Cleo Coyle is the pen name for American mystery writers Alice Alfonsi in collaboration with her husband Marc Cerasini, best-known for the Coffeehouse Mysteries (Berkley Prime Crime), a series of cozy mysteries set in and around a fictional coffeehouse in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. [1]
Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini both grew up with Italian parents in working-class neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [2] Alfonsi graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Cerasini graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. In New York, Alfonsi worked as a journalist and book author; Cerasini as a magazine editor, literary critic and fiction and nonfiction author. The couple met in Manhattan and married at the Little Church of the West in Las Vegas. [3] They live in New York City.
Alfonsi was the ghostwriter for Hidden Passions , a novelization of the NBC soap opera Passions , [4] which spent seven weeks on the 2001 New York Times hardcover fiction bestsellers list. [5] [6] Cerasini has written four novels in the 24: Declassified series of original Jack Bauer adventures based on the Fox TV series 24 . He also wrote two original novels for Marvel Comics featuring Wolverine. [7] His nonfiction includes The Future of War: The Face of 21st Century Warfare (Alpha Books, 2003).
Among their co-authored projects are the Haunted Bookshop mysteries (Penguin Group), originally written under the pen name Alice Kimberly and later published under their Cleo Coyle name. [8] The paranormal cozy mystery series is set in and around an independent bookstore in Rhode Island, and features the ghost of a hardboiled PI from the 1940s who helps the modern-day bookshop owner solve crimes.
| Library resources about Cleo Coyle |
| By Cleo Coyle |
|---|
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.
Martin Cruz Smith is an American mystery novelist. He is best known for his nine-novel series on Russian investigator Arkady Renko, who was first introduced in 1981 with Gorky Park. A tenth book in the series, Independence Square is scheduled to be published in May 2023.
James John Herbert, OBE was an English horror writer. A full-time writer, he also designed his own book covers and publicity. His books have sold 54 million copies worldwide, and have been translated into 34 languages, including Chinese and Russian.
Robert Brian "Robin" Cook is an American physician and novelist who writes about medicine and topics affecting public health.
Patriot Games is a thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and published in July 1987. Without Remorse, released six years later, is an indirect prequel, and it is chronologically the first book featuring Jack Ryan, the main character in most of Clancy's novels. The novel focuses on Ryan being the target of Irish terrorist group Ulster Liberation Army for thwarting their kidnapping attempt on the Prince and Princess of Wales in London. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation, starring Harrison Ford as Ryan, premiered on June 5, 1992.
A ghost story is any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. The "ghost" may appear of its own accord or be summoned by magic. Linked to the ghost is the idea of a "haunting", where a supernatural entity is tied to a place, object or person. Ghost stories are commonly examples of ghostlore.
Charlotte MacLeod was a Canadian-American mystery fiction writer.
Loren D. Estleman is an American writer of detective and Western fiction. He is known for a series of crime novels featuring the investigator Amos Walker.
Otto Penzler is a German-born American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
Harold William "H.W." Coyle is an American writer and author of historical and speculative fiction and of war novels including Team Yankee, a New York Times bestseller. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1974, spent 14 years on active duty with the US Army, and is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War. Other pen names include H.W. Coyle. He has co-authored books with Barrett Tillman and Jennifer Ellis.
Charlaine Harris Schulz is an American author who specializes in mysteries. She is best known for her book series The Southern Vampire Mysteries, which was adapted as the TV series True Blood. The television show was a critical and financial success for HBO, running seven seasons, from 2008 through 2014. A number of her books have been bestsellers and this series was translated into multiple languages and published across the globe.
Jonathan Maberry is an American suspense author, anthology editor, comic book writer, magazine feature writer, playwright, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer. He was named one of the Today's Top Ten Horror Writers.
Caffè Americano is a type of coffee drink prepared by diluting an espresso with hot water, giving it a different flavor from traditionally brewed coffee. Its strength varies with the number of shots of espresso and amount of water added. The name is also spelled with varying capitalization and use of diacritics: e.g., café americano.
Ilsa J. Bick is an author of short stories, e-books and novels. She has written for several long-running science fiction series, most notably Star Trek, Battletech, and Mechwarrior: Dark Age. She's taken both Grand and Second Prize in the Strange New Worlds anthology series, while her story, "The Quality of Wetness," took Second Prize in the prestigious Writers of the Future contest in 2000. Her first Star Trek novel, Well of Souls, was a 2003 Barnes & Noble bestseller.
Pete Earley is an American journalist and author who has written non-fiction books and novels.
Cozy mysteries, also referred to as "cozies", are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur off stage, the detective is an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. Cozies thus stand in contrast to hardboiled fiction, in which more violence and explicit sexuality are central to the plot. The term "cozy" was first coined in the late 20th century when various writers produced work in an attempt to re-create the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
Tim Myers is an American author who publishes under a number of pen names, including Jessica Beck. As Beck, he is the author of the Donut Shop Mystery, Classic Diner Mystery, Ghost Cat Cozy Mystery, and Cast Iron Cooking Mystery series. The author has been nominated for the Agatha Award and named an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association national bestseller. Beck is most known for the Donut Shop Mystery series, which features main protagonist Suzanne Hart, who runs a Donut Hearts shop in the town of April Springs in North Carolina.
Melanie Benjamin is the pen name of American writer Melanie Hauser.
Henrietta Dorothy Everett who wrote under the pen name Theo Douglas was a British novelist who was popular during her lifetime but who is now largely forgotten. Her identity was revealed in 1910 but little is known of her life.
