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Ariel Lawhon is a rising star in the realm of historical fiction. Her first forays into the popular genre include The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (2014), which explores one of the most mysterious missing persons cases of the twentieth century as told from the perspectives of the three women who knew the victim best. The New York Times Book Review praised Lawhon’s woven narrative as “more meticulously choreographed than a chorus line.” Her 2016 follow-up, Flight of Dreams, breathes new life into the famous Hindenburg and the deadly 1937 air disaster that claimed 36 lives in rural New Jersey. Lawhon’s greatly anticipated 2018 release, I Was Anastasia, follows the life of Anna Anderson, an enigmatic woman who spent half a century battling to be recognized as the lost Russian princess Anastasia Romanov. Notes publisher Doubleday: “Lawhon wades into the most psychologically complex and emotionally compelling territory: the nature of identity itself.” I Was Anastasia hit shelves in March.

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Laura Lippman is author of the chart-topping Tess Monaghan series. Plucky, resourceful Baltimore private eye Tess Monaghan is a consistent New York Times bestseller, and the dozen installments so far have garnered Lippman an international following. She has also published ten standalone books, including the acclaimed Every Secret Thing (2004) and After I’m Gone (2014), and an intertwined anthology called Hardly Knew Her (2006). Lippman’s mysteries have won her a staggering number of industry honors, including the Shamus Award, Edgar Award, and seven Anthony Awards. Her latest departure from Tess Monaghan, Sunburn, is a psychological thriller about a pair of lovers with dark secrets and darker intentions. In a starred review, Booklist lauds Sunburn as “an homage to classic noir, showcasing a writer at the height of her powers.” Library Journal concurs, promising “it will delight old-movie lovers, and reward Lippman’s legion of fans.” It hit shelves in late February.

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Minnesota boasts more than its share of homegrown mystery novelists, and William Kent Krueger ranks near the top of that list for many. He is best known for his sixteen-book Cork O’Connor series, set in the state’s forested and isolated Arrowhead Region. O’Connor, a cop turned sheriff and private investigator, burst onto the scene in Iron Lake (1998). This debut won Krueger a rare honor: both the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel. Subsequent installments have won too many honors to name, including five Minnesota Book Awards. Moreover, Krueger has penned two acclaimed standalone novels: The Devil’s Bed (2001) and Ordinary Grace (2013). O’Connor’s sixteenth and latest adventure, Sulfur Springs, offers a departure from the verdant Northwoods setting readers associate with the series. After receiving a cryptic voicemail from his stepson, Krueger’s dogged protagonist travels to Arizona – and finds himself embroiled with the area’s dangerous drug cartels. The Star Tribune lauds it as “a blistering Wild West mystery.”

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Edward Kelsey Moore is the pen behind 2014’s breakout hit The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. Moore’s debut follows three life-long friends – dubbed “The Supremes” while in high school – as they navigate four decades of life’s challenges. It garnered Moore a Best First Novel Award from the American Library Association – Black Caucus, among other high honors. The Supremes also boasted an impressive run on The New York Times Bestseller List, and has been optioned by Fox Searchlight Pictures for a motion picture. His anticipated follow-up, The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues, hit shelves in June. Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean are back in this sequel adventure that BookPage lauds as “an uplifting read which tugs at readers’ heartstrings and elicits enthusiastic chuckles in equal measure… sure to satisfy fans while welcoming new ones to the fold with open arms.” In addition to his career as a novelist, Edward Kelsey Moore is also a nationally renowned cellist and accomplished music essayist.

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Lawyer-turned-novelist Allen Eskens burst onto the thrillers scene in 2014 with his “compulsively suspenseful” (Bookpage) mystery The Life We Bury. This literary debut won the former defense attorney the genre’s prestigious Barry Award, the Rosebud Award for Best First Novel – and put him in contention for an Edgar Award, an Anthony Award, and half a dozen others. The Life We Bury has since been published in sixteen languages and optioned for a feature film adaptation. Eskens’ follow-ups, The Guise of Another (2015) and The Heavens May Fall (2016), follow some of the same characters. The latter won the 2017 Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction. Eskens’ newest book, The Deep Dark Descending, debuted in October. It centers around homicide detective Max Rupert – a protagonist already known to Eskens fans – as the veteran cop struggles to balance his professional integrity with a desire for personal vengeance after the shocking revelation that the hit-and-run accident that killed his wife was no accident after all.

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Acclaimed writer and prison reform advocate Heather Ann Thompson, PhD, is the winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History. Thompson won that high honor for Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Rebellion of 1971 and its Legacy – the first definitive account of our country’s largest and most notorious prison rebellion. In addition to the Pulitzer, the 2016 title also garnered Dr. Thompson the Bancroft Prize in American History and put her in the running for a National Book Award and the prestigious Los Angeles Book Prize. Furthermore, over a dozen publications – including The New York Times, Bloomberg, Newsweek, and Publishers Weekly – singled out Blood in the Water for their “Top 10 Books of the Year” lists. TriStar Pictures recently optioned Blood in the Water for adaptation into a feature film penned by Hollywood screenwriters Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel. Heather Ann Thompson is a native of Detroit and professor at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. Her previous, book-length research projects include Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City.

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Shawn Lawrence Otto is a science activist and two-time Minnesota Book Award winner. His nonfiction debut, Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America (2012), is a meticulously researched exposé on the growing anti-science movement – a book that “every voter in the country should read it,” according to MinnPost. Otto’s provocative 2016 follow-up, The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It, is “an essential work, a game changer, and probably the most important book you’ll read this year,” lauds ScienceBlogs. Otto is a co-founder of Science Debate, a grassroots movement dedicated to ensuring that candidates for public office address hot-button science and technology issues. He is a regular contributor to Huffington Post, Salon, Scientific American, and other outlets. In addition to his advocacy work, Shawn Otto has penned a well-received novel, Sins of Our Fathers (2014), and wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-nominated film House of Sand and Fog.

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Minnesota boasts its fair share of thriller novelists, but few are as prolific as David Housewright. Intrepid ex-cop Holland Taylor, Housewright’s original protagonist, first came to the attention of readers in his 1995 debut, Penance. It earned the author the 1996 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and put him in contention for that year’s Shamus Award (bestowed by the Private Eye Writers of America). Housewright’s follow-up, Practice to Deceive (1997), garnered him his first Minnesota Book Award. Jelly’s Gold (2010) and Curse of the Jade Lily (2013), two books in the fourteen-installment Rushmore “Mac” McKenzie series, earned him two more – putting him in a rare company. His latest, What the Dead Leave Behind, follows the Saint Paul private investigator as he takes on the case of an unsolved murder in New Brighton that – like so many of the Twin Cities area crimes Mac investigates – is more than it first seems. Not mincing words, Publishers Weekly warns readers that they will find What the Dead Leave Behind: “Nearly impossible to put down.” It hit shelves in June.

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