Biographical note

This collaboration between twenty-two of the world's bestselling crime writers is edited by Lee Child. Sandra Brown is the author of sixty-eight New York Times bestsellers, including Mean Streak, Deadline, Low Pressure, and Smoke Screen. Brown began her writing career in 1981 and since then has published over seventy novels, most of which remain in print. Sandra and her husband, Michael Brown, live in Arlington, Texas. Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into forty languages, and have sold over nineteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and in 2017 received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime, and was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Val has served as a judge for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates, is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford and a Professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She writes full time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife. X @valmcdermid Instagram @quineofcrime Peter James is an international bestselling thriller writer. He is a #1 Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and he is published in thirty-seven languages. His DS Roy Grace crime novels have sold 18 million copies worldwide. Prior to becoming a full-time author, he was responsible for twenty-five movies. In 1994 his novel Host was the world's first electronic novel, published on two floppy discs. He received the CWA Diamond Dagger in 2016. Michael Koryta is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve suspense novels. His books have won or been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Edgar® Award, Shamus Award, Barry Award, Quill Award, International Thriller Writers Award, and the CWA Gold Dagger. Michael has written for the screen in both feature film and television, writing scripts for Fox, Universal, and Amazon Studios. Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over thirty-five years. Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, she is the author of the Aurora Teagarden mysteries, basis for the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Aurora Teagarden original movies; the Midnight, Texas series, now airing on NBC; the Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasy series, basis for the HBO show True Blood; the Lily Bard mysteries; the Harper Connelly mysteries; and the co-author of the graphic novel trilogy Cemetery Girl. Harris now lives in Texas with her husband and two rescue dogs. With an ancestry stretching back to the Mayflower, Lara Adrian lives with her husband in coastal New England, surrounded by centuries-old graveyards, hip urban comforts and the endless inspiration of the dark Atlantic ocean. Christopher Rice's debut novel, A Density Of Souls, was published when the author was just twenty-two years old. A controversial and overnight bestseller, it was greeted with a landslide of media attention, much of it devoted to the fact that Christopher is the son of famed vampire chronicler, Anne Rice. Christopher has received a Lambda Literary Award and been declared one of People Magazine's Sexiest Men Alive. His two novels of dark supernatural suspense, The Heavens Rise and The Vines, were both finalists for the Bram Stoker Award. Nelson DeMille is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-one novels, including his most recent #1 New York Times bestseller, The Cuban Affair. Two of his novels, Mayday and Word of Honour, were made into TV movies, and The General's Daughter was made into a major motion picture starring John Travolta and Madeleine Stowe. He has written short stories, book reviews, and articles for magazines and newspapers. Nelson DeMille is a combat-decorated US Army veteran, a member of Mensa, Poets & Writers, and the Authors Guild, and a member and past president of the Mystery Writers of America. He is also a member of the International Thriller Writers, who honored him as 2015 Thriller Master of the Year. He lives on Long Island with his family.