Sam Eastland
Sam Eastland lives in the US and the UK. He is the grandson of a London police detective. His first novel was Eye of the Red Tsar, and his second, The Red Coffin was recently published.
Neil Cross
Neil Cross is the author of several novels including Always the Sun and Burial, as well as the bestselling memoir Heartland. He has been lead scriptwriter for the two most recent seasons of the acclaimed BBC spy drama series Spooks and continues to write widely for the screen, most recently Luther. His most recent book is a prequel to that show, Luther: The Calling, and is published by Simon & Schuster.
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Doug Johnstone
Doug Johnstone is a writer, musician and journalist based in Edinburgh. His latest novel, Smokeheads, was published by Faber and Faber in March 2011. He has previously published two novels with Penguin, Tombstoning (2006) and The Ossians (2008), which received praise from the likes of Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre. He’s working on a fourth novel and a screenplay. Doug is currently writer in residence at the University of Strathclyde. He’s had short stories appear in various publications, and since 1999 he has worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily covering music and literature.
Doug has a degree in physics, a PhD in nuclear physics and a diploma in journalism, and worked for four years designing airborne radars and missile guidance systems.
He grew up in Arbroath and lives in Portobello, Edinburgh with his wife and two children. He loves drinking malt whisky and playing football, not necessarily at the same time.
Elizabeth Miles
Elizabeth Miles grew up in Chappaqua, New York, not far from New York City. She graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2004, worked for several years at the Boston Phoenix, and now writes for the Portland Phoenix, an alternative weekly newspaper. She has won several awards from the New England Press Association and was nominated for an Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Award. Elizabeth serves on the board of trustees of Portland Players, a community theater and second home. She loves pizza; she can often be found running around on stage while scantily clad; and a cold winter night in Maine is one of the creepiest and most beautiful things she can think of. Fury, published by Simon & Schuster, is Elizabeth’s first novel:
It’s winter break in Ascension, Maine. The snow is falling and everything looks pristine and peaceful. But not all is as it seems…
Between cozy traditions and parties with her friends, Emily loves the holidays. And this year’s even better–the guy she’s been into for months is finally noticing her. But Em knows if she starts things with him, there’s no turning back. Because his girlfriend is Em’s best friend.
On the other side of town, Chase is having problems of his own. The stress of his home life is starting to take its toll, and his social life is unraveling. But that’s nothing compared to what’s really haunting him. Chase has done something cruel…something the perfect guy he pretends to be would never do. And it’s only a matter of time before he’s exposed.
In Ascension, mistakes can be deadly. And three girls—three beautiful, mysterious girls—are here to choose who will pay.
Em and Chase have been chosen.
Adam Levin
Adam Levin’s stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Esquire. Winner of the 2003 Tin House/Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, Levin holds an MA in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. His collection of short stories, Hot Pink, will be published by McSweeney’s in 2011, following his recently published novel The Instructions. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches writing at Columbia College and The School of the Art Institute. He also has a parrot.
Simon Spurrier
Simon Spurrier was born in 1981. After completing a degree in Film & Television Production at S.I.A.D. he worked as an Art Director for the BBC, and was awarded screenplay bursaries at the National Academy Of Writing and the Met Film School.
Since 2001 he’s become a major writer for the UK’s foremost adult comic 2000AD, and in recent years has published multiple projects through U.S. giants such as Marvel (X-Men, Wolverine, Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider), D.C. (Poison Ivy, Power Trip), Avatar Press (Crossed: Wish You Were Here, Disenchanted), Dark Horse (In Fetu) and Image (Gutsville).
He began his career as a prose writer in 2003 with a novelisation of the Kuju Entertainment/Games Workshop videogame Fire Warrior. He subsequently produced work-for-hire genre novels for BL Publishing (Lord of the Night, Strontium Dog: Prophet Margin) and Abaddon Press (The Culled). In late 2007 Spurrier published his first creator-owned novel, Contract. This was followed in 2011 by A Serpent Uncoiled.
Spurrier was born in Somewhere-You’ve-Never-Heard-Of, grew up in the heartlands of Nowhere-Terribly-Interesting, and lives today in North London. He spends much of his time in quiet cafes and pubs, where he exerts an unwanted cosmic magnetism upon any loud or malodorous patrons who should enter.
He spends far more time than he should on Twitter.
Malcolm Pryce
Malcolm Pryce is the author of a series of comic private detective novels set in Aberystwyth. Titles include Aberystwyth Mon Amour, Last Tango in Aberystwyth, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth and many more. He has been described by the Sunday Telegraph as the ‘King of Welsh Noir’ and by the Cambrian News as “a twerp who needs a boot up his backside”.
After reviewing his latest offering, The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still, Bookgeeks Jon Owens put him in the Bookgeeks hotseat:
Thomas Enger
Thomas Enger (b. 1973) previously worked as a journalist. Burned is his first novel. As well as writing, he also composes music. He lives in Oslo and is currently at work on Pierced, the next novel in the Henning Juul Series.
C.J. Box
C. J. Box is the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award and the Barry Award. 2008 novel BLOOD TRAIL was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin (Ireland) Literary Award. The novels have been translated into 25 languages. Blue Heaven and Nowhere to Run have been optioned for film.
Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he co-owns an international tourism marketing firm with his wife Laurie. In 2008, Box was awarded the “BIG WYO” Award from the state tourism industry. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He served on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. They have three daughters. He lives in Wyoming.
Bookgeeks’ own Mike Stafford caught up with him while he was on a flying visit to the UK…
Harry Sidebottom
Harry Sidebottom was brought up in racing stables in Newmarket where his father was a trainer. He had a basket saddle on a donkey before he could walk.
He was educated at various schools and universities, including Oxford, where he took his Doctorate in Ancient History at Corpus Christi College. In similar fashion he has taught at various universities including Oxford, where he is now Fellow and Director of Studies in Ancient History at St Benets Hall, and Lecturer in Ancient History at Lincoln College.
His main scholarly research interests are Greek culture under the Roman empire (thinking about the compromises and contradictions involved when an old and sophisticated culture is conquered and ruled by what it considers a younger and less civilised power) and warfare in classical antiquity (looking at how war was both done and thought about by Greeks and Romans). He has published numerous chapters in books, and articles and reviews in scholarly journals becoming an internationally recognised scholar in these fields.
Since 2006 he has been working on the Warrior of Rome series of novels featuring the Anglo-Saxon nobleman turned Roman army officer Ballista and his Familia which are set in the Roman Empire during the so-called `Great Crisis of the Third Century AD`.
He has travelled widely, especially around the Mediterranean. These trips have varied from the luxury of travelling as a guest speaker on a Cunard liner to a memorable solo journey into Albania not long after the fall of the dictator Enver Hoxha.
N.J. Cooper
An ex-publisher, past Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, and lifelong Londoner, N J Cooper writes for a variety of newspapers and journals and contributes to many radio programmes such as Woman’s Hour and Saturday Review. As Natasha Cooper, she is the author of, among many others, No Escape, A Greater Evil and A Poisoned Mind. In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library, an award that ‘goes to the author whose work has given most pleasure to readers’.
Geraint Anderson AKA Cityboy
Before sacrificing his soul to dark forces in the Square Mile, Cityboy was a genuine left-wing hippy and political activist, complete with ponytail and hoop earrings. His dream of becoming a global traveller was cruelly dashed when his brother got him an interview at a French bank in the City, which would set him on the rocky road to destruction and despair. He recently published his second book, Just Business.
Bernard O’Donoghue
Bernard O’Donoghue was born in Cullen, Co. Cork in 1945. He is a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, where he teaches Medieval English. He has published five collections of poetry including The Weakness (1991), Gunpowder (winner of the 1995 Whitbread Award for Poetry), Here Nor There (1999) and Outliving (2003). His latest collection is Farmer’s Cross.
Quintin Jardine
Quintin Jardine is the author of two much-acclaimed and best-selling series of detective novels, as Eddie Bell and Pat Lomax, his agents, can be heard proclaiming to anyone who is listening, at book festivals around the world.
Marco Vichi
Marco Vichi was born in Florence in 1957. The author of eleven novels and two collections of short stories, he has also edited crime anthologies, written screenplays, music lyrics and for radio, and collaborated on and directed various projects for humanitarian causes.
His novel Death in Florence won the Scerbanenco, Rieti and Camaiore prizes in Italy.
Marco Vichi lives in the Chianti region of Tuscany.
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an author, journalist, broadcaster, critic and bon viveur. His famous novel Anno Dracula, recently re-issued by Titan Books, is set in 1888, during Jack the Ripper’s killing spree—but a different 1888 to the one we know, in which Dracula became the ruler of England. In the novel, fictional characters—not only from Dracula, but also from other works of Victorian era fiction—appear alongside historical persons.
Bookgeeks’ Simon Parker asked him about his writing and his feelings about zombies, among other things…
Eoin Colfer
Eoin Colfer grew up in Wexford, Ireland. He first developed a passion for writing in primary school, reading Viking books inspired by his history lessons at the time. In 2001 the first Artemis Fowl book was published and he was able to resign from teaching and concentrate fully on writing. He now lives in Ireland with his wife and 2 children.
His first crime novel for adults, Plugged, has just been published. We asked him about it…
Wendy Cope
Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent. After university she worked for fifteen years as a primary school teacher in London. Her first collection of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, was published in 1986. In 1987 she received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry and in 1995 the American Academy of Arts and Letters Michael Braude Award for light verse.
Brian McGilloway
Brian McGilloway is author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Benedict Devlin series. He was born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. After studying English at Queen’s University, Belfast, he took up a teaching position in St Columb’s College in Derry, where he is currently Head of English.
His first novel, Borderlands, published by Macmillan New Writing, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2007 and was hailed by The Times as ‘one of (2007’s) most impressive debuts.’ The second novel in the series, Gallows Lane, was shortlisted for both the 2009 Irish Book Awards/Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2010. Bleed A River Deep, the third Devlin novel, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of their Best Books of 2010. The fourth novel, The Rising, will be published in paperback in May 2011 alongside the new standalone novel, Little Girl Lost, featuring DS Lucy Black.
Brian lives near the Irish borderlands with his wife and their four children.
Leigh Russell
Leigh Russell’s debut thriller Cut Short was published in 2009. It was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award and quickly became a bestseller, followed by a second bestseller Road Closed in 2010. The third in the series, Dead End, was recently published. All of these novels feature Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel pursuing murder investigations. As well as gaining popularity with readers of the genre, the books have received many excellent reviews in journals including The Times and The New York Journal of Books.
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Blaine Harden
Blaine Harden is an author and journalist who reports for PBS Frontline and contributes to The Economist. He worked for The Washington Post as a correspondent in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, as well as in New York and Seattle. He was also a national correspondent for The New York Times and writer for the Times Magazine.
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Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy: win books and signed posters [closed]
It’s a busy time for Irvine Welsh: not only has he got a new book out, Skagboys, a prequel to his famous and acclaimed Trainspotting, but his 1997 novel Ecstasy has been made in to a major new film, on general release from today. It’s a twisted tale that explores the euphoric highs and the [...]
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