Mavens of Mayhem – Our Author Members

Frankie Y. Bailey is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany (SUNY). She specializes in mass media/popular culture, and crime history. Her nonfiction books include African American Mystery Writers. Frankie’s mystery novels feature Southern crime historian Lizzie Stuart, and Albany, NY police detective Hannah McCabe. Her short stories have been published in EQMM and in several anthologies. Two of the stories feature former WW II Army nurse Jo Radcliffe. Frankie is working on her sixth Lizzie Stuart novel. She is also working on a historical thriller set in 1939. Frankie is a past executive vice president of MWA and a past president of Sisters in Crime National.

Jacqueline Boulden is an Emmy-winning former TV news reporter and Telly-winning video producer. She’s been a storyteller for as long as she can remember and has wanted to write a novel ever since she stayed up all night in high school to finish Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. She lived in Philadelphia, where her debut novel, Her Past Can’t Wait is set, for more than thirty years. In 2021, she moved back to her native New York State to be closer to family.

USA Today bestselling author Catherine Bruns writes four series including the Cookies & Chance and Italian USA Today bestselling author Catherine Bruns has written over 25 novels, including the Maple Syrup, Cookies & Chance, Italian Chef, and Cindy York mysteries. She has a B.A. in English and is a former newspaper reporter. Her book, For Sale by Killer, won the 2019 Daphne du Maurier award for Mainstream Mystery/Suspense.

Patricia Crandall has published eight books as well as numerous articles and short stories in various magazines and newspapers. Books include: The Dog Men, a thriller, The Red Gondola and the Cova, a YA thriller about child sex trafficking, and A Reunion of Death, a Christmas mystery in the method of Agatha Christie. In November 2022, she will publish Lacy O'Dunn, The Rookie, a crime/thriller. She lives at Babcock Lake in the Grafton Mountains near Petersburgh, NY.

Libby Cudmore is the author of THE BIG REWIND (William Morrow 2016) and the Martin Wade P.I. series at Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Her short fiction has been published in Reckon Review, HAD, the Coachella Review, Tough, the RS-500 and others, as well as the anthologies HANZAI JAPAN, WELCOME HOME, A BEAST WITHOUT A NAME and LAWYERS, GUNS & MONEY (co-edited with Art Taylor). She is the co-host of the OST PARTY, MISBEHAVIN' and SHATTERED SHIELD podcasts.

Tina deBellegarde writes the Batavia-on-Hudson Mystery series which debuted September 2020 with Winter Witness. Her debut was nominated for an Agatha Award, and was a finalist for a Silver Falchion Award and Chanticleer's Mystery & Mayhem Award. Her short stories appear in the Mystery Writers of America anthology A Stranger Comes to Town and Best New England Crime Stories. Find her winning flash fiction online at Retreat West, Ad Hoc Fiction and Reflex Press. Tina lives in Catskill, N.Y. For more visit tinadebellegarde.com and sign up for her newsletter.

Marni Graff is the award-winning author of The Nora Tierney English Mysteries and The Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries. The Evening’s Amethyst is the fifth in the Nora Tierney series. Her short story “Quiche Alain” is in the Anthony Award-winning Malice Domestic Anthology, Murder Most Edible. She is also Managing Editor of Bridle Path Press, and a crime book reviewer.

Syrl Kazlo, a retired teacher, lives in upstate New York with her husband and two very lively dachshunds. Kibbles and Death is the first book in her Samantha Davies Mystery series, featuring Samantha Davies and her loveable dachshund, Porkchop. When not writing she is busy hooking, rug hooking that is, reading and enjoying her family. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Mavens of Mayhem.

Chris Keefer wrote Birding Trips and Trivia, for Schenectady’s Daily Gazette for twenty years. She has articles in Coping Magazine, Kaatskill Life, The Conservationist and the digital magazine Liquid Imagination. She launched her debut novel No Comfort for the Undertaker, and The Battle in the Bathroom, a chapbook of humorous rants in October, 2022. She lives in upstate New York, and enjoys birding, gardening, metal detecting, town historian duties, bicycling, rockhounding and a grandchild.

A criminal defense lawyer Upstate now, based in Albany. Formerly a NYC Legal Aid Society Criminal Trials lawyer; before that an NYPD Lieutenant of Police. Author of 2 novels: 'Bodies in Winter’ (2009), ‘The Cold Room’ (2012), Severn House Publisher, and Editor, ‘Queens Noir’, anthology of original crime stories set in Borough of Queens, NYC (Akashic Books, Brooklyn), and 6 short stories in anthologies, including ‘Best American Mystery Stories 2007’ (Houghton-Mifflin).

Eleanor Kuhns is the 2011 winner of the Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America First Crime novel competition. After winner with A Simple Murder, she went on to write ten more in the Will Rees Mystery series. The first of a new series set in Bronze Age Crete will be released the summer of 2023. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and her dog.

Author of the critically acclaimed Marjorie McClelland Mysteries, Vermont Country Living Mysteries, and Tish Tarragon Mysteries, Amy Patricia Meade is a native of Long Island, NY. After five years living in Bristol, England, Amy recently moved back to her home state, settling in upstate New York. When not writing, Amy spends her time working for her musician husband, watching classic films, testing new recipes, bellydancing, and cleaning cat hair from her lap.

Erica Obey pursued an academic career specializing in the women folklorists of the nineteenth century, before she decided she’d rather be writing the stories herself. She is the author of five novels -- including the award-winning Curse of the Braddock Brides and the recently released Dazzlepaint.

Kelly Oliver is the award-winning and bestselling author of three mystery series: Jessica James Mysteries (contemporary suspense); Pet Detective Mysteries (middle grade); Fiona Figg Mysteries (historical cozy). When she’s not writing novels, Kelly is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

Former language teacher and business owner, CAROL POULIOT writes the acclaimed Blackwell and Watson Time-Travel Mysteries—traditional police procedurals with a seemingly impossible relationship between Depression-era cop Steven Blackwell and 21st-century journalist Olivia Watson. Passionate about international travel, when not writing, Carol can be found packing a bag and grabbing her passport. Carol is currently President of the Mavens and is a founding member of Sleuths and Sidekicks. See her at her website or at http://www.sleuthsandsidekicks.com/

Michael Sinclair is a native of Albany and completed a master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University at Albany. He is a librarian and teacher and enjoys reading, travel, architecture, and history. His novels are set in Albany and Schenectady during the jazz age of the 1920s.