Andrew F. Gulli is the editor-in-chief of The Strand Magazine, one of the most well-established and popular journals of mystery fiction active today. He is also the editor of No Rest for the Dead, a thriller written by a team of international bestselling authors including David Baldacci, Tess Gerritsen, Jeffery Deaver, Kathy Reichs, and Alexander McCall Smith.

Lamia J. Gulli is fiction editor at The Strand Magazine. She is the coeditor of No Rest for the Dead. She lives in Detroit, Michigan.

Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for “The Lottery,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1948 and went on to become one of the most anthologized stories in American literature. She is the author of six novels, including The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle; two best- selling family memoirs, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons; hundreds of short stories, many published in five collections; several children’s books; and two plays. An extraordinary compilation of her personal correspondence was recently published as The Letters of Shirley Jackson. For many years she lived in North Bennington, Vermont, with her husband, the renowned literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, and their four children. She died on August 8, 1965

Jo Nesbø is a musician, songwriter, screenwriter, and economist, as well as one of the leading crime writers in the world. He is recognized for having widened the scope of the thriller with his unusual literary qualities and ambitions, his psychological insights, and his in-depth knowledge of life in a modern, globalized world. His books have garnered countless international awards, sold more than sixty million copies, and been translated into fifty-one languages. In addition to the Harry Hole series and The Kingdom diptych, Nesbø is the author of several stand-alone novels as well as the children’s books in the Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder series.

Ruth Ware lives with her family in Sussex, on the south coast of England. She is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail (Toronto) bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Lying Game, The Death of Mrs Westaway, The Turn of the Key, One by One, The It Girl, Zero Days, One Perfect Couple, and The Woman in Cabin 10, which comes to Netflix as a movie starring Keira Knightley in the fall of 2025. The sequel, The Woman in Suite 11, will be published in July 2025. Visit her at RuthWare.com and follow her on socials @RuthWareWriter.

Originally from the Caribbean, Samantha Lokai now resides in England where she writes dark fiction, incorporating elements of neo-noir, suspense, gothic, and horror. Her work has appeared in Strand Magazine and various anthologies including Dangerous Waters: Deadly Women of the Sea, Crimson Bones, and Horror That Represents You. As a lover of the strange and unusual and an enthusiast of all things retro and vintage, she has a deep appreciation for the charm of bygone eras, and this often influences her work. You can connect with her on Twitter @samanthaslk1 and Instagram @samanthaslwrites for updates on future publications or email samanthaslkmail@gmail.com.

R. L. Stine is one of the most popular children’s authors in history. Goosebumps, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, has more than 400 million books in print in thirty-two languages. The Goosebumps series made R. L. Stine a worldwide publishing celebrity (and frequent Jeopardy! and crossword answer) and has inspired two hit television series and two feature films starring Jack Black. His other popular children’s book series include Fear Street (the inspiration for four feature films on Netflix), Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room, and Rotten School. In 2024, Stine received a Grand Master lifetime achievement award from the Mystery Writers of America. Stine lives in New York City with his wife Jane, a former editor and publisher.

Lorenzo Carcaterra is the author of fifteen books—A Safe Place, Sleepers, Apaches, Gangster, Street Boys, Paradise City, Chasers, Midnight Angels, The Wolf, Three Dreamers, and the Nonna Maria cozy trilogy. He was the managing editor for the five-season run of the CBS series Top Cops and was a writer/producer for Law & Order. He has contributed short stories to a number of anthologies and has published articles in National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Reader’s Digest. He lives in New York City with his English Bulldog Rocco, travels to Italy as often as he can, spends fun times with his two grandsons, and works out every day—allowing him to drink more wine than he should in the evenings. He is currently at work on his next novel—The Collectors.

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including such classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award-winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983), one of the 20th century’s most superb writers, was also one of its most successful and prolific. His classic works include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, Camino Real, Sweet Bird of Youth, Night of the Iguana, Orpheus Descending, and The Rose Tattoo.

Jonathan Rabb is the author of the novels Among the Living (a finalist for the 2018 Townsend Prize for Fiction), The Second Son, Shadow and Light, Rosa (winner of the Director’s Prize at Semana Negra, 2006), The Book of Q, and The Overseer. He has published short fiction and non-fiction in a number of magazines and journals, including The Oxford American, Lit Hub, Huffington Post, Opera News, and the Journal for Interdisciplinary History. He originated the role of Fermat in the Off-Broadway production of Fermat’s Last Tango, and has soloed with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, the Albany Symphony, and the Harrisburg Symphony, among others. He has taught at NYU, Columbia, and is currently a Professor of Writing at The Savannah College of Art and Design.

Mark Mower is a crime writer and historian whose fascination with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson began at the age of twelve, after watching an early black-and-white film featuring the iconic screen duo of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Quickly seeking out the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and tracking down every film and television adaptation he could find, Mark’s interest soon became a lifelong passion. A member of the Crime Writers’ Association, the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and the Solar Pons Society of London, Mark has written numerous crime books and contributed to over twenty Holmes anthologies, including The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, The Book of Extraordinary New Sherlock Holmes Stories, and Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street. His own Holmes titles include A Farewell to Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes: The Baker Street Case Files, Sherlock Holmes: The Baker Street Legacy, and Sherlock Holmes: The Baker Street Epilogue. Mark is also the author of several nonfiction works, such as Zeppelin Over Suffolk: The Final Raid of the L48, Bloody British History: Norwich, and Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Suffolk. His essays have appeared in over thirty publications, including Mobile Holmes: Transportation in the Sherlockian Canon and Truly Criminal: A Crime Writers’ Association Anthology of True Crime.

Jeffery Deaver is a New York Times bestselling author whose novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world. His books are sold in 150 countries and have been translated into twenty-five languages. A two-term president of Mystery Writers of America, he was recently named a Grand Master by the organization, joining the ranks of Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Mary Higgins Clark, and Walter Mosley. The author of fifty novels, more than one hundred short stories, a nonfiction book on the law, and the lyricist of a country-western album, Deaver has received—or been shortlisted for—dozens of awards. The Bodies Left Behind was named Novel of the Year by the International Thriller Writers, while The Broken Window and Edge were also finalists. He won the CWA’s Steel Dagger for The Garden of Beasts and its Short Story Dagger for his short fiction. He has been nominated eight times for an Edgar Award by Mystery Writers of America. Deaver has received numerous lifetime achievement honors, including those from the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, The Strand Magazine, and the Raymond Chandler Award in Italy. Several of his works have been adapted for the screen: A Maiden’s Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin; The Bone Collector was turned into a feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie; and an adaptation of The Devil’s Teardrop aired on Lifetime. His Lincoln Rhyme series was adapted into the NBC drama Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector. More recently, The Never Game—featuring his character Colter Shaw—was adapted as the CBS series Tracker.

Sir Alexander McCall Smith is the author of over 120 books that have been published throughout the world. His best-known series is The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, of which twenty-five volumes have been published to date. Translated into over forty languages, these books became a successful television series and film under the direction of the late Anthony Minghella. His many other works of fiction include the world’s longest-running serial novel, the 44 Scotland Street series. The 44 Scotland Street books are published on a daily basis in The Scotsman newspaper and then appear in book form. There are seventeen volumes to date. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the American Academy of Arts Medal for Literature, the Lifetime Award of the Scottish cultural organization, the Saltire Society, the UK Author of the Year Award, and honorary degrees from thirteen universities in Europe and North America.

An expert humorist and a master of light verse, P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) was born in Guildford, Surrey, and educated at Dulwich College in south London. After a spell in a bank, he then spent some years freelancing as a journalist. During a literary career spanning over seventy years, he wrote more than ninety books, twenty film scripts, and collaborated on more than thirty plays and musical comedies. The first of many visits to the US took place in 1904, and he moved there permanently in 1947, settling in Southampton NY, gaining citizenship in 1955. Sir Pelham Wodehouse died on St. Valentine’s Day 1975 at the age of ninety-three.

Michael Bond, C.B.E., (1926–2017) was born in Newbury, Berkshire on 13th January 1926. He started writing while serving in the British Army and stationed in Cairo at the end of World War II, but it was to be over a decade later, while working as a television cameraman for the BBC, that he was inspired to start writing stories about a small bear found on a London railway platform. Although best known for his books about Paddington Bear, Michael Bond wrote many other stories for children, including a number of books about his daughter’s guinea pig, Olga da Polga, and two television series: The Herbs and The Adventures of Parsley. In 1983, he turned his hand to adult fiction and published the first in a series of eighteen humorous detective novels about Monsieur Pamplemousse, an ex-member of the French Sûreté turned food guide inspector, and his faithful bloodhound, Pommes Frites. In 2007, despite having left school at the age of fourteen without a single academic qualification to his name, Michael Bond was granted an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Reading University. Eight years later, he was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for his services to children’s literature. Michael Bond continued to write every day of his life until he died at his home in London on 27th June 2017. He was honored with a Memorial Service in St. Paul’s Cathedral and is laid to rest, very appropriately, in Paddington Old Cemetery.

Catherine Aird (1930–2024) was the author of more than twenty books of detective mysteries and three collections of short stories, most of which feature Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan and Detective Constable W. E. Crosby. Aird held an honorary master’s degree from the University of Kent and was appointed an MBE in 1998. In recognition of her significant contribution to crime writing she was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger in 2015. She died in late 2024.

Andrew Crowley lives in Toronto with his wife and daughters. His short fiction has appeared most recently in Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, and “Peephole” was his first published story. The idea for it came during a bout of insomnia: “I wanted to capture the feeling of a waking nightmare. I thought if I could commit it to paper, maybe I could finally get to sleep, so I wrote ‘Peephole’ without any plans to get it published. It did help, and I did get to sleep, and some months later I sent it in to The Strand and was very pleased to have it published under one of those great, dark, Strand covers that captured that middle-of-night atmosphere so well. It’s an honor to have ‘Peephole’ appear in The Strand’s twenty-fifth anniversary collection.”

Walter Mosley is the author of over sixty critically acclaimed books of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and plays. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, The Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy®, several Edgars, 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 the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and was awarded the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award from the National Book Foundation. He divides his time between New York and California.

Michael Mallory is the author of the Amelia Watson (“The Second Mrs. Watson”) and Dave Beauchamp mystery series, and the stand-alone novels The Mural, Death Walks Skid Row, Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Battle for Christmas, and The Ambulance. His short stories—some two hundred to date—have been published everywhere from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine to Fox Kids Magazine. His story “What the Cat Dragged In,” first published in The Strand Magazine, was selected for inclusion in The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of 2023. In the realm of nonfiction, Mike has authored eleven books on popular culture subjects, including the bestselling Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror, and more than six hundred articles for scores of publications including Variety, The Los Angeles Times, Animation Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and Mystery Scene. A former actor whose credits include the television shows Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Vegas, Mob City, and Angie Tribeca, Mike lives in the Greater Los Angeles area.

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) earned a reputation as “a prophet of his time,” thanks to groundbreaking classics such as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds. Born into humble beginnings in Kent, England, Wells rose to become one of the most widely read and influential authors of the 20th century. A true polymath, he wrote across genres—from speculative fiction to political commentary—and found enormous success with his nonfiction work The Outline of History. His works have been adapted numerous times, including the 2005 blockbuster War of the Worlds directed by Steven Spielberg, the 2020 horror reimagining of The Invisible Man, and various BBC and streaming adaptations of The Time Machine. In addition to his many short stories, Wells’s visionary themes continue to resonate, securing his legacy as a pioneer of science fiction and modern thought.

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of a National Humanities Medal awarded by President Barack Obama, the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina, the Cino Del Duca World Prize, and is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the bestsellers Blonde and We Were the Mulvaneys. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities Emerita at Princeton University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2024 she won the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award given to “a master of the thriller and noir literary genre.”

Zoë Sharp is a neuro-diverse autodidact who opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve and wrote her first novel at fifteen. She created her award-winning crime thrillers featuring ex-Special Forces trainee turned bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox, after receiving death threats in the course of her work as a photojournalist. She began making a living from writing in 1988, and since 2001 has penned various novels such as the long-running Charlie Fox series (including a prequel novella), the Blake & Byron mystery series, the McColl & Weston psychological thrillers set in the English Lake District, standalone crime novels, and collaborations with espionage thriller author John Lawton, as well as numerous highly acclaimed short stories. Her work has been used in school textbooks in Denmark, inspired an original song and music video, and been optioned for TV and film. www.ZoeSharp.com

John M. Floyd is the author of more than a thousand short stories in publications like Strand Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Best American Mystery Stories (2015, 2018, and 2010), and Best Mystery Stories of the Year (2021 and 2024). A former Air Force captain and IBM systems engineer, John is also an Edgar nominee, a Shamus Award winner, a six-time Derringer Award winner, a past recipient of the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, and the author of nine books. He and his wife, Carolyn, live in Mississippi.

Michael Connelly was born in Philadelphia, PA, and is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of forty novels and one work of nonfiction. With over eighty-nine million copies of his books sold worldwide and translations into forty-five languages, he is one of the most successful writers working today. His debut novel, The Black Echo, won the prestigious Best First Novel Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1992. Over the course of his career, his work has been honored with the Diamond Dagger from the CWA in 2018 and the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Writing Award from Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England in 2022. He was also named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 2023. Two of Connelly’s novels have been adapted for the screen: Blood Work, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, and The Lincoln Lawyer, with Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. Connelly serves as executive producer of Bosch and Bosch: Legacy—Amazon Studios original drama series based on his bestselling character Harry Bosch. He is also executive producer of The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix, starring Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Mickey Haller, as well as the documentary films Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story and Tales of the American. He both created and hosts the podcasts Murder Book and The Wonderland Murders & The Secret History of Hollywood. His recent New York Times bestsellers include The Waiting, Resurrection Walk, Desert Star, The Dark Hours, The Law of Innocence, The Night Fire, and Dark Sacred Night. He divides his time between California and Florida.

Charles Todd is the New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge series and the Bess Crawford series. A Christmas Witness Novella is due October 21, 2025, followed by A Day of Judgment in Spring 2026 and a new Bess Crawford mystery. He has published over forty titles including two stand-alone novels, an anthology, and twenty short stories appearing in mystery magazines and anthologies worldwide. His works have received the Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha, and Barry awards and nominations for other major awards. He was a Guest of Honor at Killer Nashville, Malice Domestic, and Bouchercon in 2025.

Kira Peikoff is the author of Baby X, Mother Knows Best, Living Proof, No Time to Die, and Die Again Tomorrow. She has a degree in journalism from New York University and a master’s in bioethics from Columbia. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Popular Mechanics, and other outlets.

James Dorr’s Avoid Seeing a Mouse and Other Tales of The Real and Surreal was published in January 2024 by Alien Buddha Press. His previous works include The Tears of Isis (a 2013 Bram Stoker Award® nominee for fiction collection), Tombs: A Chronicle of Latter-Day Times of Earth, and Vamps (A Retrospective), an all-poetry volume. Specializing in dark fantasy and horror, with forays into mystery and science fiction, Dorr has been a technical writer, an editor on a regional magazine, a full-time non-fiction freelancer, and a semi-professional musician. He currently harbors a Goth cat named Triana and counts among his major influences Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, Allen Ginsberg, and Bertolt Brecht.

Sir John Mortimer (1923–2009) was a novelist, playwright, and barrister. The first book featuring his most famous character, Horace Rumpole, was published by Penguin in 1980, and Mortimer went on to publish a dozen collections of Rumpole stories as well as a handful of novels, culminating in 2007 in Rumpole Misbehaves. He was knighted in 1998 for his services to the arts and died in January 2009.

James Lee Burke is a New York Times bestselling author best known for his mysteries, particularly the Dave Robicheaux series. He has twice received the Edgar Award for Best Novel, for Black Cherry Blues and Cimarron Rose. Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up on the Texas–Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA from the latter. He has worked at a wide variety of jobs over the years, including as an oil lease negotiator, a reporter, and a social worker. He was Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, succeeding his good friend and posthumous Pulitzer Prize winner John Kennedy Toole, and preceding Ernest Gaines in the position. Shortly before his move to Montana, he taught for several years in the Creative Writing program at Wichita State University in the 1980s. Burke and his wife, Pearl, split their time between Lolo, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana.

Laura Benedict is the Edgar and ITW Thriller Award–nominated author of eight novels of mystery and suspense, including The Stranger Inside and the Bliss House gothic series. In addition to The Strand Magazine, Benedict’s short fiction has appeared in publications such as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, and numerous anthologies. When she’s not writing, Laura teaches writing workshops and edits fiction for emerging writers from her home in the Midwest.