelling.

Her historicals and thrillers are written under pen name H.B. Moore. She writes women’s fiction, romance and inspirational non-fiction under Heather B. Moore, and . . . speculative fiction under Jane Redd. This can all be confusing, so her kids just call her Mom. Heather attended Cairo American College in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. Despite failing her high school AP English exam, Heather persevered and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University in something other than English.

Her America: Eight Women Who Transformed the Nation

Her America recognizes eight remarkable women who refused to wait for permission to prove a woman’s worth in society. They fought for American independence, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and civil rights with their pens and their voices, empowered by their unwavering convictions and courage, to challenge the status quo. Through vivid fictional vignettes and meticulously researched nonfiction accounts, Her America immerses readers in these women’s crucial role in transforming this nation.

Laura Joh Rowland

Laura Joh Rowland is the author of two mystery series. The first, set in seventeenth-century Japan, chronicles the adventures of samurai detective Sano Ichiro. The second features photographer Sarah Bain and her motley crew in Victorian England. Her new book is a stand-alone thriller titled Resurrection Kill, set in upstate New York in 1953. Laura’s books have been published in fourteen countries and selected for The Wall Street Journal‘s list of top ten historical mysteries. Laura is also a painter and cartoonist, working on a graphic novel inspired by her Chinese-American family in Detroit in the 1940s. She lives in New York City.

Resurrection Kill

New York State, 1953. Dr. Claire Kendall is a psychiatrist-in-training at Resurrection Kill Hospital, a luxurious private and isolated mental institution for the wealthy. But under her mask of professionalism, Claire has a secret: She was a patient at the hospital when she was fourteen. 

With gaps in her memory, Claire is determined to discover what really happened the summer she was institutionalized—even if it means uncovering the dangerous secrets hiding at Resurrection Kill. Before long, Claire takes a special interest in a teenage patient, Rory Kirkpatrick—a free-spirited girl who is also determined to uncover Resurrection Kill Hospital’s dark past. Claire indulges Rory’s rebellious nature, hoping to glean clues that might help in her own search for the truth. 

But the hunt for answers triggers flashbacks of Claire’s painful childhood—her father’s cruelty, her mother’s alcoholism, her beloved older brother’s death. The deeper she probes her own past, the more she remembers about the summer that changed everything. And as she delves deeper into her own mind, she’ll come to find that her sanity grows more fragile by the day and that some secrets are meant to stay buried. She’ll discover that remembering may come at the cost of her life.

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The Back Room is the brainchild of bestselling authors Hank Phillippi Ryan and Karen Dionne. 

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