Ben H. Winters | |
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| Born | June 14, 1976 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Alma mater | Washington University in St. Louis |
| Period | 2009–present |
| Website | |
| benhwinters | |
Benjamin Allen H. "Ben" Winters (born June 14, 1976) is an American author. [1] He is best known for mystery/sci-fi novels such as The Last Policeman and Underground Airlines , and for creating the CBS show Tracker .
Winters was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Maryland. In high school, he played in the punk band Corm, [2] alongside John Davis, now of Title Tracks. In 1998, he graduated from Washington University in St. Louis where he was active in the comedy group Mama's Pot Roast. [3]
Winters was first known as the author of the 2009 New York Times bestseller Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. In June 2010, Android Karenina was published by Quirk Books. A young adult novel, The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, was published by HarperCollins in September 2010. Finkleman was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America in January 2011. In 2011, Winters published a second book in the Ms. Finkleman series, titled The Mystery of the Missing Everything, and Bedbugs, a horror novel for adults. Winters has also written numerous books in the Worst-Case Scenario Series.[ citation needed ]
In 2012, Winters published The Last Policeman , the first in a trilogy of detective novels set in a pre-apocalyptic United States; that book won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in the category Best Paperback Original; [4] was an Amazon Best Book of 2012; [5] and was nominated for the Macavity Award for Best Mystery by Mystery Readers International. [6] The second novel in the Last Policeman trilogy, Countdown City , was published in July 2013; it won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award for Distinguished Science Fiction. [7] The third book in the Policeman series, World of Trouble , was published in July 2014. It was nominated for the Edgar Award in the category of Best Paperback Original [4] and for the Anthony Award. [8]
Winters's work for the theater includes the Off-Broadway musical Slut, the children's musicals The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Uncle Pirate, and A (Tooth) Fairy Tale and the Neil Sedaka juke-box musical, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do .
Winters's novel Underground Airlines was published by Mulholland Books in July 2016. It is an alternate history book, set in a present-day alternate universe in which the American Civil War never occurred, with human chattel slavery continuing to be practiced legally in four U.S. states as a result. In the book, the main character, a former slave and bounty hunter working for the U.S. government, attempts to infiltrate an abolitionist organization known as the "Underground Airlines" (a reference to the historical Underground Railroad). [9] [10] The book was an Indie Next pick for July 2016 and a New York Times bestseller. [11] [12] The book won the 2016 Sidewise Award for Alternate History.
His novel Golden State was published by Mulholland Books in January 2019. The novel imagines an alternate history version of Southern California in which objective reality is fetishized and protected above all things, and lying is the greatest crime imaginable. Winters has said the book was inspired by the rise of alternative facts and in particular by the argument about the crowd size at the 2017 presidential inauguration. [13] Golden State was an Indie Next pick for January 2019 [14] and a Book of the Month Club selection. [15] Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Berry called the novel "smart, intricate and propulsive" and "proof that Winters deserves our continued attention as one of crime fiction’s most inventive practitioners." [16]
In 2021 Winters published The Quiet Boy. Reviewing The Quiet Boy in the New York Times, Sarah Lyall wrote "Winters is such a fine writer that by the time he asks you to suspend your disbelief, you’ll follow him anywhere." [17] His upcoming thriller Big Time, which centers two average women caught up in the world of corporate espionage, arrives March 2024. Critics have praised Big Time as a "fast-paced and thought-provoking speculative thriller with well-drawn and relatable characters" [18] and "jaw-dropping plot twists." [19]
Winters has been active in television since 2016, developing pilots and staffing on shows such as Legion and the Apple limited series Manhunt . In 2022 it was announced that Winters was creating a show based on the Jeffery Deaver novel The Never Game, [20] later retitled Tracker for CBS. The procedural, starring Justin Hartley of This is Us and directed by Ken Olin, was picked up to series and premiered after Super Bowl LVIII in February 2024. [21]
Winters lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children. [22]
Margaret Frazer, born Gail Lynn Brown, was an American historical novelist, best known for more than twenty historical mystery novels and a variety of short stories. The pen name was originally shared by Frazer and Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld in their collaboration on The Novice's Tale, the first of the Sister Frevisse books featuring the Benedictine nun Dame Frevisse. Their collaboration came to an end with The Murderer's Tale, the sixth book in the series. Starting with the Edgar Award-nominated The Prioress' Tale, the Margaret Frazer pen name was used exclusively by Gail Brown. She also wrote the Player Joliffe mysteries, starring the medieval actor Joliffe.
Harlan Coben is an American writer of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past, murders, or fatal accidents and have multiple twists. Twelve of his novels have been adapted for film and television.
Eric Wright was a Canadian writer of mystery novels.
John Connolly is an Irish writer who is best known for his series of novels starring private detective Charlie Parker.
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.
Jeff Abbott is an American suspense novelist. He has degrees in History and English from Rice University. He lives in Austin, Texas. Before writing full-time, he was a creative director at an advertising agency. His early novels were traditional detective fiction, but in recent years he has turned to writing thriller fiction. A theme of his work is the idea of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary danger and fighting to return to their normal lives. His novels are published in several countries and have also been bestsellers in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Germany, France and Portugal. He is also Creative Director at Springbox, a Prophet company.
Margaret Maron was an American writer, the author of award-winning mystery novels.
Dana Cameron is an American archaeologist, and author of award-winning crime fiction and urban fantasy.
Andrew Klavan is an American novelist and conservative political commentator. He has also worked in film and as an essayist and video satirist. He is also known for being a political commentator and hosts The Andrew Klavan Show podcast on the conservative site The Daily Wire.
Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Leslie S. Klinger is an American attorney and writer. He is a noted literary editor and annotator of classic genre fiction, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the novels Dracula, Frankenstein, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics, Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel Watchmen, the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, and Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
Tana French is an American-Irish writer and theatrical actress. She is a longtime resident of Dublin, Ireland. Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for best first novel. The Independent has referred to her as "the First Lady of Irish Crime".
Boston Teran is the pseudonymous American author of 16 novels published from 1999 to 2023. Teran's legal identity is unknown, and the author engages in limited publicity by doing only one interview per book.
The Last Policeman is a 2012 American science fiction mystery novel by Ben H. Winters. It follows a police detective in New Hampshire as he investigates a suicide he believes was really a murder. His efforts are complicated by the social, political and economic effects of preparations for, and anticipation of, an asteroid impact six months in the future.
Countdown City is a 2013 American soft science fiction mystery novel by Ben H. Winters. It is the sequel to The Last Policeman (2012) and follows the exploits of former detective Henry Palace as he investigates the disappearance of Brett Cavatone, the husband of his childhood nanny, Martha. The book is set in a world preparing for the impact of 2011GV1, an asteroid that will wipe out humanity, which will occur in 77 days, within the archipelago of Indonesia. As with The Last Policeman, Countdown City examines the psychological, cultural and metaphysical consequences of the apocalypse.
World of Trouble is an American soft science fiction mystery novel by Ben H. Winters and published by Quirk Books. It is the third and last installment of the Last Policeman trilogy. It was published on July 15, 2014.
Claire Legrand is an American writer of children's and young adult literature, including novels and short stories. She is best known for her New York Times bestsellingEmpirium trilogy, published by Sourcebooks Fire.
Underground Airlines is a 2016 science fiction novel by American writer Ben Winters, set in a contemporary alternate-history United States where the American Civil War never occurred because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated prior to his 1861 inauguration and a version of the Crittenden Compromise was adopted instead. As a result, slavery has remained legal in the "Hard Four" : Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and a unified Carolina. Its name evokes the Underground Railroad in relations to its setting. The novel attracted praise for exploring racism through the alternate-history mechanism.
William Henry Hallahan III was an American Edgar-award winning novelist. He is best known for his work in the mystery, suspense and occult fields.
The Inspector Banks series is a collection of mystery novels by Peter Robinson about Detective Superintendent Alan Banks.
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