October 17, 7 PM EST
Criminally exciting! Tasha Alexander, Gigi Pandian, Marcie Rendon, & Erin E. Adams are talking mysteries!
Meet authors Tasha Alexander, Gigi Pandian, Marcie Rendon, and Erin E. Adams for an engrossing hour about their brand-new novels, their writing secrets, and how they keep us readers riveted. As a special treat, they’ll read from their books. Emcee is our very own Lisa Black.
Not only is the event FREE, you and three other attending readers can win a drawing for one of their exciting new novels. Wishing you the best of luck to be a winner:
Secrets of the Nile by Tasha Alexander
Under Lock and Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian
Sinister Graves by Marcie Rendon
Jackal by Erin E. Adams
As always, our guests’ (or their characters’) favorite snacks with recipes are posted below. Feel culinary and adventurous? Dining and drinking will commence at the start of the show. Bring your favorite beverage!
Sign up soon! If you’re one of the first 100 in the Zoom room, you can personally debrief these best-selling authors. You can also catch them on Facebook Live, and interrogate via comments.
Come meet the Criminally Exciting!
Secrets of the Nile, October 4, 2022
Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, have joined his formidable mother on a holiday to visit the exotic treasures of Egypt—then under British rule. Their host, Lord Bertram Deeley, renowned amateur British collector of antiquities, has invited his closest friends on a lavish cruise up the Nile to his home at Luxor. But after a welcome toast, Bertram is dead from cyanide and it’s up to Emily and Colin to unmask one of their shipmates as a killer.
Emily’s favorite drink and snack would be port with Stilton and walnuts, but the recipe for Tasha’s latest favorite is featured below!
Gigi Pandian is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning mystery author, breast cancer survivor, and accidental almost-vegan. She spent her childhood tagging along with cultural anthropologist parents and was awarded a Malice Domestic Grant for her debut novel, Artifact—then went on to win Agatha, Anthony, Lefty, and Derringer Awards. Along with Kellye Garrett and Walter Mosley, Gigi is a co-founder of Crime Writers of Color. She lives outside San Francisco with her husband and a gargoyle who watches over the garden.
Under Lock and Skeleton Key, March 15, 2022
After a disastrous stage accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California where her father’s company specializes in transforming clients’ homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses, and hidden reading nooks.
When Tempest visits her dad’s latest renovation project, her former stage double is discovered dead inside a wall that’s supposedly been sealed for more than a century. Searching for answers, Tempest can’t help but wonder if the Raj family curse that’s plagued her family for generations―something she used to swear didn’t exist―has finally come for her.
Tempest’s favorite beverage is Jaggery Coffee, a South Indian style coffee made by her grandfather. There are a lot of variations, but see below for the recipe Tempest likes.
Marcie R. Rendon is a member of the White Earth Nation, author, playwright, poet, freelance writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and community arts activist who supports other Native American artists. The creative mind behind Raving Native Theater, Marcie has also curated community created performances and received a fellowship for work with women incarcerated in county jails. She lives in Minneapolis.
Sinister Graves, October 11, 2022
Cash Blackbear, a 19-year-old Ojibwe woman, sometimes helps her guardian Sheriff Wheaton on his investigations. Melting snows float up the body of an unidentified woman, who carries no clue except for the torn page of a hymnal in both English and Ojibwe. To learn more, Cash knows she will have to return to the White Earth Reservation, a place she once called home.
Cash’s food of choice is a tuna fish sandwich—see recipe and helpful video below!
Debut author ERIN E. ADAMS is a first-generation Haitian American writer and theatre artist. She received her BA with honors in literary arts from Brown University, her MFA in acting from The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program, and her MFA in dramatic writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. An award-winning playwright and actor, Adams has called New York City home for the last decade.
Jackal, October 4, 2022
Liz Rocher is coming home . . . reluctantly. As a Black woman, Liz doesn’t exactly have fond memories of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white town. But her best friend is getting married, so she braces herself for a weekend of awkward and passive-aggressive reunions. Liz has grown, and can handle whatever awaits her–but on the day of the wedding, the bride’s daughter Caroline goes missing, leaving only a piece of white fabric covered in blood.
Liz is the only one who notices a pattern: a summer night. A missing girl. A party in the woods. She’s seen this before. Keisha Woodson, the only other Black girl in school, walked into the woods and was later found with her chest cavity ripped open. As Liz digs through the town’s history, she uncovers this horrifying secret: Children have been going missing in these woods for years. All of them Black. All of them girls.
With the evil in the forest creeping closer, Liz knows what she must do: find Caroline, or be entirely consumed by the darkness.
Erin’s favorite drink is a complex Cabernet Sauvignon, and her favorite snack–a Gob! In case you might not be familiar with Gobs, the original Johnstown recipe can be found below!
Our MC:
Lisa Black is the New York Times bestselling author of 15 suspense novels, including works that have been translated into six languages, optioned for film, and shortlisted for the inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award. She is also a Latent Print Examiner and a certified Crime Scene Analyst, beginning her forensics career at the Coroner’s office in Cleveland Ohio and then the police department in Cape Coral, Florida. She has spoken to readers and writers at numerous conferences and will be a Guest of Honor at 2021 Killer Nashville.
Recipes
TASHA’S FAVORITE ELDERFLOWER FRENCH CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL
(Adapted from David Lebovitz’s Drinking French)
1.5 oz Sipsmith gin
.5 oz St. Germain (or Elderflower cordial)
.5 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice
3-4 oz champagne or other dry sparkling wine
Lemon twist for garnish
Add the gin, St. Germain, and lemon juice to a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice and shake until well chilled. Strain into a chilled champagne flute or coupe glass. Top with champagne. Garnish with lemon twist.
TEMPEST’S FAVORITE JAGGERY COFFEE
2 tsp instant coffee
2 tsp jaggery*
2 Tbsp water
1 cup milk (dairy or non-dairy, but not non-fat)
Whisk the first three ingredients together in a saucepan until well blended. Add milk and continue to whisk until warm and frothy. Enjoy!
*Jaggery is an unprocessed sugar, common in India, that you can find at Indian grocery stores or online. It’s a bit less sweet than other sugars.
CASH BLACKBEAR’S TUNA SANDWICH RECIPE
(Makes 2 sandwiches)
Ingredients:
1 egg
1 ½ – 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
½ teaspoon yellow mustard
Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon diced pickle
1 tablespoon diced onion
1 can of tuna
Iceberg lettuce
4 slices white bread
Instructions:
- Hard boil one egg and let cool.
- Separate the hard-boiled egg yolk from the egg white. Set the egg white aside and add the yolk to a bowl and mash until smooth.
- Add 1 ½ tablespoons of mayonnaise, the yellow mustard, and a splash of Worcestershire sauce to the yolk and mix until fully combined.
- Mix in 1 can of tuna until combined and smooth. If the mixture is not smooth enough or the tuna is not fully incorporating, add another ½ tablespoon of mayonnaise.
- Chop the hard-boiled egg white into small pieces and add to the mixture along with the pickles and onions.
- Spread the tuna mixture across one slice of bread for each sandwich and top with 1-2 leaves of lettuce and a second slice of bread to complete your sandwich.
- Serve immediately or slice your sandwich diagonally into two pieces and wrap in wax paper to enjoy later like Cash Blackbear would!
For a handy video of Marcie making this sandwich click HERE.
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