J.A. Jance

1 - What's your latest?

J.A. Jance: QUEEN OF THE NIGHT.

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

J.A. Jance: In view of the border war situation in Arizona, at the moment, it's far more timely than I anticipated. It will also give you insights into the world and legends of the Tohono O'odham, the native American tribe that has lived in the desert west of Tucson for thousands of years.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

J.A. Jance: I love this whole cast of Walker Family characters. They've been in the background of my creative life the whole time I've been writing.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

J.A. Jance: My favorite scene is when Dan Pardee's grandfather comes to Dan's foster home to take Dan home to Arizona.

5 - What's next?

J.A. Jance: Next up will be Ali Reynolds in FATAL ERROR in February, 2011.

Jane Haddam

1 - What's your latest?

Jane Haddam: WANTING SHELIA DEAD, which came out July 20.

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Jane Haddam: I have no idea how to answer a question like this.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Jane Haddam: Nothing. I've been writing about Gregor Demarkian for twenty-five years. By now, I know more about him than I know about himself. But, you know, lately I've been thinking about how different he is from what he was when the series started, and how much older.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Jane Haddam: Oh, good question.

There are two mysteries in this book, not connected except by the fact that Gregor Demarkian investigates them.

In the first one, it's the enormous cat fight among a group of girls who are all contestants on the same reality show.

In the second one, it's when the comatose body of one woman and the dazed but nominally conscious body of another are found together, and that second person starts to talk.

In both cases, I think I got the speaking right, if that makes sense. It's hard to do.

5 - What's next?

Jane Haddam: Another GD, which I'm finishing up now. It's due out about the same time next year.

Elizabeth Duncan

1 - What's your latest?

Elizabeth Duncan: A BRUSH WITH DEATH, published July 20, 2010 by St. Martin's Press.

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Elizabeth Duncan: For the beautiful Welsh scenery, well-developed characters and damn fine story telling!

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Elizabeth Duncan: She's smarter than she thinks she is.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Elizabeth Duncan: It's a rainy Saturday in April, 1967 and two strangers meet in Liverpool's Lime Street Railway Station and fall in love. I love the period and the place.

5 - What's next?

Elizabeth Duncan: Working on the third book in series involving a wealthy widow who falls for a con man who then takes a very nasty fall himself off a wall-walk of Conwy Castle.

Sheila Lowe

1 - What's your latest?

Sheila Lowe: LAST WRITES, the fourth in the forensic handwriting mystery series featuring Claudia Rose, forensic handwriting expert. Just came out July 6 (see web site for signings: http://www.claudiaroseseries.com/).

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Sheila Lowe: Because you'll want to know what an old stuffed bunny has to do with a religious cult. This is not the usual book about a fundamentalist religious cult with creepy people. These people are nice (mostly), they're true believers. It's already getting great reviews.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Sheila Lowe: I think that by now (4th book) I know Claudia pretty well. In LAST WRITES, as in WRITTEN IN BLOOD (book #2), she has an opportunity to champion the cause of a child in jeopardy, this time a three-year-old. Unable to have children of her own, and due to her past painful experience, which was revealed in DEAD WRITE (book #3), Claudia is drawn to try and save this little girl from a terrifying future.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Sheila Lowe: That's a tough question, but it's probably when Claudia confronts a character about what's going on behind the scenes in the cult. This was an opportunity to explore the depths of the character's emotions as he's torn between doing what he's been taught is right, and loyalty to his friend.

5 - What's next?

Sheila Lowe: Currently working on a standalone thriller that has cameo appearances by some of my series characters. Title: LYING...IN BED. A young woman wakes up on a train pulling into a station and realizes that she doesn't know who she is or where she's going. I'm also working on a non-fiction book about handwriting and relationships (RELATIONSHIPS THE WRITE WAY) to help people understand what motivates them to choose the relationships they do.

Alex Kava

1 - What's your latest?

Alex Kava: DAMAGED.

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Alex Kava: I love the Alfred Hitchcock approach to suspense. I like to take my readers to the edge, then leave them to their imaginations, hopefully racing through the pages to find out what happens next. If you like that sort of thriller, I think you'll enjoy DAMAGED.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Alex Kava: Maggie O'Dell has ordinary fears like the rest of us, but somehow she can and does overcome them during extraordinary situations.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Alex Kava: DAMAGED takes place in Pensacola, Florida, with a hurricane headed directly at the area. One of the major characters is Liz Bailey, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. She's new to her aircrew so she's still needing to prove herself to them. During a rescue of a boater, her pilot tells her she's to bring up the lone survivor but not his dog. He won't allow a dog inside his helicopter. When Liz gets down to the boat she discovers there's actually two dogs, not just one, and their owner refuses leave them. So Liz finds a way to save all three.

5 - What's next?

Alex Kava: HOTWIRE.

Tana French

1 - What's your latest?

Tana French: It's called FAITHFUL PLACE, and it's out in July in the US. Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor on Faithful Place in Dublin's inner city, when he and his first love Rosie made plans to run away together. When she didn't show, he thought she had dumped him. He never went home again. Twenty-two years later, he's an undercover detective. Then Rosie's suitcase shows up in an abandoned house in Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Tana French: It's about family and the lifelong, tangled, bone-deep power it has, for better or for worse; it's about the many different kinds of love and what happens when they come into conflict; it's about home and what that means; and it's a love song to Dublin. If any of those sound like your kind of thing, give it a go.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Tana French: He could probably kick any of my other characters' arse.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Tana French: There's a scene, early on, where Frank and his two brothers and two sisters are sitting out on the front steps of their parents' home. They haven't been together like that for twenty-two years, and they're re-testing the boundaries of their relationships, falling back into old patterns, trying to work out who these people are now. I just like it. The complexities and nuances of sibling relationships fascinate me.

5 - What's next?

Tana French: I'm working on Book 4. This time the narrator is Scorcher Kennedy, Frank's old friend/rival/general nuisance from Faithful Place. Frank's take on him wasn't exactly objective, so Scorcher is a little different as a narrator than he was as a supporting character.

Dan Fesperman

1 - What's your latest?

Dan Fesperman: LAYOVER IN DUBAI.

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Dan Fesperman: Because it's set in a truly bizarre part of the world, the likes of which has never been seen on the planet -- a hedonist dreamscape that rose up almost overnight in the bosom of Muslim severity, a speculator's nightmare/paradise (take your pick) populated by risk takers, global runaways, developers on the make (is there any other kind?), the mobsters of three nations, and, sprinkled here and there like grains of salt and pepper, the outnumbered locals, laying low but living well, the men all in white, the women all in black.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Dan Fesperman: Well, his name is Anwar Sharaf, and even though he's an Emirati cop from a completely different background -- a childhood among smugglers and pearl divers, with no electricity and no running water -- his befuddled and anxious view of the world around him is probably a lot more like mine than I'd care to admit, and he's also about my age.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Dan Fesperman: Probably the one where Sharaf and Sam Keller, a young American businessman whose colleague has been murdered, visit the security center of a luxury mega-mall -- which looks more like the control room of a nuclear power plant -- to secretly watch over a conclave of rival mafia factions, Russian and Iranian. The meeting takes place at an open-air restaurant on the third level. Only in Dubai would crime bosses see a mall not only as an optimum meeting place (while their wives shop, of course), but also as a tidy setting for disposing of a troublesome associate.

5 - What's next?

Dan Fesperman: A novel from the point of view of a fellow who is out on the cutting edge of modern warfare, and is slowly being driven crazy by its contrasts and strangeness. He commutes from the 'burbs of Vegas to a trailer in the Nevada desert where he pilots Predators drones over Afghanistan from 7,000 miles away. On a typical day he might watch a house for a few hours, kill everyone inside in a single minute, spend the next two hours assessing the carnage, then drive home just in time to catch his daughter's soccer game in an under-10 rec league, followed by burgers and beer on the patio.

Tess Gerritsen

1 - What's your latest?

Tess Gerritsen: ICE COLD.

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Tess Gerritsen: Have you ever blindly followed the instructions from your auto GPS? Have you ever wondered, "how far off could it be?" In ICE COLD, things go very, very wrong for a group of five unfortunate tourists who put too much faith in a GPS and end up in a remote village where the residents have mysteriously vanished. The story turns into every traveler's worst nightmare.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Tess Gerritsen: The book features medical examiner Maura Isles, stranded with four unlikable companions. The story forced me to really probe Maura's character, and I found that she's on the precipice of a big change in her life -- and she's finally found the courage to make that change.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Tess Gerritsen: When the five travelers realize that they truly are stuck in the snow, they're thirty miles from help, and they could die. It's a horrible, sickening moment.

5 - What's next?

Tess Gerritsen: I'm just doing the research for the next book, due in December. No title, no details, but I've got a pretty good idea of what it's about.

Avery Aames

1 - What's your latest?

Avery Aames: THE LONG QUICHE GOODBYE, from Berkley Prime Crime, debuts July 6, 2010.

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Avery Aames: Because it's a tasty mystery. It's got heart, spirit, humor. Charlotte Bessette, the protagonist, is a cheesemonger who cares about family andadores cheese. You'll visit a quaint town in Ohio and meet fun, quirky characters all while learning about the tasty world of gourmet cheese.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Avery Aames: I hadn't realized that she's very much a part of my soul right now. I feel as if I know her and we'd be best friends. Her energy is mine. Her passion for life is mine, as well.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Avery Aames: I have many favorite scenes...but one is with Charlotte and her grandmother, who is over-the-top with worry because she's suspected of murder, and Charlotte tries to coax her back to sanity with food, love, routine, and sass.

5 - What's next?

Avery Aames: The next book up in the series is LOST AND FONDUE, coming in 2011.

Gregg Hurwitz

1 - What's your latest?

Gregg Hurwitz: THEY'RE WATCHING (July 2010)

2 - Assuming I haven't read it, why should I?

Gregg Hurwitz: I suppose that depends on who you are. If you're a thriller fan, you should read it because it's a Hitchcockian suspense story -- my homage to Rear Window. Patrick realizes that someone is filming him at private moments and delivering the unmarked DVDs to his house. His curiosity and outrage lead him on a mysterious and dangerous quest to find out what's behind it. If you tend toward character studies, it's the tale of a couple with their marriage on the rocks who are desperately trying to find their way back to each other. Now they must do so under the most intense pressure they've ever faced.

3 - What can you tell us about your main character that you hadn't realized until you answered the question?

Gregg Hurwitz: He is the only character I've written who is as curious as I am. And that leads him into great danger.

4 - What's your favorite scene and why?

Gregg Hurwitz: The book opens with Patrick finding a DVD someone has left of him entering his bathroom in the morning and washing up. He goes outside his house to the bathroom window to look for traces of the camera that filmed him. Nothing. When he gets home from work that day, there's ANOTHER DVD waiting. This one filmed from the neighbor's roof, showing him that morning outside his house, looking for traces of that camera that filmed the first DVD. His realization then -- that this is a chess game and a massive intrusion into his life -- is my favorite story beat.

5 - What's next?

Gregg Hurwitz: Coupla things. Working on my next thriller. I'm a writer-producer on ABC's V and we just revved up Season Two. I write comics for Marvel, and I'm participating in their big Shadowland Event. And a director just snapped up the film rights to THEY'RE WATCHING, which I'll be producing as a film.