October 29, 7 PM ET
Thanks to authors Brian Andrews, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Paula Munier, and William Kent Krueger along with Back Room host Hank Phillippi Ryan for an evening of great conversation!
“It was so much fun! The time flew by.”
The Authors
Brian Andrews is a US Navy veteran, nuclear engineer, and former submarine officer. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in psychology, holds a Master’s in business from Cornell, and is a Park Leadership Fellow.
Brian co-authors the Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon best-selling TIER ONE thriller series with Jeffrey Wilson. Starting 2021, he and Jeff have been tapped to write the W.E.B Griffin Presidential Agent Series.
Learn more at www.brianandrewsauthor.com
William Kent Krueger is the author of the New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor mystery series, set in the great Northwoods of Minnesota. His work has received the Edgar Award, Macavity Award, multiple Anthony, Barry, and Dilys Awards, the Friends of the American Writers Prize, and has been translated into more than twenty languages.
He lives in Saint Paul and does all his creative writing in local, author-friendly coffee shops. His most recent novel This Tender Land has spent more than three months on the New York Time bestseller list. Visit his website at williamkentkrueger.com.
Paula Munier is the USA Today bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones, the first in the series, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search was inspired by the real-life rescue of a little boy with autism who got lost in the woods. The Hiding Place debuts in March 2021.
Paula credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep love of New England as her series’ major influences. Paula has also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Fixing Freddie and Happier Every Day. Visit her website at paulamunier.com.
Julia Spencer-Fleming is The New York Times bestselling author of One Was A Soldier, and an Agatha, Anthony, Dilys, Barry, Macavity, and Gumshoe Award winner. She studied acting and history at Ithaca College and received her J.D. at the University of Maine School of Law.
Her books have been shortlisted for the Edgar, Nero Wolfe, and Romantic Times RC awards. Julia lives in a 190-year-old farmhouse in southern Maine.
Learn more at us.macmillan.com/author/juliaspencerfleming
Your Host
Hank Phillippi Ryan is the USA Today bestselling author of eleven award winning novels of suspense. National reviews have called her a “master at crafting suspenseful mysteries” and “a superb and gifted storyteller.” Her 2020 book is The First to Lie. The Publishers Weekly Starred Review calls it “Stellar.” Hank is also an award-winning investigative reporter at Boston’s WHDH-TV.
In addition to 36 EMMYs and 14 Edward R. Murrow awards, Hank’s won dozens of other honors for her ground-breaking journalism. Hank is a founding teacher at Mystery Writers of America University and served as 2013 president of national Sisters in Crime. She blogs at Jungle Red Writers and Career Authors. Learn more about Hank at www.HankPhillippiRyan.com.
Authors’ Books
Collateral (Tier One Thrillers Book 6) by Bryan Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson
After a surprise assault on Task Force Ember’s secret compound in Virginia by Russian covert operators, John Dempsey and his teammates are mourning their dead and trying to put the pieces back together. But in the ever-evolving world of shadow warfare, there is no respite for heroes or victims. Russian spymaster Arkady Zhukov, the mind behind the attack on Ember, has a new and devastating agenda–directing false flag operations to destabilize Ukraine and enable Russia to seize control of the Black Sea.
The American President designates Arkady and his Zetas a clear and present danger to the United States. Dempsey and his team are tasked to systematically eliminate each and every Zeta agent around the globe. But when American and Russian covert operations collide in Kiev, the “new Cold War” goes from a simmer to a boil. Escalation ensues, bringing America and her allies to the brink of world war. Unless Dempsey and Task Force Ember can derail Russia’s secret plans, the collateral damage could bring the world to its knees.
This Tender Land by William Kent Kruger
In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota’s Gilead River, Odie O’Banion is an orphan confined to the Lincoln Indian Training School, a pitiless place where his lively nature earns him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee after committing a terrible crime, he and his brother, Albert, their best friend, Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.
Over the course of one summer, these four orphans journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.
Purchase This Tender Land at an independent bookstore near you.
Purchase This Tender Land online at www.bookshop.org.
Blind Search by Paula Munier
It’s October, hunting season in the Green Mountains—and the Vermont wilderness has never been more beautiful or more dangerous. Especially for nine-year-old Henry, who’s lost in the woods. Again. Only this time he sees something terrible. When a young woman is found shot through the heart with a fatal arrow, Mercy thinks that something is murder. But Henry, a math genius whose autism often silences him when he should speak up most, is not talking.
Now there’s a murderer hiding among the hunters in the forest—and Mercy and Elvis must team up with their crime-solving friends, game warden Troy Warner and search-and-rescue dog Susie Bear, to find the killer—before the killer finds Henry. When an early season blizzard hits the mountains, cutting them off from the rest of the world, the race is on to solve the crime, apprehend the murderer, and keep the boy safe until the snowplows get through.
Purchase Blind Search at an independent bookstore near you.
Purchase Blind Search online at www.bookshop.org.
The First to Lie by Hank Phillippi RyanWe all have our reasons for being who we are―but what if being someone else could get you what you want? After a devastating betrayal, a young woman sets off on an obsessive path to justice, no matter what dark family secrets are revealed.
What she doesn’t know―she isn’t the only one plotting revenge. An affluent daughter of privilege. A glamorous manipulative wannabe. A determined reporter, in too deep. A grieving widow who has to choose her new reality. Who will be the first to lie? And when the stakes are life and death, do a few lies really matter?
Purchase The First to Lie at an independent bookstore near you.
Purchase The First to Lie online at www.bookshop.org.
Hid from Our Eyes by Julia Spencer-Fleming
1952. Millers Kill Police Chief Harry McNeil is called to a crime scene where a woman in a party dress has been murdered with no obvious cause of death.
1972. Millers Kill Police Chief Jack Liddle is called to a murder scene of a woman that’s very similar to one he worked as a trooper in the 50s. The only difference is this time, they have a suspect. Young Vietnam War veteran Russ van Alstyne found the body while riding his motorcycle and is quickly pegged as the prime focus of the investigation.
Present-day. Millers Kill Police Chief Russ van Alstyne gets a 911 call that a young woman has been found dead in a party dress, the same MO as the crime he was accused of in the 70s. The pressure is on for Russ to solve the murder before he’s removed from the case.
Purchase Hid from Our Eyes at an independent bookstore near you.
Purchase Hid from Our Eyes online at www.bookshop.org.
