Panelists on this fun, fast-paced improv game in which authors brainstorm on their feet to create a brand new mystery, using suggestions from the audience, will be:

Kate Flora: Flora’s fascination with people’s criminal tendencies began in the Maine attorney general’s office. Deadbeat dads, people who hurt their kids, and employers’ discrimination aroused her curiosity about human behavior. The author of twenty-four books spanning many genres including crime fiction, true crime, memoir, and nonfiction, and many short stories, Flora’s been a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards. She won the Public Safety Writers Association award for nonfiction and twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction.

Judith McIntosh: A recovering attorney, J.A. McIntosh still lives in the small Massachusetts town where she was born, though she travels often. She writes the Meredith, Massachusetts series about imperfect people seeking justice. Her latest novel, Swift River Secrets, is a contemporary mystery with historical elements going back one hundred years. She is the president of the Swift River Valley Historical Society and belongs to Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and the Straw Dog Writers Guild.

Matt Cost: Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries. Cost has published six books in the Mainely Mystery series, five books in the Clay Wolfe/Port Essex series, and two books in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series. For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, where he spends his days at the computer, writing.

Janet Raye Stevens: writes short stories and novel-length mystery, YA, and romance. Winner of RWA’s 2018 Golden Heart Award, Janet lives in Massachusetts where she indulges her hobbies of drinking copious amounts of tea (Earl Gray, hot) plotting revenge (best served cold), and creating fictional worlds populated with cool chicks and hot guys.

Made possible by Groton Public Library Endowment Trust.