CLICK HERE to register.

Join CFA Mystery Night emcee and celebrated author Kate Flora to discover how to create suspense in fiction with mystery writers Susan Oleksiw, Dale Phillips and Susan Smith.

Kate Flora's fascination with people's criminal tendencies began in the Maine attorney general's office. Deadbeat dads, child abusers, and employment discrimination aroused her curiosity about human behavior. The author of twenty-four books spanning genres including crime fiction, true crime, memoir, nonfiction, and short stories, Flora's been a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards and twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction. She's a former international president of Sisters in Crime, and a founder of the New England Crime Bake and Maine Crime Wave mystery conferences. She blogs with the Maine Crime Writers. 

Susan Oleksiw wears many hats in the mystery world. She is co-founder and co-editor of Crime Spell Books, which publishes Best New England Crime Stories. The first volume is Bloodroot, available in November 2021. She also writes three series. The Anita Ray series, set in South India, follows an Indian-American photographer. The Mellingham series set in a New England town features Chief of Police Joe Silva. In Below the Tree Line, Felicity O'Brien, farmer and healer, struggles to keep her land. Susan's short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and numerous anthologies. She published A Reader's Guide to the Classic British Mystery (1988) and co-edited The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing (1999). 

Dale Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 70 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). Dale is a novelist, poet and short story writer with over 70 stories published, a number of which have been included in anthologies. He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime.

"When my niece went to college," Sarah Smith says, "she had to deal with being African-American but not brought up in a 'normal' African-American culture. I listened to her talk about stereotyping. Being me, I wrote a book." In CRIMES AND SURVIVORS, set in 1912, a young woman who's always thought she was white finds out that her grandfather may be passing. She follows her grandfather onto the newest, biggest steamer in the world, hoping to learn an easy truth. But what she finds on Titanic is not what race she is, but who she might be--and what she has to do about it. Sarah Smith's internationally bestselling mysteries have won the Agatha Award and the Massachusetts Book Award. They've been named New York Times Books of the Year twice, Waterstone's Book of the Year, Entertainment Weekly Editor's Choice, and have been published in 12 languages.

This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library.