BORIS AKUNIN is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in the republic of Georgia in 1956. A philologist, critic, essayist, and translator of Japanese, he published his first detective stories in 1998 and quickly became one of the most widely read authors in Russia. He has written ten Erast Fandorin novels to date, which have sold more than eight million copies in Russia and been translated into nearly two dozen languages. He lives in Moscow.

ALEX CARR is (under her real name, Jenny Siler) the critically acclaimed author of the novels Easy Money, Iced, Shot, and Flashback. She lives with her husband and young child in Lexington, Virginia.

AGATHA CHRISTIE’s writing career spanned more than half a century, during which she wrote seventy-nine novels and a short story collection, as well as fourteen plays, one of which, The Mousetrap, is the longest running play in history. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in forty-four foreign languages. Agatha Christie died in 1976.

DAVID CORBETT isthe highly acclaimed author of Done For a Dime and The Devil's Redhead. He was a senior operative with a prominent San Francisco private investication firm for nearly fifteen years, the worked with his late wife Terri in a small law practice. He lives in northern California, where he is at work on another novel for Mortalis. For more information, visit his website at www.davidcorbett.com

STEPHEN DUNCOMBE teaches politics and history of media and culture at New York University’s Gallatin School. ANDREW MATTSON teaches American studies and media studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. They both live in New York.

ANTHONY FLACCO is the author of A Checklist for Murder and Tiny Dancer. He began his writing career as a staff writer at several prominent Chicago theatres. He was selected for the highly prestigious American Film Institute fellowship in Screenwriting and received his MFA in Screenwriting in 1992. He was the recipient of the AFI Paramount Fellowship Screenwriting Award for his script, The Frog's Legacy, and was selected as a winner of The Walt Disney Studios Screenwriting Fellowship, and spent a year writing for the Touchstone Pictures division. His screenplay, Tesla's Best Secret, was a finalist in the Alfred Sloan Fellowship for Sundance, and the extended short story version was also a finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest for short stories. Anthony is a member of the Writers Guild, a member of the WGA Film Society, and is the creator and former Director of the AFI Alumni Networking Workshop. Visit his website at www.anthonyflacco.com.

P.D. JAMES is the author of nineteen books. She spent thirty years in various departments of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of Great Britain's Home Office. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. The recipient of many prizes and honors, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. She lives in London and Oxford.

RUTH RENDELL is the author of many novels, most recently End in Tears and the bestselling Thirteen Steps Down. She has won numerous awards, including three Edgars, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, and three Gold Daggers, one Silver Dagger, and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England's prestigious Crime Writer's Association. Rendell lives in London, where she also writes under the name Barbara Vine.

MARTIN CRUZ SMITH is author of the Arkady Renko thrillers: Gorky Park, Polar Star, and Red Square, as well as the novels Nightwing, Stallion Gate, and Rose for which he won the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers. He lives with his wife in northern California and they have three children.

FRANK TALLIS is a writer and practicing clinical psychologist. He has held lecturing posts in clinical psychology and neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry and King's College London and is one of Britain's leading experts on obsessional states. In 1999 he received a Writers' Award from the Arts Council of Great Britain and in 2000 he won the New London Writers Award (London Arts Board). He is the author of numerous trade nonfiction books on psychology, including Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness, and Hidden Minds: A History of the Unconscious. He lives and works in London. Visit his website at www.franktallis.com.