Spotlight Guests


2024 ThrillerMaster: Tess Gerritsen

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.

While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift”, which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.

Tess’s first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her books have been top-3 bestsellers in the United States and number one bestsellers abroad. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”.

Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles” starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.

She is also a filmmaker.  She and her son Josh have just completed production of a feature-length documentary, “Magnificent Beast,” about the ancient origins of the pig taboo. Their previous film, “Island Zero,” is a feature-length horror movie that was released in 2018.

Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.


2024 ThrillerMaster: Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane grew up in Boston. Since his first novel, A Drink Before the War, won the Shamus Award, he has published thirteen more novels that have been translated into more than 30 languages and become international bestsellers: Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; Mystic River; Shutter Island; The Given Day; Moonlight Mile; Live by Night; World Gone By; Since We Fell, and Small Mercies.

Four of his novels – Live by Night, Mystic River, Gone, Baby, Gone, and Shutter Island – have been adapted into films. A fifth, The Drop, was adapted by Lehane himself into a film starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini in his final role.  Lehane was a staff writer on the acclaimed HBO series, The Wire, and also worked as a writer-producer on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and the Netflix series, Bloodline. He was a writer-producer on the television adaptations of three Stephen King novels—Mr. Mercedes and End of Watch for DirecTV and The Outsider for HBO. He wrote and produced the acclaimed limited series Black Bird for Apple TV+ and is currently developing his next series for Apple.

Lehane and his family live in California.


2024 Silver Bullet Recipient: Louise Penny

Louise Penny is the author of the bestselling mystery series that features Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Incorporating elements of a cozy mystery, the character-driven books are carefully plotted whodunits that explore such universal themes as love, friendship, loss, and redemption.

From a young age, she wanted to be a writer, and while growing up she read classic mystery authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. She studied radio and television arts at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University; Bachelor of Applied Arts, 1979) and later joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), where she worked as a radio host and a journalist for 18 years.


2024 Spotlight Guest: Steph Cha

Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s a critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as noir editor, and is the current series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her family.


2024 Spotlight Guest: Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware is an international number one bestseller. Her thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game, The Death of Mrs Westaway, The Turn of the Key, One by One and The It Girl have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the Sunday Times and New York Times. Her books have been optioned for both film and TV, and she is published in more than 40 languages. Ruth lives near Brighton with her family.


2024 Thriller Fan: Ayo Onatade


2024 Thriller Legend: Audible


2023 ThrillerMaster: Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris was born in the Mississippi Delta. Her father was a farmer and then a school principal, and her mother was a librarian. Charlaine was educated at public schools and attended Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.

Two thousand twenty-one will mark Charlaine’s fortieth year as a published writer. She has written two stand-alones, and her series include the Aurora Teagarden mysteries, the Lily Bard mysteries, the Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasies, the Harper Connelly urban fantasies, the Midnight, Texas novels, the Cemetery Girl graphic novels (with Christopher Golden), and the Gunnie Rose books, set in an alternate history America. Charlaine has also written many short stories, and together with Toni L.P. Kelner she edited seven themed anthologies (and had great fun).

The television series “True Blood” was based on Charlaine’s Sookie Stackhouse novels. Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is still showing a series of movies created about the Aurora Teagarden character, and for two seasons “Midnight, Texas” was on the air. Two of her other series are in production.

Charlaine belongs to several professional organizations and is an avid reader. She and her husband live on a cliff overlooking the Brazos River with their rescue dogs. Charlaine has the joy of being a grandmother, and she attends the Episcopalian church.


2023 ThrillerMaster: Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America. He is the author of more than sixty critically acclaimed books that cover a wide range of ideas, genres, and forms including fiction (literary, mystery, and science fiction), political monographs, writing guides including Elements of Fiction, a memoir in paintings, and a young adult novel called 47. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages,

From a forthcoming collection of short stories, The Awkward Black Man, to his daring novel John Woman, which explored deconstructionist history, and his standalone crime novel Down the River and Unto the Sea, which won an Edgar Award for Best Novel, the rich storylines that Mosley has created deepen the understanding and appreciation of Black life in the United States. He has introduced an indelible cast of characters into the American canon starting with his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, which brought Easy Rawlins, his private detective in postwar Los Angeles and his friends Jackson Blue and Raymond “Mouse” Alexander into reader’s lives. Mosley has explored both large issues and intimate realities through the lens of characters like the Black philosopher Socrates Fortlow; the elder suffering from Alzheimer’s, Ptolemy Grey; the bluesman R L; the boxer and New York private investigator Leonid McGill; Debbie Dare, the porn star of Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore; and Tempest Landry and his struggling angel, among many others.

Mosley has also written and staged several plays including The Fall of Heaven, based on his Tempest Landry stories and directed by the acclaimed director Marion McClinton. Several of his books have been adapted for film and television including Devil in a Blue Dress (starring Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle and Jennifer Beals) and the HBO production of Always Outnumbered (starring Laurence Fishburne and Natalie Cole). His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction—long-form essays and op-eds—have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Nation among other publications. He is also a writer and an executive producer on the John Singleton FX drama series, “Snowfall.”

Concerned by the lack of diversity in all levels of publishing, Mosley established The Publishing Certificate Program with the City University of New York to bring together book professionals and students hailing from a wide range of racial, ethnic and economic communities for courses, internships, and job opportunities. In 2013, Mosley was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, The Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy®, several NAACP Image awards, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, he was named the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mosley now lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.


2023 Silver Bullet Award Recipient: Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly was born in Philadelphia, PA on July 21, 1956. He moved to Florida with his family when he was 12 years old. Michael decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.

After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat.  In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.

Michael is the bestselling author of thirty-six novels and one work of non-fiction. With over eighty million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into forty-five foreign languages, he is one of the most successful writers working today. His very first novel, The Black Echo, won the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly’s 1998 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of his #1 bestselling novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, hit theaters worldwide starring Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. His most recent #1 New York Times bestsellers include Dark Sacred Night, Two Kinds Of TruthThe Late Show, The Wrong Side Of GoodbyeThe CrossingThe Burning RoomThe Gods of Guilt, and The Black Box. Michael’s crime fiction career was honored with the Diamond Dagger from the CWA in 2018.

Michael is the executive producer of Bosch, an Amazon Studios original drama series based on his bestselling character Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver. Bosch streams on Amazon Prime Video. He is the creator and host of the podcast Murder Book. He is also the executive producer of the documentary films, Sound Of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story and Tales of the AmericanHe spends his time in California and Florida.


2023 Spotlight Guest: Jack Carr

Jack Carr led special operations teams as a Team Leader, Platoon Commander, Troop Commander and Task Unit Commander. Over his 20 years in Naval Special Warfare he transitioned from an enlisted SEAL sniper, to a junior officer leading assault and sniper teams in Iraq and Afghanistan, to a platoon commander practicing counterinsurgency in the southern Philippines, to commanding a Special Operations Task Unit in the most Iranian influenced section of southern Iraq throughout the tumultuous drawdown of U.S. Forces.


2023 Spotlight Guest: Oyinkan Braithwaite

Oyinkan Braithwaite is a graduate of Creative Writing and Law from Kingston University. Following her degree, she worked as an assistant editor at a Nigerian Publishing House and has been freelancing as a writer and graphic designer since. She has had short stories published in anthologies and has also self-published work.

In 2014, she was shortlisted as a top ten spoken word artist in the Eko Poetry Slam. In 2016, she was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

She is the author of My Sister, the Serial Killer, which won the 2019 LA Times Award for Best Crime Thriller, the 2019 Morning News Tournament of Books, the 2019 Amazon Publishing Reader’s Award for Best Debut Novel, the 2019 Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

It was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, shortlisted for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 in the Mystery & Thriller and Debut Novel categories, shortlisted for the British Book Awards 2020 in two categories, shortlisted for the Cameo Awards 2020 in the Book to Audio category, shortlisted for Book Bloggers’ Choice Awards 2020.

It was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2019, and longlisted for the 2020 Dublin Literary Award.

My Sister, the Serial Killer is being translated into 30 languages and has also been optioned for film.


2023 Thriller Legend: Minotaur Books

The Thriller Legend award was created to extend a special thank you to those who’ve made an extraordinary contribution to International Thriller Writers. People who’ve showed us consistent and unwavering support.


2023 Thriller Fan: John Berylson

He is the director of Youngworld Stores Group, Inc and Non Executive Chairman, Member of Audit Committee and Member of Remuneration Committee of Millwall Holdings PLC. Berylson has pumped an estimated £100m into the club.

He is a formerly active US Marine, and a passionate fan of the Boston Red Sox. He holds numerous Trustee positions; at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, The Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Brown University Sports Foundation, and he holds the position of Director at the Brown University Library System.


2022 ThrillerMaster: Diana Gabaldon

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling OUTLANDER novels, described by Salon magazine as “the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting ‘Scrooge McDuck’ comics.”

As of January, 2022, Diana’s books are published in thirty-eight languages and sold in one hundred and fourteen countries.

The adventure began in 1991 with the classic OUTLANDER (“historical fiction with a Moebius twist”), and has continued through eight more internationally bestselling novels in the series so far. These books feature the story of Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser and Jamie Fraser, and include elements of time travel and lots of real Scottish and American history.

The latest novel in Diana’s Outlander series of major novels is GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE, which was first published in the U.S.A., Canada, the U.K., and Germany on November 23, 2021. BEES debuted at number one on the New York Times list and is also an international bestseller. She is currently writing and doing the background research for Book Ten of the Outlander novels, as yet untitled.

Diana serves as a co-producer and advisor for the popular Outlander TV series, which is produced by the Starz network and Tall Ship Productions and distributed by Sony International. The show is an adaptation of her OUTLANDER series of novels. She has also written the scripts for several episodes and made a cameo appearance in the first season.

Lord John Grey (a major minor character from the Outlander series of novels, is featured in a novel, THE SCOTTISH PRISONER and short stories and novellas.

Diana has written a number of short stories and novellas that are related to her Outlander and Lord John works. Her Chronology of the Outlander Series webpage shows how the novels and short fiction are interwoven in time.

THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION, Volumes One and Two, are nonfiction (well, relatively) which provide details on the settings, background, characters, research, and writing of the first eight novels in the Outlander series of novels. Authorized publications by various authors have also celebrated the Outlander novels including a coloring book, cookbook, and others.

Returning to her comic-book roots, she wrote a graphic novel titled THE EXILE (set within the OUTLANDER universe and featuring the main characters from the novel OUTLANDER), but told from the viewpoint of Jamie Fraser and his godfather, Murtagh.

Dr. Diana J. Gabaldon holds three degrees in science: Zoology, Marine Biology, and a Ph.D. in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology. (Plus she was granted an honorary degree as Doctor of Humane Letters, which entitles her to be Diana Gabaldon, Ph.D., D.H.L.”  She supposes this is better than “Diana Gabaldon, Phd.X.”)

Diana worked a dozen years as a university professor before beginning to write her first novel, OUTLANDER, in 1989. Through the late 1980s, she wrote scientific articles and textbooks, worked as a contributing editor on the MacMillan ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMPUTERS, founded the scientific-computation journal SCIENCE SOFTWARE QUARTERLY, contributed articles to tech magazines such as INFOWORLD, and wrote numerous comic-book scripts for Walt Disney. None of this has anything whatever to do with her novels, but there it is.

Diana and her husband, Douglas Watkins, have three adult children, and two grandchildren.

A native of Flagstaff, Arizona, Diana wrote a touching story about her parents for an Arizona newspaper titled “Myth and Mountain Birthdays.”


2022 ThrillerMaster: Frederick Forsyth

Former RAF pilot and investigative journalist, Frederick Forsyth defined the modern thriller when he wrote The Day of The Jackal, described by Lee Child as ‘the book that broke the mould’, with its lightning-paced storytelling, effortlessly cool reality and unique insider information. Since then he has written twelve novels which have been bestsellers around the world: The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Devil’s Alternative, The Fourth Protocol, The Negotiator, The Deceiver, The Fist of God, Icon, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and, most recently, The Kill List. He lives in Buckinghamshire, England.


2022 Spotlight Guest: Alafair Burke

Alafair Burke is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of eighteen novels.

Her most recent psychological thriller, THE BETTER SISTER, has been praised as “twisty” (BookBub), “cunning” (Washington Post), “gripping” (Karin Slaughter), “mesmerizing” (Publishers Weekly), “sizzling” (South Florida Sun Sentinal) and “tantalizing” (Booklist).

Her previous novel, THE WIFE, was selected as a best-of-the-month pick by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Entertainment Weekly, O (Oprah Magazine), and others. It is being adapted as a feature film by Amazon Studios, with Alafair hired to write the screenplay.

Her novel, THE EX, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel.

In addition to the standalone novels that have earned her a reputation as “a genius for plot” (Oprah Magazine) and “a virtuoso” of domestic suspense (Minneapolis Star Tribune), she authors “two power house series” (Sun-Sentinel) featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and Portland Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid. Alafair is also the co-author of the “Under Suspicion” series with Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark.


2022 Spotlight Guest: Joseph Finder

Joseph Finder is the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen previous suspense novels, including THE SWITCH, THE FIXER and SUSPICION. He introduced “private spy” Nick Heller in VANISHED, an instant bestseller, and the continuing series includes BURIED SECRETS and GUILTY MINDS.

Joe’s novels HIGH CRIMES and PARANOIA have been adapted as major motion pictures. GUILTY MINDS and COMPANY MAN won the Barry Award for Best Thriller. An international bestseller, KILLER INSTINCT won the International Thriller Writers’ Thriller Award for Best Novel. BURIED SECRETS won the Strand Critics Award for Best Novel.

A founding member of the International Thriller Writers, Joe is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. He is a graduate of Yale College and the Harvard Russian Research Center, and lives in Boston.


2022 Spotlight Guest: Veronica Roth

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent Series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Four: A Divergent Collection) and the Carve the Mark series (Carve the Mark, The Fates Divide). Her short stories and essays have appeared in the anthologies Summer Days and Summer NightsShards and Ashes, and Three Sides of a Heart. The Divergent Series was developed into three major motion pictures.

Veronica grew up outside of Chicago and graduated from Northwestern University. She now lives in Chicago proper with her husband and dog and writes full-time.


2022 Thriller Legend: Writers House, A Literary Agency

The Thriller Legend award was created to extend a special thank you to those who’ve made an extraordinary contribution to International Thriller Writers. People who’ve showed us consistent and unwavering support.


2022 ThrillerFans: Theresa Lee & Rosie Stroy


2019 ThrillerMaster: John Sandford

John Sandford is the pseudonym of John Roswell Camp, an American author and journalist. Camp won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1986, and was one of four finalists for the prize in 1980. He also was the winner of the Distinguished Writing Award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for 1985.

Camp is the author of 40 published novels, all of which have appeared, in one format or another, on the New York Times bestseller lists. He is also the co-author of three young adult books in the Singular Menace series, with Michele Cook, and co-author of the science-fiction thriller SATURN RUN with Ctein.

He is the author of two non-fiction books, one on art (THE EYE AND THE HEART: THE WATERCOLORS OF JOHN STUART INGLE) and one on plastic surgery (PLASTIC SURGERY: THE KINDEST CUT).

He is the principal financial backer of the Beth-Shean Valley Archaeological Project in the Jordan River Valley of Israel, with a website at www.rehov.org. A major show of the expedition’s findings is currently being held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Camp was born February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His maternal grandparents were immigrants from Lithuania and he spent many of his early years living on, or visiting, their rural acreage.

He attended Cedar Rapids Catholic and public schools, graduating from Washington Senior High School in 1962. He received a bachelor’s degree in American Studies in 1966, and a master’s degree in journalism in 1971, both from the University of Iowa. Between his two stints at the University of Iowa, he served two years in the U.S. Army in Korea with the 4th U.S. Army Missile Command.

Camp was married to Susan Lee Jones in 1966, and has two children, Roswell Camp and Emily Curtis, and three grandchildren, Benjamin, Daniel and Gabriel Curtis. His wife, Susan, died of metastasized breast cancer in May, 2007.
In October, 2013, he married Michele Cook, a journalist and screenwriter. They currently have homes in Santa Fe, NM, and the countryside near Hayward, WI. In addition to co-authoring the three books in the Singular Menace series, Cook has done the initial editing of all the Sandford books since 2010.

Camp’s journalism career began as an Army reporter (he is included in the ‘Hall of Fame’ at the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, MD.) After getting out of the Army, he then worked as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Southeast Missourian for a year, covering such stories as the Cairo, IL, race riots.

He was a reporter and an editor at The Miami Herald from 1971-1978, and a reporter and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press from 1978-1990. He continues to do occasional journalism, and was embedded with the 2-147 Air Assault Battalion during the Iraq War, and covered the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.


2019 Silver Bullet Recipient: Harlan Coben

With over 70 million books in print worldwide, Harlan Coben is the perennial #1 New York Times author of thirty novels including FOOL ME ONCE, TELL NO ONE, NO SECOND CHANCE and the renowned Myron Bolitar series. His books are published in 43 languages around the globe.

Harlan is the creator and executive producer for several television shows including the upcoming Netflix Original drama SAFE starring Michael C. Hall, Audrey Fleurot and Amanda Abbington. Harlan was showrunner and executive producer for two French TV shows, UNE CHANCE DE TROP (NO SECOND CHANCE) with Alexandra Lamy and JUST UN REGARD (JUST ONE LOOK) with Virginie Ledoyen, both six-part French series based on his novels for TF1, produced with Sydney Gallonde. He is also the creator and executive producer of THE FIVE, an original 10-episode crime drama from Sky1 now airing on Netflix. Recently, KEINE ZWEIT CHANCE, also based on Harlan’s novel, aired in Germany on Sat1.

Harlan’s novel TELL NO ONE (NE LE DIS A PERSONNE) was turned into the renowned French film, directed by Guillaume Canet and starring Francois Cluzet. The movie was the top box office foreign-language film of the year in USA, won the Lumiere (French Golden Globe) for best picture and was nominated for nine Cesars (French Oscar) and won four, including best actor, best director and best music. The movie with subtitles is now available on Netflix, Amazon Prime and DVD/Blu-Ray.

Winner of the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Anthony Award – the first author to win all three – international bestselling author Harlan Coben’s critically-acclaimed novels have been called “ingenious” (New York Times), “poignant and insightful” (Los Angeles Times), “consistently entertaining” (Houston Chronicle), “superb” (Chicago Tribune) and “must reading” (Philadelphia Inquirer).


2019 Thriller Legend: Margaret Marbury

Margaret Marbury is Vice President of Editorial for four Harlequin Trade Publishing imprints: MIRA Books, Park Row Books, Hanover Square Press, and Inkyard Press, Harlequin’s YA imprint. With over 25 years in the business, she is still energized by the prospect of acquiring, developing and publishing great authors and books. She holds a B.A. in Literature, Science and the Arts from the University of Iowa and an M.A. in Journalism from Syracuse University.


2019 Spotlight Guest: Lisa Unger

Lisa Unger is the New York Times and internationally bestselling, award-winning author of sixteen novels. Her new release UNDER MY SKIN is named one of the most anticipated and top thrillers of fall 2018 by BookBubBookishLibrary JournalBooklistPopSugar and CrimeReads.

Her books are published in twenty-six languages worldwide, have sold millions of copies and have been voted “Best of the Year” or top picks by the Today show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, Amazon, Indie Booksellers, Goodreads and Sun Sentinel to name a few.

Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR and Travel+Leisure Magazine. Lisa Unger lives in the Tampa Bay area of Florida with her husband, daughter and labradoodle.


2019 Spotlight Guest: Stephen Hunter

Stephen Hunter has written eighteen novels. The retired chief film critic for The Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, he has also published two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work, American Gunfight. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.


2018 ThrillerMaster: George R.R. Martin

George R.R. Martin sold his first story in 1971 and has been writing professionally since then. He spent ten years in Hollywood as a writer-producer, working on The Twilight ZoneBeauty and the Beast, and various feature films and television pilots that were never made. In the mid ‘90s he returned to prose, his first love, and began work on his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. He has been in the Seven Kingdoms ever since. Whenever he’s allowed to leave, he returns to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives with the lovely Parris, and two cats named Augustus and Caligula, who think they run the place.


2018 Silver Bullet Recipient: James Rollins

James Rollins is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of international thrillers, translated into more than forty languages. His Sigma series has been lauded as one of the “top crowd pleasers” (New York Times) and one of the “hottest summer reads” (People Magazine). In each novel, acclaimed for its originality, Rollins unveils unseen worlds, scientific breakthroughs, and historical secrets–and he does it all at breakneck speed and with stunning insight.

As a boy immersed in the scientific adventures of Doc Savage, the wonders of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and pulps such as The ShadowThe Spider, and The Avenger, James Rollins decided he wanted to be a writer. He honed his storytelling skills early, spinning elaborate tales that were often at the heart of pranks played on his brothers and sisters.

Before he would set heroes and villains on harrowing adventures, Rollins embarked on a career in veterinary medicine, graduating from the University of Missouri and establishing a successful veterinary practice. He continues to volunteer his time and veterinary skills in support of the local SPCA. His hands-on knowledge of medicine and science helps shape the research and scientific speculation that set James Rollins books apart.


2017 ThrillerMaster: Lee Child

Lee Child was born in 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV’s “golden age.” During his tenure his company made Brideshead RevisitedThe Jewel in the CrownPrime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars’ worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, KILLING FLOOR, the first in the Jack Reacher series.

KILLING FLOOR was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment.

Lee has several homes—an apartment in Manhattan, country houses in England and the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. In the US he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar’s Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born.

Lee spends his spare time reading, listening to music, and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. He is married with a grown-up daughter. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise.


2017 Silver Bullet Recipient: Lisa Gardner

Lisa Gardner, a #1 New York Times crime thriller novelist, began her career in food service, but after catching her hair on fire numerous times, she took the hint and focused on writing instead. A self-described research junkie, her work as a research analyst for an international consulting firm parlayed her interest in police procedure, cutting edge forensics and twisted plots into a streak of internationally bestselling suspense novels, including her most recent release, FIND HER.

With over 22 million books in print, Lisa is published in 30 countries. Her success crosses into the small screen with four of her novels becoming movies (AT THE MIDNIGHT HOUR; THE PERFECT HUSBAND; THE SURVIVORS CLUB; HIDE) and personal appearances on television shows (TruTVCNN).

Lisa Gardner’s novels have also received awards from across the globe. Her novel THE NEIGHBOR was recognized as the Best Hardcover Novel from the International Thriller Writers in the United States and Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle, prix du policier in France. She was also recognized with the Daphne duMaurior Award presented by RWA in 2000 for THE OTHER DAUGHTER.

Readers are invited to get in on the fun by entering the annual “Kill a Friend, Maim a Buddy” Sweepstakes at LisaGardner.com, where they can nominate the person of their choice to die in Lisa’s latest novel. Every year, one Lucky Stiff is selected for Literary Immortality. It’s cheaper than therapy, and you get a great book besides.

Lisa lives in New Hampshire with her auto-racing husband and black-diamond skiing daughter. She spends her days writing in her loft with a young silly sheltie and a adventurous terrier.


2018 Spotlight Guest: Megan Abbott

Megan Abbott is the Edgar®-winning author of the novels DIE A LITTLEBURY ME DEEPTHE END OF EVERYTHINGDARE ME and THE FEVER. Her most recent book is YOU WILL KNOW MEYOU WILL KNOW ME

chosen one of Best Books of 2016 by NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston GlobeTime Out NY, the Washington PostGooglePublishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and The Believer. Her stories hav appeared in multiple collections, including the Best American Mystery Stories of 2014 and 2016.

Her work has won or been nominated for the CWA Steel Dagger, the International Thriller Writers Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and five Edgar awards, Currently, she is a staff writer on HBO’s new David Simon show, The Deuce, and is adapting two of her novels for television and feature film.

Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan and received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She has taught at NYU, the State University of New York and the New School University. In 2013-14, she served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at Ole Miss.

She is also the author of a nonfiction book, THE STREET WAS MINE: WHITE MASCULINITY IN HARDBOILED FICTION AND FILM NOIR, and the editor of A HELL OF A WOMAN, an anthology of female crime fiction. She has been nominated for many awards, including three Edgar® Awards, Hammett Prize, the Shirley Jackson Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Folio Prize.


 

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2016 ThrillerMaster: Heather Graham

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Heather Graham majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, back-up vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write, working on short horror stories and romances.

After some trial and error, she sold her first book, WHEN NEXT WE LOVE, in 1982 and since then, she has written over one hundred novels and novellas including category, romantic suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, and Christmas holiday fare. She wrote the launch books for the Dell’s Ecstasy Supreme line, Silhouette’s Shadows, and for Harlequin’s mainstream fiction imprint, Mira Books.

Heather was a founding member of the Florida Romance Writers chapter of RWA and, since 1999, has hosted the Romantic Times Vampire Ball, with all revenues going directly to children’s charity.

She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty languages, and to have been honored with awards from Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, Georgia Romance Writers, Affaire de Coeur, Romantic Times, and more.

She has had books selected for the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild, and has been quoted, interviewed, or featured in such publications as The Nation, Redbook, People, and USA Today and appeared on many newscasts including local television and Entertainment Tonight.

Heather loves travel and anything having to do with the water, and is a certified scuba diver. Married since high school graduation and the mother of five, her greatest love in life remains her family, but she also believes her career has been an incredible gift, and she is grateful every day to be doing something that she loves so very much for a living.


2016 Spotlight Guest: C.J. Box

C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 21 novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel (BLUE HEAVEN, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award, and the 2010 Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction. He was recently awarded the 2016 Western Heritage Award for Literature by the National Cowboy Museum. His novels have been translated into 27 languages. Over ten million copies of his novels have been sold in the U.S. alone.

In 2016, OFF THE GRID debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in March. Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he owned an international tourism marketing firm with his wife Laurie. In 2008, Box was awarded the “BIG WYO” Award from the state tourism industry. He served on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo and currently serves on the Wyoming Office of Tourism Board. He and his wife Laurie split their time between their home and ranch in Wyoming.


2016 Spotlight Guest: Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn was born in Kansas City, Missouri to two community college professors—her mother taught reading; her father, film. Thus she spent an inordinate amount of her youth nosing through books and watching movies. It was a good childhood. Flynn’s 2006 debut novel, the literary mystery SHARP OBJECTS, was an Edgar Award finalist and the winner of two of Britain’s Dagger Awards—the first book ever to win multiple Daggers in one year. Flynn’s second novel, the 2009 New York Times bestseller DARK PLACES, was a New Yorker Reviewers’ Favorite, Weekend TODAY Top Summer Read, Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009, and Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction choice.

Flynn’s third novel, GONE GIRL, was an international sensation and a runaway hit that has spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists. GONE GIRL was named one of the best books of the year by People Magazine and Janet Maslin at the New York Times. Nominated for both the Edgar Award and the Anthony Award for Best Novel, Flynn wrote the screenplay for David Fincher’s 2014 adaptation of GONE GIRL for the big screen, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.

Her newest release, THE GROWNUP, is an Edgar Award-winning short story and an homage to the classic ghost story. This is the first time it is being published as a standalone. Flynn’s work has been published in 41 languages.


2016 Spotlight Guest: Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America today. He is the author of more than 43 critically acclaimed books, including the major bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins.

Mosley’s work has been translated into 23 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation, among other publications.

He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.


2016 Silver Bullet Recipient: John Lescroart

John Lescroart (pronounced “less-kwah”) is the author of twenty-six novels, eighteen of which have been New York Times Bestsellers. Libraries Unlimited has named him among “The 100 Most Popular Thriller and Suspense Authors.” With sales of over twelve million copies, his books have been translated into twenty-two languages in more than seventy-five countries, and his short stories appear in many anthologies.

John’s first novel, SUNBURN, won the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Award; DEAD IRISH, THE 13TH JUROR and THE KEEPER were nominees for the Shamus, Anthony and Silver Falchion Best Mystery/Crime Novel, respectively; THE 13TH JUROR is included in the International Thriller Writers publication “100 Must-Read Thrillers Of All Time.”

HARD EVIDENCE appears in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Ultimate Reading List.” GUILT was a Readers Digest Select Edition choice. THE MOTIVE was an Audie Finalist of the Audio Publishers Association. THE MERCY RULE, NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, THE SUSPECT, and THE FALL have been major market Book Club selections. THE SUSPECT was the 2007 One Book Sacramento choice, and the American Author’s Association chose it as its 2007 Book of the Year. THE OPHELIA CUT, BETRAYAL, and A PLAGUE OF SECRETS were each Top Five selections of Strand Magazine’s “Books of the Year.” Several of John’s books have been Main Selections of one or more of the Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, and Book of the Month Club.

He lives in Northern California with his wife, Lisa Sawyer.


2015 ThrillerMaster: Nelson DeMille

Nelson Richard DeMille was born in New York City on August 23, 1943 to Huron and Antonia (Panzera) DeMille. He moved as a child with his family to Long Island. In high school, he played football and ran track.

DeMille spent three years at Hofstra University, then joined the Army and attended Officer Candidate School. He was a First Lieutenant in the United States Army (1966-69) and saw action as an infantry platoon leader with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam. He was decorated with the Air Medal, Bronze Star, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

DeMille returned to the States and went back to Hofstra University where he received his degree in Political Science and History. He has three children, Lauren, Alexander, and James, and still lives on Long Island.

DeMille’s earlier books were NYPD detective novels. His first major novel was By the Rivers of Babylon, published in 1978 and still in print, as are all his succeeding novels. He is a member of The Authors Guild, the Mystery Writers of America, and American Mensa. He holds three honorary doctorates: Doctor of Humane Letters from Hofstra University, Doctor of Literature from Long Island University, and Doctor of Humane Letters from Dowling College.

Nelson DeMille is the author of: By the Rivers of Babylon, Cathedral, The Talbot Odyssey, Word of Honor, The Charm School, The Gold Coast, The General’s Daughter, Spencerville, Plum Island, The Lion’s Game, Up Country, Night Fall, Wild Fire, The Gate House, The Lion, The Panther and The Quest. He also co-authored Mayday with Thomas Block and has contributed short stories, book reviews, and articles to magazines and newspapers.


2015 Silver Bullet Recipient: Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs’s first novel Déjà Dead catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Her other Temperance Brennan novels include Death du Jour, Deadly Décisions, Fatal Voyage, Grave Secrets, Bare Bones, Monday Mourning, Cross Bones, Break No Bones, Bones to Ashes, Devil Bones, 206 Bones, Spider Bones, Flash and Bones, Bones Are Forever, and Bones of the Lost, and the Temperance Brennan e-short, Bones In Her Pocket. In addition, Kathy co-authors the Virals young adult series with her son, Brendan Reichs. The best-selling titles are: Virals, Seizure, Code, and Exposure, along with two Virals e-novellas, Shift and Swipe. These books follow the adventures of Temperance Brennan’s great niece, Tory Brennan. Dr. Reichs is also a producer of the hit Fox TV series, Bones, which is based on her work and her novels.

From teaching FBI agents how to detect and recover human remains, to separating and identifying commingled body parts in her Montreal lab, as a forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs has brought her own dramatic work experience to her mesmerizing forensic thrillers. For years she consulted to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina, and continues to do so for the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Québec. Dr. Reichs has travelled to Rwanda to testify at the UN Tribunal on Genocide, and helped exhume a mass grave in Guatemala. As part of her work at JPAC (Formerly CILHI) she aided in the identification of war dead from World War II, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Dr. Reichs also assisted with identifying remains found at ground zero of the World Trade Center following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.


2015 Spotlight Guest: Mark Billingham

Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor and more recently as a TV writer and stand-up comedian his first crime novel was published in 2001.

Sleepyhead was an instant bestseller in the UK. It has been sold widely throughout the world and was published in the USA in the summer of 2002.

The series of crime novels featuring London-based detective Tom Thorne continued with Scaredy Cat and was followed by LazybonesThe Burning GirlLifelessBuriedDeath MessageBloodlineFrom The DeadGood As DeadThe Dying Hours and the most recent, The Bones Beneath. Mark is also the author of the standalone novels In The Dark and Rush Of Blood, as well as a series of children’s thrillers – Triskellion – written under the pseudonym Will Peterson.

An acclaimed television series based on the Thorne novels was screened on Sky One in Autumn 2010, starring David Morrissey as Tom Thorne. Adaptations of both In The Dark and Rush Of Blood are currently in development at the BBC.

Mark lives in London with his wife and two children. He is currently writing his next novel.


2015 Spotlight Guest: Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over thirty years. She was born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She switched to novels a few years later, and achieved publication in 1981 with Sweet and Deadly.

After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris launched the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with Real Murders, a Best Novel 1990 nomination for the Agatha Awards. Harris wrote eight books in her series about a Georgia librarian. In 1996, she released the first in the much darker Shakespeare mysteries, featuring the amateur sleuth Lily Bard, a karate student who makes her living cleaning houses. Shakespeare’s Counselor, the fifth—and final—Lily Bard novel, was printed in fall 2001.

By then, Harris was feeling the call of new territory. Starting with the premise of a young woman with a disability who wants to try inter-species dating, she created The Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasy series before there was a genre called “urban fantasy.” Telepathic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse works in a bar in the fictional northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001. Each subsequent book follows Sookie through adventures involving vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. The series, which ended in 2013, has been released in over thirty languages.

Professionally, Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the American Crime Writers League, Sisters in Crime, and the International Crime Writers Association. She is a past member of the boards of Sisters in Crime and MWA, and she has served as president of the MWA. She is also a member of Science Fiction Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, and Romance Writers of America, just to make sure she’s covered.

Personally, Harris has been married for many years. She’s the mother of three wonderful children and the grandmother of two. She lives in central Texas, and when she is not writing her own books, she reads omnivorously. Her house is full of rescue dogs.


2015 Spotlight Guest: Greg Iles

Greg Iles was born in Germany in 1960, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War. Iles spent his youth in Natchez, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. While attending Ole Miss, Greg lived in the cabin where William Faulkner and his brothers listened to countless stories told by “Mammy Callie,” their beloved nanny, who had been born a slave. Iles wrote his first novel in 1993, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, which became the first of twelve New York Times bestsellers.

Iles’s novels have been made into films, translated into more than twenty languages, and published in more than thirty-five countries worldwide. His new epic trilogy continues the story of Penn Cage, protagonist of The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, and New York Times #1 bestseller The Devil’s Punchbowl.

Iles is a member of the legendary lit-rock group “The Rock Bottom Remainders.” Like bandmate Stephen King, Greg returned to the musical stage after recovering from his injuries, and joined the band for their final two shows in Los Angeles in 2012. A nonfiction memoir by the band, titled Hard Listening, was published this past summer. Hard Listening also contains a short story Greg wrote as an homage to King.

Iles lives in Natchez, Mississippi. He has two teenaged children, at least one of whom aspires to both literary and film endeavors.


2014 ThrillerMaster: Scott Turow

Scott Turow is a writer and attorney. He is the author of nine best-selling works of fiction, including his first novel Presumed Innocent (1987) and its sequel, Innocent (May 4, 2010). His newest novel, Identical, will be published by Grand Central Publishing in October, 2013. His works of non-fiction include One L (1977) about his experience as a law student, and Ultimate Punishment (2003), a reflection on the death penalty. He frequently contributes essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as The New York TimesWashington PostVanity FairThe New YorkerPlayboy and The Atlantic. Mr. Turow’s books have won a number of literary awards, including the Heartland Prize in 2003 for Reversible Errors, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 2004 for Ultimate Punishment and Time Magazine’s Best Work of Fiction, 1999 for Personal Injuries. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages, sold more than 30 million copies world-wide and have been adapted into a full length film and two television miniseries.


2014 Silver Bullet Award Recipient: Brenda Novak

It was a shocking experience that jump-started Brenda Novak’s career as a bestselling author–she caught her day-care provider drugging her children with cough syrup to get them to sleep all day. That was when Brenda decided she needed to quit her job as a loan officer and help make a living from home.

“When I first got the idea to become a novelist, it took me five years to teach myself the craft and finish my first book,” Brenda says. But she sold that book, and the rest is history. Her novels have made the New York Times, USA Today and Borders/Waldenbooks bestseller lists and won many awards, including three Rita nominations, the Book Buyer’s Best, the Book Seller’s Best and the National Reader’s Choice Award.

Brenda and her husband, Ted, live in Sacramento and are proud parents of five children–three girls and two boys. When she’s not spending time with her family or writing, Brenda is usually working on her annual fund-raiser for diabetes research–an online auction held on her Web site (www.brendanovak.com) every May. Brenda has raised over $1.6 million to date.


2013 ThrillerMaster: Anne Rice

Anne Rice is one of America’s most read and celebrated authors. She is known for weaving the visible and supernatural worlds together in epic stories that both entertain and challenge readers. Her books are rich tapestries of history, belief, philosophy, religion, and compelling characters that examine and extend our physical world beyond the limits we perceive.

Anne lives and works in California. Anne’s life experiences and intellectual inquisitiveness provide her with constant inspiration for her work.


2013 Silver Bullet Award Recipient: Steve Berry

Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of The Columbus Affair, The Jefferson KeyThe Emperor’s TombThe Paris VendettaThe Charlemagne PursuitThe Venetian BetrayalThe Alexandria LinkThe Templar LegacyThe Third SecretThe Romanov Prophecy, and The Amber Room. His books have been translated into 40 languages with more than 15 million printed copies in 51 countries. They consistently appear in the top echelon of The New York TimesUSA Today, and Indie bestseller lists.

The following FACEOFF contributors were showcased at ThrillerFest IX:

David Baldacci, Linwood Barclay, Steve Berry, Lee Child, Lincoln Child, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Linda Fairstein, Joseph Finder, Lisa Gardner, Heather Graham, Peter James, Raymond Khoury, Dennis Lehane, John Lescroart, Steve Martini, T. Jefferson Parker, Douglas Preston, Ian Rankin, James Rollins, M.J. Rose, John Sandford, R.L. Stine, and F. Paul Wilson.


2013 ThrillerMaster: Anne Rice

Anne Rice is one of America’s most read and celebrated authors. She is known for weaving the visible and supernatural worlds together in epic stories that both entertain and challenge readers. Her books are rich tapestries of history, belief, philosophy, religion, and compelling characters that examine and extend our physical world beyond the limits we perceive.

Anne lives and works in California. Anne’s life experiences and intellectual inquisitiveness provide her with constant inspiration for her work.


2011 ThrillerMaster: R. L. Stine

R. L. Stine is the author of over 330 books for children. His Goosebumps, Fear Street, and other book series have sold nearly 400 million copies around the world, making him one of the best-selling children’s authors in history. Stine is a three-time winner of the Nickelodeon Children’s Choice Award and a recipient of the American Library Association Award.


Spotlight Guest: Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is the author of the recent #1 New York Times bestsellers The DropThe Fifth Witness, The ReversalThe ScarecrowThe Brass Verdict, and The Lincoln Lawyer, as well as the bestselling Harry Bosch series of novels. He is a former newspaper reporter who has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels. He spends his time in California and Florida.


Spotlight Guest: T. Jefferson Parker

T. Jefferson Parker is the bestselling author of twenty novels, including L.A. Outlaws and Storm Runners. His novels, Silent Joe and California Girl both won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Along with Dick Francis and James Lee Burke, he is one of only three two-time recipients of the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Parker lives with his family in Southern California.


Spotlight Guest: Michael Palmer

Michael Palmer is the author of 18 novels of medical and political suspense, all New York Times Best Sellers. His books have been translated into forty languages. Palmer was educated at Wesleyan University and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. His most recent novel, Political Suicide was released in December, 2012. His book Extreme Measures was made into the hit film of the same name starring Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, and Sarah Jessica Parker. Palmer also works as with the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Physician Health Services, helping doctors with physical and mental illness, as well as drug dependence and alcoholism.


2013 Silver Bullet Award Recipient: Steve Berry

Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of The Columbus Affair, The Jefferson KeyThe Emperor’s TombThe Paris VendettaThe Charlemagne PursuitThe Venetian BetrayalThe Alexandria LinkThe Templar LegacyThe Third SecretThe Romanov Prophecy, and The Amber Room. His books have been translated into 40 languages with more than 15 million printed copies in 51 countries. They consistently appear in the top echelon of The New York TimesUSA Today, and Indie bestseller lists.


2012 ThrillerMaster: Jack Higgins

Jack Higgins is among the world’s most popular authors. Since the publication of The Eagle Has Landed–one of the biggest-selling thrillers of all time–every novel he has written has become an international bestseller, including The White House Connection and Day of Reckoning. He has had simultaneous number-one bestsellers in hardcover and paperback, and has been published in thirty-eight languages worldwide. Many of his books have been made into successful movies, among them The Eagle Has LandedTo Catch A King, and The Valhalla Exchange. He lives in Jersey in the Channel Islands.


2011 ThrillerMaster: R. L. Stine

R. L. Stine is the author of over 330 books for children. His Goosebumps, Fear Street, and other book series have sold nearly 400 million copies around the world, making him one of the best-selling children’s authors in history. Stine is a three-time winner of the Nickelodeon Children’s Choice Award and a recipient of the American Library Association Award.


Spotlight Guest: Lee Child

Lee Child was born in 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV’s “golden age.” During his tenure his company made Brideshead RevisitedThe Jewel in the CrownPrime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars’ worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series. Killing Floor was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment.


Spotlight Guest: John Sandford

John Sandford is the pseudonym of John Roswell Camp, an American author and journalist. Camp won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1986, and was one of four finalists for the prize in 1980. He also was the winner of the Distinguished Writing Award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for 1985.

Camp is the author of thirty-one published novels, all of which have appeared, in one format or another, on the New York Times Best-Seller lists. He is also the author of two non-fiction books, one on plastic surgery and one on art. His books have been translated into most European languages, as well as Japanese and Korean.


Spotlight Guest: Catherine Coulter

Catherine Coulter wrote her first novel to pass time aboard the ark. She realized writing novels was not only fun, it had the added advantage of earning enough money to feed the cats. She alternates writing suspense thrillers with historical romances to keep her brain unconstipated. To date, she’s written 67 novels, 62 of which have hit the New York Times bestseller list. Her wildly popular FBI series now includes 16 thrillers and thankfully, she says, she sees no end in sight.

Given the incredible insanity of the publishing industry, Coulter thinks the best antidote is a lot of drinking and a big sense of humor.


2012 True Thriller Award Recipient: Ann Rule

Ann Rule is the author of 30 New York Times bestsellers, all of them still in print. A former Seattle police officer, she knows the crime scene firsthand. She is a certified instructor for police training seminars and lectures to law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and forensic science organizations, including the FBI. For more than two decades, she has been a powerful advocate for victims of violent crime. She has testified before U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittees on serial murder and victims’ rights, and was a civilian adviser to the VI-CAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). A graduate of the University of Washington, she holds a Ph.D. in Humane Letters from Willamette University.


2012 Silver Bullet Award Recipient: Richard North Patterson

Richard North Patterson is the author of The Devil’s LightIn the Name of HonorThe Spire, and sixteen other bestselling and critically acclaimed novels. Formerly a trial lawyer, he was the SEC liaison to the Watergate special prosecutor and has served on the boards of several Washington advocacy groups. He lives in Martha’s Vineyard, San Francisco, and Cabo San Lucas with his wife, Dr. Nancy Clair.


2011 Silver Bullet Award Recipient: Karin Slaughter

Karin Slaughter is the number one international bestseller of several novels, including the Grant County series. A long-time resident of Atlanta, she splits her time between the kitchen and the living room.

The Silver Bullet Award was created by the International Thriller Writers in conjunction with Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) to recognize outstanding and meritorious achievement in the pursuit of literacy and the love of reading. Past recipients include authors Sandra Brown, R.L. Stine, David Baldacci, publisher Tom Doherty, actor Tony Plana (UGLY BETTY), the Nestle Company, Capital One, and Macy’s.


These are the special guest who were featured at ThrillerFest VI (July, 2011):

2011 Thrillermaster: R.L. Stine

R. L. Stine is the author of over 330 books for children. His Goosebumps, Fear Street, and other book series have sold nearly 400 million copies around the world, making him one of the best-selling children’s authors in history.

He was born Robert Lawrence Stine on October 8, 1943 in Columbus, Ohio. Stine started writing when he was 9 years old. He wrote stories and jokes on a typewriter and handed them out at school. He graduated with a B.A. in English from Ohio State University in 1965. Stine taught social studies after college, then moved to New York City to become a writer. He married Jane Waldhorn on June 22, 1969. Jane is an editor and publisher. Their son, Matthew Daniel Stine, was born on June 7, 1980.

Stine’s thrillers and horror tales have proven to be great reading motivation for young people. The YA series, Fear Street, started in 1989 and was followed in 1992 by Goosebumps, which quickly took off around the world. Goosebumps has been translated into 35 languages. These days, Stine continues to add books to the Goosebumps series, scaring a new generation of kids.

He has had three TV series based on his works– Goosebumps, The Nightmare Room, and R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, which is currently being seen on The Hub Network. In addition, several TV movies have become perennial Halloween favorites.

Stine has published three thrillers for adults– Superstitious, The Sitter, and Eye Candy. The Sitter is currently being developed as a feature film by Sam Raimi’s company. In 2012, Touchstone Books will publish a new R.L. Stine adult horror novel.

Stine is a three-time winner of the Nickelodeon Children’s Choice Award and a recipient of the American Library Association Award. For his work in promoting literacy, he was also a recipient of the ITW Silver Bullet Award.


2010 Thrillermaster: Ken Follett

Ken Follett is one of the world’s best-loved novelists. He has sold more than 130 million copies. His latest book, Fall of Giants, went straight to the No.1 position on bestseller lists in the USA, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.

He burst into the book world in 1978 with Eye of the Needle, a taut and original thriller with a memorable woman character in the central role. The book won the Edgar award and became an outstanding film starring Kate Nelligan and Donald Sutherland.

He went on to write four more best-selling thrillers: TripleThe Key to RebeccaThe Man from St Petersburg; and Lie Down with Lions. Cliff Robertson and David Soul starred in the miniseries of The Key to Rebecca. In 1994 Timothy Dalton, Omar Sharif and Marg Helgenberger starred in the miniseries of Lie Down with Lions.

He also wrote On Wings of Eagles, the true story of how two employees of Ross Perot were rescued from Iran during the revolution of 1979. This book was made into a miniseries with Richard Crenna as Ross Perot and Burt Lancaster as Colonel ‘Bull’ Simons.

He then surprised readers by radically changing course with The Pillars of the Earth, a novel about building a cathedral in the Middle Ages. Published in September 1989 to rave reviews, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for eighteen weeks. It also reached the No. 1 position on lists in Canada, Great Britain and Italy, and was on the German bestseller list for six years.

It was voted the third greatest book ever written by 250,000 viewers of the German television station ZDF in 2004, beaten only by The Lord of the Rings and the Bible. When The Times of London asked its readers to vote for the 60 greatest novels of the last 60 years, The Pillars of the Earth was placed at No.2, after To Kill a Mockingbird. (The sequel, World Without End, was No.23 on the same list.) In November 2007 ‘Pillars’ became the most popular ever choice of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, returning to No.1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The miniseries, produced by Ridley Scott and starring Ian McShane and Matthew Macfadyen, was broadcast in 2010.

For a while he abandoned the straightforward spy genre, but his stories still had powerful narrative drive, strong women characters, and elements of suspense and intrigue. He followed Pillars with Night over WaterA Dangerous Fortune, and A Place Called Freedom.

Then he returned to the thriller. The Third Twin is a scorching suspense novel about a young woman scientist who stumbles over a secret experiment in genetic engineering. Miniseries rights were sold to CBS for $1,400,000, a record price for four hours of television. The series, starring Kelly McGillis and Larry Hagman (and with Ken appearing briefly as the butler), was broadcast in the USA in November 1997. In Publishing Trends’ annual survey of international fiction bestsellers for 1997, The Third Twin was ranked No. 2 in the world, beaten only by John Grisham’s The Partner.

The Hammer of Eden, another nail-biting contemporary suspense story, came in 1998. Code to Zero (2000), about brainwashing and rocket science in the Fifties, went to No.1 on bestseller lists in the USA, German and Italy, and film rights were snapped up by Doug Wick, producer of Gladiator, in a seven-figure deal.

Ken returned to the WWII era with his next two novels: Jackdaws (2001), a World War II thriller about a group of women parachuted into France to destroy a vital telephone exchange – which won the won the Corine Prize for 2003 – and Hornet Flight (2002), about a daring young Danish couple who escape to Britain from occupied Denmark in a rebuilt Hornet Moth biplane with vital information about German radar.

Whiteout, a contemporary thriller about the theft of a dangerous virus from a laboratory, was published in 2004, and made into a miniseries in 2009. Set in the remote Scottish Highlands over a stormy, snow-bound Christmas,Whiteout crackles with jealousies, distrust, sexual attraction, rivalries, hidden traitors and unexpected heroes.

World Without End, the long-awaited sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, was published in October 2008. It is set in Kingsbridge, the fictional location of the cathedral in Pillars, and features the descendants of the original characters at the time of the Black Death. It was a No.1 bestseller in Italy, the USA, the UK, Germany, France and Spain, where it was the fastest-selling book ever published in the Spanish language, outstripping the last Harry Potter book.

A board game based on The Pillars of the Earth was released worldwide in 2007-2008 and won the following prizes: Deutscher Spielepreis 2007; Game of the year 2007 in the USA (GAMES 100); Jeu d’annee 2007 (Canada); Juego del ano 2007 (Spain); Japan Boardgame Prize 2007; Arets Spill 2007 (Norway); Spiele Hit 2007 (Austria). It was a nominee in Finland, France and the Netherlands and got a recommendation in Germany by the Jury “Spiel des Jahres”.

In 2008 Ken was awarded the Olaguibel Prize by the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos Vasco-Navarro for contributing to the promotion and awareness of architecture. A statue of him by the distinguished Spanish sculptor Casto Solano was unveiled in January 2008 outside the cathedral of Santa Maria in the Basque capital of Vitoria-Gasteiz in northern Spain.

His current project is his most ambitious yet. The Century Trilogy will tell the entire history of the twentieth century, seen through the eyes of five linked families: one American, one English, one German, one Russian, and one Welsh. The first book, Fall of Giants, focusing on the First World War and the Russian Revolution, was published worldwide simultaneously on 28 September 2010. He is already at work on the second, provisionally titled The Winter of the World, about the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the development of nuclear weapons.

Ken Follett is married to Barbara Follett, a political activist who was the Member of Parliament for Stevenage in Hertfordshire for thirteen years and Minister for Culture in the government of Gordon Brown. They live in a rambling rectory in Stevenage and also have an eighteenth-century town house in London and a beach house in Antigua. Ken Follett is a lover of Shakespeare, and is often to be seen at London productions of the Bard’s plays. An enthusiastic amateur musician, he plays bass guitar in a band called Damn Right I Got the Blues, and appears occasionally with the folk group Clog Iron playing a bass balalaika.

He was Chair of the National Year of Reading 1998-99, a British government initiative to raise literacy levels. He was president of the charity Dyslexia Action for ten years. He is a member of The Welsh Academy, a board director of the National Academy of Writing, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Literature (D.Litt.) by the University of Glamorgan, and similar degrees by Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan, where his papers are kept in the Ken Follett Archive; and (in 2008) by the University of Exeter. He is active in numerous Stevenage charities and was a governor of Roebuck Primary School for ten years, serving as Chair of Governors for four of those years.

He was born on 5 June 1949 in Cardiff, Wales, the son of a tax inspector. He was educated at state schools and graduated from University College, London, with an Honours degree in philosophy. He was made a Fellow of the college in 1995.

He became a reporter, first with his home-town newspaper the South Wales Echo and later with the London Evening News. While working on the Evening News he wrote his first novel, which was published but did not become a bestseller. He then went to work for a small London publishing house, Everest Books, eventually becoming Deputy Managing Director. He continued to write novels in his spare time. Eye of the Needle was his eleventh book, and his first success. Around 130 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide.


Spotlight Guest: Robert Crais

Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. A native of Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers. He purchased a secondhand paperback of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister when he was fifteen, which inspired his lifelong love of writing, Los Angeles, and the literature of crime fiction. Other literary influences include Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker, and John Steinbeck.

After years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to Hollywood in 1976 where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice, as well as numerous series pilots and Movies-of-the-Week for the major networks. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues, but is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire, which the New York Times declared: “A searing and powerful documentation of the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to national prominence in the 20s.”

In the mid-eighties, feeling constrained by the collaborative working requirements of Hollywood, Crais resigned from a lucrative position as a contract writer and television producer in order to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. His first efforts proved unsuccessful, but upon the death of his father in 1985, Crais was inspired to create Elvis Cole, using elements of his own life as the basis of the story. The resulting novel, The Monkey’s Raincoat, won the Anthony and Macavity Awards and was nominated for the Edgar Award. It has since been selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Crais conceived of the novel as a stand-alone, but realized that—in Elvis Cole—he had created an ideal and powerful character through which to comment upon his life and times. Elvis Cole’s readership and fan base grew with each new book, then skyrocketed in 1999 upon the publication of L. A. Requiem, which was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller and forever changed the way Crais conceived of and structured his novels. In this new way of telling his stories, Crais combined the classic ‘first person’ narrative of the American detective novel with flashbacks, multiple story lines, multiple points-of-view, and literary elements to better illuminate his themes. Larger and deeper in scope, Publishers Weekly wrote of L. A. Requiem, “Crais has stretched himself the way another Southern California writer—Ross Macdonald—always tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base.” Booklist added, “This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience.”

Crais followed with his first non-series novel, Demolition Angel, which was published in 2000 and featured former Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Technician Carol Starkey. Starkey has since become a leading character in the Elvis Cole series. In 2001, Crais published his second non-series novel, Hostage, which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and was a world-wide bestseller. Additionally, the editors of Amazon.com selected Hostage as the #1 thriller of the year. A film adaptation of Hostage was released in 2005, starring Bruce Willis as ex-LAPD SWAT negotiator Jeff Talley.

Elvis Cole returned in 2003 with the publication of The Last Detective, followed by the tenth Elvis Cole novel, The Forgotten Man, in 2005. Both novels explore with increasing depth the natures and characters of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. RC’s third stand-alone novel, The Two Minute Rule, was published in 2006, and was followed in 2007 by The Watchman, the first novel in the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series to feature Joe Pike in the title role.

The novels of Robert Crais have been published in 42 countries and are bestsellers around the world. Robert Crais is the 2006 recipient of the Ross Macdonald Literary Award.

Currently, Robert Crais lives in the Santa Monica mountains with his wife, three cats, and many thousands of books.


Spotlight Guest: Diana Gabaldon

Are they histories? Fantasies? Science fiction? Thrillers? While it may be impossible to categorize the books Diana Gabaldon calls historical fantasias, it hardly matters to the author’s huge and loyal fan base, all of whom are just eager to devour Gabaldon s richly detailed, complexly plotted, extravagantly romantic romps through time, space, and breathtaking landscapes.

To millions of fans, Diana Gabaldon is the creator of a complex, original, and utterly compelling amalgam of 18th-century romantic adventure and 20th-century science fiction. To the publishing industry, she’s a grassroots-marketing phenomenon. And to would-be writers everywhere who worry that they don’t have the time or expertise to do what they love, Gabaldon is nothing short of an inspiration.

Gabaldon wrote her first novel while juggling the demands of motherhood and career: in between her job as an ecology professor, she also had a part-time gig writing freelance software reviews. Gabaldon had never written fiction before, and didn’t intend to publish this first novel, which she decided to call Outlander. This, she decided, would be her “practice novel”. Worried that she might not be able to pull a plot and characters out of thin air, she settled on a historical novel because “it’s easier to look things up than to make them up entirely.”

The impulse to set her novel in 18th-century Scotland didn’t stem — as some fans have assumed from a desire to explore her own familial roots (in fact, Gabaldon isn’t even Scottish). Rather, it came from watching an episode of the British sci-fi series Dr. Who and becoming smitten with a handsome time traveler in a kilt. A time-travel element crept into Gabaldon’s own book only after she realized her wisecracking female lead couldn’t have come from anywhere but the 20th century. The resulting love affair between an intelligent, mature, sexually experienced woman and a charismatic, brave, virginal young man turned the conventions of historical romance upside-down.

Gabaldon has said her books were hard to market at first because they were impossible to categorize neatly. Were they historical romances? Sci-fi adventure stories? Literary fiction? Whatever their genre (Gabaldon eventually proffered the term “historical fantasias”), they eventually found their audience, and it turned out to be a staggeringly huge one.

Even before the publication of Outlander, Gabaldon had an online community of friends who’d read excerpts and were waiting eagerly for more. (In fact, her cohorts at the CompuServe Literary Forum helped hook her up with an agent.) Once the book was released, word kept spreading, both on the Internet and off, and Gabaldon kept writing sequels. (When her fourth book, “Drums of Autumn,” was released, it debuted at No. 1 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and her publisher, Delacorte, raced to add more copies to their initial print run of 155,000.)

With her books consistently topping the bestseller lists, it’s apparent that Gabaldon’s appeal lies partly in her ability to bulldoze the formulaic conventions of popular fiction. Salon writer Gavin McNett noted approvingly, “She simply doesn’t pay attention to genre or precedent, and doesn’t seem to care that identifying with Claire puts women in the role of the mysterious stranger, with Jamie — no wimp in any regard — as the romantic ‘heroine.”‘

In between Outlander novels, Gabaldon also writes historical mysteries featuring Lord John Grey, a popular, if minor, character from the series, and is working on a contemporary mystery series. Meanwhile, the author’s formidable fan base keeps growing, as evidenced by the expanding list of Gabaldon chat rooms, mailing lists, fan clubs and web sites — some of them complete with fetching photos of red-haired lads in kilts.


Spotlight Guest: John Lescroart

John Lescroart (pronounced “less-kwah”) is a big believer in hard work and single-minded dedication, although he’ll acknowledge that a little luck never hurts. Now a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into 16 languages in more than 75 countries, John wrote his first novel in college and the second one a year after he graduated from Cal Berkeley in 1970.

The only hitch was that he didn’t even try to publish either of these books until fourteen years later, when finally, at his wife Lisa’s urging, he submitted Son of Holmes to New York publishers—and got two offers, one in hardcover, within six weeks!

But about six years before that first hardcover publication, John’s ambition to become a working novelist began to take shape. At that time, as Johnny Capo of Johnny Capo and His Real Good Band, he’d been performing his own songs for several years at clubs and honky-tonks in the San Francisco Bay Area. On his 30th birthday, figuring that if he hadn’t made it in music by then, he never would, he retired from the music business.

He’d been writing all along, and didn’t stop now, although his emphasis changed from music first, prose second, to the other way around. Within two months of his last musical gig, he finished a novel, Sunburn, that drew on his experiences in Spain. Since John didn’t know anyone in the publishing world, he sent the manuscript to his old high school English teacher, who was not enthusiastic. Fortunately, the teacher left the pages on his bedside table, and his wife picked them up and read them. She loved the book and submitted it in John’s name to The Joseph Henry Jackson Award, given yearly by the San Francisco Foundation for Best Novel by a California author. Much to John’s astonishment, Sunburn beat out 280 other entrants, including INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, for the prize.

Though Sunburn wasn’t to be published for another four years, and then only in paperback, the award changed John’s approach to writing. He started to think he might make a living as an author, something he’d never previously believed possible for a “regular guy with no connections.” He started paying for his writing habit by working a succession of “day jobs”—everything from a computer programmer with the telephone company, to Ad Director of Guitar Player Magazine, to moving man, house painter, bartender (at the real Little Shamrock bar in San Francisco), legal secretary, fundraising executive, and management consultant writing briefs on coal transportation for the Interstate Commerce Commission!!

John moved to Los Angeles and in the next three years finished three long novels, the last of them featuring a private investigator who shared the name Dismas Hardy (and very little else) with the man who would become John’s well-known attorney/hero. Since he’d gotten SUNBURN published without using a literary agent (an old friend had shown it to a secretary at Pinnacle Books in Los Angeles, who bought it), John went on submitting his work to New York over the transom, receiving many kind rejection letters, but no offers. Finally he realized that even if he wasn’t fated to become a commercially successful author, he wanted to be involved in books and literature. So he enrolled in the Masters Program in Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

While John and his wife, Lisa Sawyer, were preparing that summer to move to New England, he was paying bills by typing technical papers on coal transportation for a consulting firm. Asked by the boss what he thought of the paper, John commented that the argument it made wasn’t very compelling and that it wasn’t very well-written. His boss challenged him: could he do it any better? In a week, John re-wrote the 400-page draft, which went on to win before the ICC. This led to a “day job” offer that John couldn’t refuse. Graduate school fell by the wayside.

But after a year and a half, even a lucrative day job had become a burden. Nothing would do for John by now but to write, but he had little time for writing with his high-paying, career-oriented job. Lisa suggested taking a look at some of the old manuscripts and submitting them—she remembered reading and liking Son of Holmes. How about that one? There was one 14-year-old yellowed and brittle copy of the manuscript left in the world—in the basement of their best man, Don Matheson’s, apartment. Six weeks later, John had his first hardcover book deal.

Over the next seven years, back in Los Angeles again, John and Lisa were finally ready to start their family. During this time, John wrote several screenplays and published three more books while he held down a job as a word processing supervisor at a downtown law firm. He rose each day at 5:30 and went to a room they’d built in their garage, where he wrote four pages of his latest in two hours. Then he worked his nine-to-five, ate a bag lunch, and stayed downtown, typing briefs and pleadings at various other law firms until 10:00 or 11:00 at night.

Finally he was publishing, but he wasn’t making a living. And then in 1989, at the age of forty-one, he took a break to go body-surfing at Seal Beach. The next day, he lay in a Pasadena hospital. From the contaminated sea water where he’d been surfing, he’d contracted spinal meningitis. Doctors gave him two hours to live.

John now looks back on his 11-day battle with death as the turning point in his career. He quit the last of his day jobs to move back to Northern California and to write full-time, with intense focus and a renewed dedication. The resulting books, richer in terms of theme and story, found a devoted readership and propelled him into the elite circle of bestselling authors—only twenty years to overnight success!

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