Minerva Koenig (born 1960) is an American author based in Texas who writes the Julia Kalas mystery series, published by St. Martin's Minotaur. [1] Kalas is a short, rotund mafia widow of mixed ethnicity in her late 30s who is sent to the fictional small town of Azula, Texas, by the United States Federal Witness Protection Program after her husband is killed by the Aryan Brotherhood. [2] [3]
Nine Days, the first book in the series, was released in September 2014. South of Nowhere was released in February 2016, [4] [5] and was included in Texas Monthly's "Checklist" of recommended books for February 2016. [6]
Koenig's work often addresses issues of feminism, racism, and Texas border politics. [7] [8] She has appeared at a number of book festivals including the Texas Book Festival. [9] [10] [11]
Koenig was born in Berkeley, California and grew up in Galveston, Texas. She is an architect. [12]
Pflugerville is a city in Travis County, Texas, United States, with a small portion in Williamson County. The population was 65,191 at the 2020 census. Pflugerville is a suburb of Austin and part of the Austin–Round Rock– Metropolitan Statistical Area. It was named after the original German settlers who farmed the area; Pflüger means "plowman".
Janet Evanovich is an American writer. She began her career writing short contemporary romance novels under the pen name Steffie Hall, but gained fame authoring a series of contemporary mysteries featuring Stephanie Plum, a former lingerie buyer from Trenton, New Jersey, who becomes a bounty hunter to make ends meet after losing her job. The novels in this series have been on The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestseller lists. Evanovich has had her last seventeen Plums debut at #1 on the NY Times Best Sellers list and eleven of them have hit #1 on USA Today Best-Selling Books list. She has over two hundred million books in print worldwide, and her books have been translated into over 40 languages.
Paulette Kay Jiles is an American poet, memoirist, and novelist.
Joe Richard Lansdale is an American writer and martial arts instructor. A prose writer in a variety of genres, including Western, horror, science fiction, mystery, and suspense, he has also written comic books and screenplays. Several of his novels have been adapted for film and television. He is the winner of the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, the Edgar Award, and eleven Bram Stoker Awards.
Suzanne Collins is an American author and television writer. She is best known as the author of the young adult dystopian book series The Hunger Games. She is also the author of the children's fantasy series The Underland Chronicles.
Ben M. Baglio is an American author who created the brief for two series of children's books – Dolphin Diaries and Animal Ark. Dolphin Diaries features a girl and her family from Florida, who travel around the world as marine biologists and study dolphins. Animal Ark features Mandy Hope, whose parents are vets; she helps injured animals and solves animal-related mysteries. The books were written by commissioned writers in the Canada under Baglio's instruction and published using the pseudonym Lucy Daniels in the UK. Each author is named with a "Special Thanks" on the copyright page – see Dolphin in the Deep copyright page for an example. In the U.S., the books are published under the name of Ben M. Baglio so this name is effectively both a man born in 1960 and also the collective pseudonym for the group of writers who write the books.
Gene Luen Yang is an American cartoonist. He is a frequent lecturer on the subjects of graphic novels and comics, at comic book conventions and universities, schools, and libraries. In addition, he was the Director of Information Services and taught computer science at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. In 2012, Yang joined the faculty at Hamline University as a part of the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults (MFAC) program. In 2016, the U.S. Library of Congress named him Ambassador for Young People's Literature. That year he became the third graphic novelist, alongside Lauren Redniss, to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Sandra Lynn Brown, née Cox is an American bestselling author of romantic novels and thriller suspense novels. Brown has also published works under the pen names of Rachel Ryan, Laura Jordan, and Erin St. Claire.
Richard Russell Riordan Jr. is an American author, best known for writing the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. Riordan's books have been translated into forty-two languages and sold more than thirty million copies in the United States. 20th Century Fox adapted the first two books of his Percy Jackson series as part of a series of films in which Riordan was not involved. Riordan currently serves as a co-creator and executive producer on the television series adaption of the book series that was released on Disney+ in 2023. Riordan's books have also spawned other related media, such as graphic novels and short story collections.
The Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos metropolitan statistical area, or Greater Austin, is a five-county metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Texas, as defined by the Office of Management and Budget. The metropolitan area is situated in Central Texas on the western edge of the American South and on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, and borders Greater San Antonio to the south.
Kathryn Casey is an American writer of mystery novels and non-fiction books. She is best known for writing She Wanted It All, which recounts the case of Celeste Beard, who married an Austin multimillionaire only to convince her lesbian lover, Tracey Tarlton, to kill him.
The culture of San Antonio reflects the history and culture of one of the state's oldest and largest cities straddling the regional and cultural divide between South and Central Texas. Historically, San Antonio culture comes from a blend of Central Texas and South Texas (Southwestern) culture. Founded as a Spanish outpost and the first civil settlement in Texas, San Antonio is heavily influenced by Mexican American culture due to Texas formerly being part of Mexico and, previously, the Spanish Empire. The city also has significant German, Anglo, and African American cultural influences. San Antonio offers a host of cultural institutions, events, restaurants and nightlife in South Texas for both residents and visitors alike.
Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. The website's offices are located in San Francisco.
Neal Barrett Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, science fiction, mystery/suspense, and historical fiction. He also worked under the pseudonyms Victor Appleton, Chad Calhoun, Franklin W. Dixon, Rebecca Drury, and J. D. Hardin.
Theodore Reed "T. R." Fehrenbach, Jr. was an American historian, columnist, and the former head of the Texas Historical Commission (1987–1991). He graduated from Princeton University in 1947 with a degree in modern languages and wrote more than twenty books, including the bestseller Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans and This Kind of War, about the Korean War. Senator John McCain called this book "perhaps the best book ever written on the Korean War". Secretary of Defense James Mattis said “There’s a reason I recommended T.R. Fehrenbach’s book...that we all pull it out and read it one more time.”
Suzy Spencer is an American author and journalist who made the New York Times Best Seller list in 1998 with her first true crime book Wasted.
Joe McKinney was a San Antonio–based author and Patrol Supervisor with the San Antonio Police Department.
Sarah Cortez is a Latina poet, teacher, editor, and essayist from Houston, Texas. She is also a law enforcement officer who first gained acclaim for her poetry collection, How to Undress a Cop.
Cindy Callaghan is an American author of children's books who has written several middle-grade novels. Her first book, Just Add Magic, was adapted into an Amazon television series by the same name.
Sandra de Helen is a poet, playwright, editor, and author of mysteries, plays, short stories, essays, poetry, and articles, many of which feature lesbian protagonists.