JOHN CONNOLLY’s first exposure to Sherlock Holmes came in the form of Saturday afternoon TV screenings by the BBC of the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce adaptations, and these have inevitably colored his view of Holmes and Watson ever since. He finds committed Sherlockians mildly perturbing, which may explain the nature of his contribution. He is the author of more than twenty novels and collections of short stories, including the Charlie Parker series and The Book of Lost Things, and finds the possibility of the Caxton Private Lending Library’s existence strangely consoling. www.johnconnollybooks.com New York Times bestselling author DEBORAH CROMBIE is a Texan who writes crime novels set in Britain. Her Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series has received numerous awards and is published to international acclaim. Crombie lives in North Texas with her husband, German shepherds, and cats, and divides her time between Texas and Britain. Her seventeenth Kincaid/James novel, Garden of Lamentations, will be published by William Morrow in 2016. She blames her lifetime affliction with Anglophilia on an early introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. www.deborahcrombie.com CORY DOCTOROW (www.craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and blogger—the co-editor of Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net) and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture of the Nerds and Makers. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
HALLIE EPHRON is the daughter of Hollywood screenwriters, so her first encounters with the Sherlock Holmes Canon were through movies. It was only natural that she set “Understudy in Scarlet” on a movie set. Hallie is a New York Times bestselling author of suspense novels. Her latest, Night Night, Sleep Tight, received a starred PW review: “Old Hollywood glamour, scandals, and lies infuse this captivating thriller.” Her books have been finalists for Edgar?, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark awards, and her Never Tell a Lie was made into a Lifetime Movie Network movie. She is an award-winning book reviewer for the Boston Globe. http://hallieephron.com MEG GARDINER grew up watching Basil Rathbone play Sherlock Holmes. But she only came to appreciate the great detective after moving from California to London and reading The Hound of the Baskervilles when her children were assigned it in elementary school. The kids had to grab the book from her hands. She’s been a Holmes fan ever since. Meg is the author of twelve thrillers that have been bestsellers in the U.S. and internationally and have been translated into more than twenty languages. China Lake won the 2009 Edgar? Award for Best Paperback Original. The Dirty Secrets Club was chosen one of the Top Ten Thrillers of 2008 by Amazon. The Nightmare Thief won the 2012 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense Audiobook of the Year. Her current novel, Phantom Instinct, was chosen one of O, The Oprah Magazine’s “Best Books of Summer.” She lives in Austin, Texas. www.meggardiner.com LAURIE R. KING is the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories, beginning with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (one of the IMBA’s 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century). She has won or been nominated for an alphabet of prizes from Agatha to Wolfe, been Guest of Honor at several crime conventions, and is probably the only writer to have received both an Edgar? Award and an honorary doctorate in theology. She was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars in 2010, as “The Red Circle.” www.LaurieRKing.com LESLIE S. KLINGER is the New York Times bestselling editor of the Edgar?-winning The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and the multi-award-winning ten-volume Sherlock Holmes Reference Library. He also co-edited, with Laurie R. King, the anthologies A Study in Sherlock and the Anthony-winning In the Company of Sherlock Holmes. He became hooked on the Sherlock Holmes Canon while he was attending law school, desperate for some non-law reading. He freely admits that even more than the stories, the footnotes of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by William S. Baring-Gould were his primary interest. He also writes about other geeky subjects, such as Dracula, H. P. Lovecraft, and Frankenstein and has edited two anthologies of horror stories. Klinger was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars in 1999 as “The Abbey Grange.” www.lesliesklinger.com Probably like many of his generation, WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER came to Sherlock Holmes via Hollywood. Those atmospheric black and white gems cranked out in the thirties and forties guided him to the classic original texts and he was, of course, hooked on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Nevertheless, for him, Basil Rathbone will always be the image of that greatest of detectives and the bumbling, mumbling Nigel Bruce will always be Watson. Krueger writes the New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor mystery series, which is set in Minnesota’s great Northwoods. His novel Ordinary Grace received the Edgar? Award for Best Novel in 2014.