Authors in This Issue

“Murder Can’t Stop De Carnival” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier
Ashley-Ruth Bernier’s first story for EQMM appeared in our March/ April 2022 issue. At that time, she’d already placed several stories with The Caribbean Writer, but never had a mystery published. Since then, she’s made a name for herself in our genre as a Claymore finalist, a 2023 Derringer nominee, and 2022’s winner of the Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize.

“Nate’s Initiation” by W. Edward Blain
Winner of the 2022 EQMM Readers Award for his story “The Secret Sharer,” W. Edward Blain was also a nominee for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1991 for his novel Passion Play—reissued in e-book and hardcover in 2018 by Pegasus Crime.

“Don’t Push Me” by Liza Cody
Liza Cody introduced the female P.I. to British mystery fiction with her Anna Lee novels, which were adapted for TV. She’s also a top-notch short-story writer; her latest collection is My People and Other Crime Stories.

“The Great Wolf” by John J. McKeon
In 1991, John J. McKeon’s first novel, The Serpent’s Crown, was called “powerful, riveting and timely” by the New York Times Book Review. But shortly thereafter he became engrossed in a quarter-century career as a freelance business journalist. He’s only recently returned to fiction with a story in Delmarva Review. This is his first EQMM story.

“Somebody That I Used to Know” by Sharyn Kolberg
Sharyn Kolberg, ghostwriter and author of many bestselling nonfiction books, first appeared in EQMM in 2022 with “The Thesaurus of Love and Death.” At that time she’d already had short stories in Mystery Weekly Magazine, Literal Latte, Mensa Bulletin Fiction Issue, and Akashic Books’s Mondays Are Murder.

“Shall I Be Mother” by David Dean
“Mrs. Hyde,” the first entry in the Dr. Beckett Marchland series by David Dean, not only won our 2023 Readers Award, it made Robert Lopresti’s Best of the Year list at SleuthSayers. Reviewer Anne van Doorn said of the series: “Dean excels at writing historical mysteries!”

“When Life Gives You Lemons” by LaToya Jovena
LaToya Jovena made her fiction debut in EQMM in 2020. Since then she’s had several more stories in EQMM and AHMM, one of them, “Stingers” (AHMM), selected for Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022.

“Ipso Facto” by Michael Wiley
Shamus Award winner Michael Wiley’s third P.I. Sam Kelson novel, Head Case, was praised by PW for “integrating humor, mostly deriving from Kelson’s inability to keep himself from sharing blunt truths.” Here’s Kelson’s latest case.

“Our Father’s Secrets” by Jeff Soloway
Jeff Soloway’s January/February EQMM story “The Interpreter and the Killer” (2021) received a nomination for the ITW Thriller Award. He began his career in fiction with a story that won the Robert L. Fish Award for best short story by a new American author. His short stories are standouts, but he’s also the author of the Travel Writer mystery novels.

“An Ounce of Prevention” by Twist Phelan
Author of the Finn Teller Corporate Spy novels and the Pinnacle Peak books, Twist Phelan is equally celebrated for her two-dozen-plus short stories, which have won many awards, including two ITW Thriller Awards and an Arthur Ellis Award.

“The Bijoux Bird” by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens
Max Allan Collins, winner of multiple Shamus Awards and PWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, is distinguished in many genres, including graphic novels (the Academy Award-winning Road to Perdition was based on his graphic novel). Matthew V. Clemens cowrote with Max Allan Collins not only this story but the best-selling Reader and Rogers thrillers and a long-running series of CSI novels.

“Redbeard” by Matthew Wilson
An English teacher from Portland, Oregon, Matthew Wilson’s fiction debut was in our Department of First Stories in 2018. His work has since appeared in EQMM and elsewhere, including The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022.

“The Tragedy of Black Swan Lodge” by Alice Arisugawa
Alice Arisugawa is the pseudonym of Uehara Masahide, a leading writer of Japan’s “New Traditionalist” school. Like Ellery Queen, he uses for his pen name the name of his protagonist, a crime novelist/sleuth. A 2016 TV series was based on the thirty-two “Writer Alice” books.

“The Midnight Caller” by Jay Randall
Jay Randall is the fiction-writing pseudonym of a freelance author who lived in Asia for many years. His articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Newsweek, among many other publications.

“Letters From Tokyo” by Yoshinori Todo
Although he is a Japanese citizen, Yoshinori Todo was born in Vienna and has also lived in Munich and London. He speaks four languages fluently—English, Japanese, German, and Russian—but writes fiction only in English. He has worked many jobs but is currently an English-language tutor in Tokyo.

“El Aleman” by Hector Acosta
Hector Acosta was a 2020 nominee for both the best short story Edgar Award and the Anthony Award for his story “Turistas.” His short fiction has appeared in Mystery Tribune, Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, and elsewhere. This is his EQMM debut.