Sleuths, Spies & Alibis is the group blog of thirteen authors who write mysteries and thrillers for middle grade and young adult readers (and for mystery/thriller fans of all ages!). We aim to demystify the writing process, from
tracking down ideas to publishing a book. Though we do not review books, we blog about new kidlit mystery/thriller books to watch out for, books we love, and the writing craft. We regularly interview emerging and established mystery authors in our popular Interrogation Room feature. You can follow us on Twitter, too!
W.H. Beck grew up in Wisconsin, the oldest of four kids. As a kid, her dad always teased her that she would be a librarian someday. That’s because she read all the time—walking home from school, while brushing her teeth, under the table at dinnertime, and under the covers at night. And, sure enough, after earning an elementary teaching degree from the University of Wisconsin (go Badgers!), she went on to get a master’s degree in information studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Yes, that’d be library school.
She still lives and reads in Wisconsin, but now she shares her home and books with her husband, two sons, and two big black dogs. Malcolm at Midnight is her first novel. She's hard at work on her next.
F.T. Bradley is the author of Double Vision (Harper Children's, October
2012), the first in the middle-grade adventure series featuring Lincoln
Baker and Benjamin Green. Her husband's Air Force career has F.T. and
their two daughters moving all around the world, but for the moment the
family lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. To find out more about F.T. and Double Vision, visit http://www.doublevisionbooks.com.
Elle Cosimano
website ~ twitter ~ facebook
Elle Cosimano is the daughter of a prison warden and an elementary school teacher who rides a Harley. As a teen, she spent summers working on a fishing boat, baiting hooks and lugging buckets of bait. She majored in Psychology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and set aside a successful real-estate career to pursue writing. She lives with her husband and two young sons, and divides her time between her home near Washington, DC and a jungle tree house in the Mayan Riviera.
website ~ twitter ~ facebook
Elle Cosimano is the daughter of a prison warden and an elementary school teacher who rides a Harley. As a teen, she spent summers working on a fishing boat, baiting hooks and lugging buckets of bait. She majored in Psychology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and set aside a successful real-estate career to pursue writing. She lives with her husband and two young sons, and divides her time between her home near Washington, DC and a jungle tree house in the Mayan Riviera.
Laura Ellen
Laura Ellen writes YA and MG contemporary novels that tend to center around a mystery and a romance. She loves the unknown, the draw of the mystery, the suggestion of a conspiracy. She likes the idea of things being there that we cannot see, and how this always makes us think we know what's going on, when we really don't. Her YA debut Blind Spot will be published in Fall, 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is represented by Jill Corcoran of The Herman Agency.
Ashley Elston
website ~ twitter ~ facebook ~ goodreads
Ashley Elston lives in Northwest Louisiana with her husband and three sons. She spent ten years working as a wedding photographer but quit to focus on her writing. She has been in cake withdrawal ever since. Her debut, THE RULES FOR DISAPPEARING, will be published by Disney Hyperion on May 14, 2013 and the sequel in Spring 2014.
website ~ twitter ~ facebook ~ goodreads
Ashley Elston lives in Northwest Louisiana with her husband and three sons. She spent ten years working as a wedding photographer but quit to focus on her writing. She has been in cake withdrawal ever since. Her debut, THE RULES FOR DISAPPEARING, will be published by Disney Hyperion on May 14, 2013 and the sequel in Spring 2014.
website ~ twitter ~ facebook ~ goodreads
Lamar "L. R." Giles writes for adults and teens. Penning everything from epic fantasy to noir thrillers, he's never met a genre he didn't like. His debut YA mystery FAKE ID is about a teen in witness protection who investigates his best friend's murder and stumbles on a dark conspiracy that leads back to his own father. It will be published in 2014 by Amistad/HarperCollins Children's Books. He resides in Virginia with his wife and is represented by Jamie Weiss Chilton of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
website ~ twitter ~ facebook
Kristen Kittscher grew up in many different places, including San Francisco, Dallas, and London but she feels most at home in Southern California, where she lives with her husband, Kai, and their hopelessly spoiled cat and dog. A graduate of Brown University and former English teacher, she now writes funny mysteries for the precocious middle-schoolers she once enjoyed teaching so much. Her debut novel, The Wig in the Window, comes out in Summer 2013 with Harper Children’s.
Elisa Ludwig
Elisa Ludwig's debut young adult novel Pretty Crooked (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins), will be released in March 2012. It's the story of Willa Fox, a teen girl who goes Robin Hood on her rich classmates —the first of a three-book series of thriller/mysteries. Even though she had to extensively research pickpocketing techniques to write it, she remains a law-abiding citizen. Elisa lives in Philadelphia with her husband Jesse and cat Beau a.k.a. Bread. When she's not writing for teens, she's cooking and/or writing about food for The Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications. Elisa is a proud member of The Apocalypsies.
Mary McCoy
website ~ twitter
website ~ twitter
Mary is a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library, and has been a contributor to On Bunker Hill (http://www.onbunkerhill.org/)
Diana was born in Seattle and now lives outside of Boston with her husband and son. She has taught ESL (English as a Second Language), writing, and literature, worked as a freelance writer and editor in educational publishing, and authored several ESL textbooks and DVD video scripts (which is way more exciting than it sounds). She is also the Fiction Editor at YARN (Young Adult Review Network). Diana's debut young adult novel, Tokyo Heist (Viking/Penguin, 2012) is an art mystery set in Seattle and Japan. Her next book from Viking, Latitude Zero, also a YA mystery featuring globetrotting teens and international intrigue, is coming in 2014. With a young son, it’s a mystery to her how to find spare time these
days, but when she does, she enjoys taiko drumming and bicycling.
Sarah Skilton
website ~ twitter ~ facebook ~ goodreads ~ blog
website ~ twitter ~ facebook ~ goodreads ~ blog
After growing up in the suburbs of Chicago and graduating
with a TV/Radio degree from Ithaca College in upstate New York, Sarah moved to
sunny Los Angeles, where her blood promptly thinned out, preventing her from
returning to either location. Kicking around Hollywood for ten years, Sarah
worked as a movie-of-the-week production assistant, a TV extra, a freelance
writer, a film reviewer, and a blogger at a Japanese marketing group. She
currently reads TV and film scripts for a company that streamlines the casting
process for agents and actors. She and her husband, a magician, live in Santa
Clarita, CA, with their young son. Sarah is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a fact
that came in handy while writing her martial arts-themed debut YA novel,
BRUISED (Amulet Books, March 2013). Her second book, HIGH AND DRY (Amulet
Books, 2014), is a young adult mystery about corruption in high school.
website ~ YA Muses blog ~ blog ~ twitter
Talia Vance is the author of Spies & Prejudice (Egmont, June 2013), Silver (Flux) and it's sequel Gold (Fall 2013). She has worked as a horse trainer, a freelance writer and an attorney. She lives in Northern California with her husband, children and a needy Saint Bernard named Huckleberry. Talia always thought she’d grow up to write “the Great American Novel” but her tastes ran more along the lines of torrid romance and fast-paced thrillers. So did her life. But that's another story.
Our Intern:
Dani Forshay
Dani Forshay is a recent graduate of Hamilton College who spent the last year and a half as a Fulbright fellow at Gorno-Altaysk State University in Siberia and then traveling throughout Southeast Asia before returning to America to pursue a career in publishing. She currently works at Houghton Mifflin. Aside from her love for books, she also enjoys foreign languages, musical instruments, hiking, and gardening.
Our Intern:
Dani Forshay is a recent graduate of Hamilton College who spent the last year and a half as a Fulbright fellow at Gorno-Altaysk State University in Siberia and then traveling throughout Southeast Asia before returning to America to pursue a career in publishing. She currently works at Houghton Mifflin. Aside from her love for books, she also enjoys foreign languages, musical instruments, hiking, and gardening.
