VaBook!

Participants - VABook! 2005

• fiction
• mystery & suspense
• nonfiction
• poetry & songwriting
• publishing & exhibitors
• youth & family

Mystery & Suspense
(aka: Crime Wave)

Donna Andrews' Owls Well That Ends Well is the sixth in her series featuring blacksmith Meg Langslow. Access Denied is third in her series featuring artificial intelligence personality Turing Hopper. Both are award-winning series. 3/19 4 p.m.

David Baldacci's latest thriller is Hour Game. He is the author of nine other thrillers and a coming of age novel--Wish You Well, selected by All America Reads to be read nationally by high school students. His work has been translated into 39 languages in more than 80 countries. 3/18 8 p.m.

Nero Blanc is the pseudonym for Cordelia Frances Biddle and Steve Zettler, collaborators on nine crossword mysteries, including Wrapped Up in Crosswords. 3/19 4 p.m.

Cordelia Biddle (a.k.a Nero Blank) has written other works including the historical dramas Beneath the Wind and the recently completed The Conjurer. She was an actress in New York. 3/19 4 p.m.

Sallie Bissell is the author of A Legacy of Masks, the fourth in a series of novels featuring the half-Cherokee prosecutor Mary Crow. Her first two novels received critical acclaim from Kirkus Review and Publishers Weekly. 3/19 10 a.m.

Michelle Blake is the author of The Book of Light, The Tentmaker and Earth Has No Sorrow, a mystery series featuring Episcopal priest Lily Connor. Like Lily, Blake was born in Texas and now lives outside Boston. 3/19 2 p.m.

Rhys Bowen is the author of For the Love of Mike, the fourth Molly Murphy mystery--a series that has garnered six awards including the prestigious Agatha and Anthony. She also writes the Constable Evans mysteries as well as award-winning short stories. 3/19 2 p.m.

Ellen Byerrum, author of Designer Knockoff, is a reporter in Washington, D.C. who holds a Virginia private investigator's registration. She's also a produced and published playwright, under the name Eliot Byerrum. Her first mystery, Killer Hair, introduced fashion sleuth Lacey Smithsonian. 3/19 10 a.m.

John Case is the pseudonym for Jim and Carolyn Hougan. 3/19 10 a.m.

Carol Higgins Clark, author of Burned, writes the Regan Reilly mystery series. Her first novel, Decked, was nominated for both the Agatha and Anthony Awards for best first novel. She has also written three holiday suspense novels with her mother, Mary Higgins Clark. 3/19 4 p.m.

Tracy Dunham is the author of Wishful, Sinful, the first in a new crime series. She is a retired lawyer and has previously published historical westerns. Her next book is called Yes, The River Knows. 3/19 4 p.m.

Laura Durham, author of Better Off Wed, is a professional wedding planner in Washington, D.C. She is consistently named the city's top planner by Washingtonian magazine, and like her book's protagonist, she has worked on some of D.C.'s grandest weddings. 3/19 10 a.m.

Kit Ehrman, author of Cold Burn, has written three books in the equine-oriented Steve Cline Mystery Series. She has worked at show barns and breeding farms in Maryland and Pennsylvania. 3/19 2 p.m.

Linda Fairstein, author of Entombed, is a graduate of Vassar College and the UVa School of Law. Her work as bureau chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit of the New York County District AttorneyÕs Office earned her several ÒWoman of the YearÓ awards. 3/18 8 p.m.; 3/19 noon

Jerrilyn Farmer's The Flaming Luau of Death is the seventh in the #1 best-selling, award-winning series featuring event-planner Madeline Bean. Farmer also writes for television and teaches mystery writing at UCLA. 3/19 10 a.m.

Chris Freeburn, author of Dying for Redemption, is a former JAG Army specialist and paralegal. Redemption introduces Callous, a PI who proves sometimes the best detective is a dead one. Freeburn also writes mysteries focusing on the social elements of law enforcement and crime. 3/19 2 p.m.


Kevin Guilfoile's first novel is Cast of Shadows. He is also the author of My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook by George W. Bush, and has written for McSweeney’s, Salon, and The New Republic. He lives in Chicago with his wife and child. 3/19 2 p.m., 4 p.m.

John R. Hanny, author of Asleep at the Wheel, also wrote Secrets from the White House Kitchen, a cookbook. He was a food and wine consultant at the White House, and is currently working on a new political thriller. 3/19 10 a.m.

Willetta L. Heising is the author of Detecting Women and Detecting Men. Her Guide to Police Detective Series will be available this summer, followed by a fourth edition of Detecting Women next year. 3/27 10 a.m., 2 p.m.

Rupert Holmes's novels are Where the Truth Lies and Swing. He received several Tony Awards for his musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and two Edgars for his Broadway thrillers.. He created and wrote the Emmy Award-winning series "Remember WENN," and the play Say Goodnight Gracie. 3/19 2 p.m., 4 p.m.

Jim Hougan is an investigative reporter and a former Washington editor of Harper's Magazine. He has also written a novel of conspiracy, Kingdom Come, while collaborating with his wife, Carolyn, to pen five thrillers as "John Case." The Murder Artist is their most recent book. 3/19 10 a.m.

Carolyn Hougan writes thrillers. After penning four novels of suspense on her own (including Blood Relatives), she teamed up with husband Jim to write as John Case. "John Case" is New York Times bestselling author of five thrillers including the Genesis Code. 3/19 10 a.m.

S. W. Hubbard, author of Swallow the Hook, is an avid hiker and canoeist, who has spent many happy hours exploring the High Peaks area of the Adirondacks, the setting for her Frank Bennett mystery series. 3/19 2 p.m.

Susan S. James is the author of The Belles of Solace Glen and The Siren of Solace Glen. She has taught English and practiced law. Married to an attorney, she is a stepmother and the mother of a son and a daughter. 3/19 10 a.m.

Christopher Klim, author of The Winner's Circle, Firecracker Jones Is on the Case, Everything Burns and Jesus Lives in Trenton, and is a space-physicist-turned-author, teacher, and magazine entrepreneur/editor (Writers Notes Magazine). 3/19 4 p.m.

Con Lehane, author of What Goes Around Comes Around, won a 2002 Publishers Weekly Best Mystery Novel award for his first bartender Brian McNulty novel, Beware the Solitary Drinker. He has been a college professor, a union organizer, and a bartender. 3/19 2 p.m.

Laura Lippman is the author of eleven novels, the latest of which is By a Spider's Thread. A veteran journalist, she also writes for the Baltimore Sun. 3/19 4 p.m.

Rosemary Martin, author of It's a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod Murder, is the pseudonym for Rosemary Stevens, an Agatha and Romantic Times Award-winning author. "Mod" is the first in a new mystery series, set in l964. 3/19 2 p.m.

Susan McBride is the author of The Good GirlÕs Guide to Murder, second of her Debutante Dropout Mysteries following Blue Blood. Good Girl was on the BookSense "We Also Recommend" list and is a Mystery Guild featured alternate selection. 3/19 10 a.m.

Tom Nolan is the author of the Edgar Award-nominated Ross Macdonald: A Biography and editor of the just-published The Couple Next Door: Collected Short Mysteries by Margaret Millar. He reviews crime fiction for the Wall Street Journal. 3/18 8 p.m., 3/19 10 a.m., 2 p.m.

Benjamin M. Schutz is the author of the thriller, The Mongol Reply, set in Northern Virginia. His novel, A Tax in Blood won the Shamus for Best Novel. He is also a nationally known author on child custody evaluations. 3/19 10 a.m.

Jenny Siler, author of Flashback, has travelled widely and worked as, among other things, a salmon grader, grape picker, furniture mover, forklift driver, and bartender. She now lives in Lexington, Virginia with her husband and daughter, and writes full time. 3/19 4 p.m.

Andy Straka is the Shamus Award-winning author of three novels, A Witness Above, A Killing Sky, and Cold Quarry, featuring Charlottesville private eye and falconer Frank Pavlicek. His fourth Pavlicek novel, Kitty Hitter, is forthcoming. 3/16 4 p.m.; 3/19 Crime Wave and Young VA Writers conf.

Stephen White is the author of Missing Persons, the latest in the series of New York Times bestselling Alan Gregory novels. In his books, he draws upon over fifteen years of clinical practice as a psychologist. 3/19 2 p.m.

Steve Zettler (a.k.a Nero Blanc) wrote the thrillers The Second Man and Double Identity. He's also acted on the New York stage and in television. 3/19 4 p.m.