Reading
A Roundtable Discussion on Dark Academia
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Darkened libraries, exclusive elite schools, looming Gothic towers, charismatic professors, illicit affairs, the tang of autumn in the air… rivalries and obsessions that lead to murder. Why is dark academia…
A Reading List of Badass Covens
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I’ve always been enamored with witches. Be it Roald Dahl’s child-hating witches, the Wicked Witch of the West, or Bony Legs with her iron teeth, the ferocity and power…
The Off-Broadway Play Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors Is Cute, Not-So-Bloody Fun
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Gordan Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s new play Dracula: a Comedy of Terrors, now open at New World Stages, is production is replete with playful contradictions. Despite the presence of…
Michele Campbell Leans into the Truth
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Michele Campbell worked at a prominent Manhattan law firm before spending eight years fighting crime as a federal prosecutor in New York City. She launched her fiction career in…
The Art of Writing Mysteries Featuring Real-Life Figures
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My objective is to list the six best mysteries that feature real people. Quite a challenge given all the published stories meeting this criterion. There are, for example, several…
The Albatross of Smartphones in Young Adult Mysteries
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There’s a joke among millennials that our favorite childhood television shows would have sucked if the characters had owned smartphones. Videos of Buffy fighting vampires would have been uploaded…
The Sleuthing Spinster: Why Single Women Rule Cozy Fiction
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When people talk about great fictional detectives, there are classic names that come to mind: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot; Sam Spade; Phillip Marlowe; and Columbo trip easily off the…
Why James Patterson and Mike Lupica Came Together to Write a Thriller
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For such a hotshot lawyer who’s never lost a court case, you’re a lot younger than anyone would expect. And it’s your win/loss record, not your good looks, that’s…
10 Big Pharma Conspiracy Thrillers
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Big Pharma is an industry that touches most everyone in some way. We have connection to it on a personal level as individuals and, even more importantly to many,…