International Thriller Award winner Twist Phelan joins us this month with a story that draws on one of the successful careers she pursued before becoming a novelist and short story writer. The former lawyer and commodities trader revisits the trading floor in this reading of her story "Floored," from the June 2008 EQMM.

http://www.twistphelan.com/

Three short shorts comprise this month's podcast. First up, one of the U.K.'s most accomplished authors, poet and crime writer John Harvey, who reads his story "Ghosts," from the September/October 2009 EQMM. Next, current Edgar Allan Poe Award Best Short Story nominee David Dean reads his story "Awake," from our July 2009 issue. And finally, we present a story by multi-genre author Dave Raines. His "Suitcase in Slow Time," from the June 2009 EQMM, is read by Mark Lagasse.

http://raineswriter.com/
http://mellotone.co.uk/
http://www.sleuthsayers.org/

Fiction writer, book reviewer, and college professor Art Taylor reads his story "A Drowning at Snow's Cut" (EQMM, May 2011), which is currently nominated for the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Long Short Story Derringer Award. The author is a former Derringer Award winner in the novelette category, and a frequent contributor to EQMM.

http://www.arttaylorwriter.com/

This month’s selection is a story by Derringer Award-winning author Robert S. Levinson, “The Girl in the Golden Gown” (EQMM March/April 2010), read by Dell Magazines editor Mark Lagasse. A private-eye tale told in an inimitable voice, it was a nominee for the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award.

http://www.robertslevinson.com/

Shamus Award winner Terence Faherty is featured this month reading “No Mystery” (from the March/April 2011 EQMM), a story in his Star Republic series, which follows the sometimes-offbeat investigations of a nameless newspaper reporter. The author is best known for his award-winning Owen Keane and Scott Elliott mystery series.

http://www.terencefaherty.com/

This month, to celebrate the holiday season, EQMM presents a third podcast reading by multiple Edgar Allan Poe Award winner Doug Allyn. This time out, the author/musician brings us one of his Christmas stories, “Stone Cold Christmas” (EQMM January 2007), complete with his own musical arrangement and performance of a classic holiday song.

The story that won the EQMM Readers Award in 2007, “Ibrahim’s Eyes” by David Dean (from the June 2007 EQMM), is featured this month in a reading by another EQMM Readers Award winner, Doug Allyn. David Dean, whose work was recently nominated for a Barry Award, has been a regular contributor to EQMM since 1989.

The Private Eye Writers of America’s new lifetime achievement award winner, Ed Gorman, is our featured author this month. His dark suspense story “Comeback,” read by Mark Lagasse, appeared in EQMM’s March/April 2009 issue. Like much of the Iowa author’s work, the tale revolves around its characters and missed opportunities. . . .

http://newimprovedgorman.blogspot.com/

Elizabeth Zelvin, a New York poet and psychotherapist turned mystery writer, reads her Agatha Award nominated story “The Green Cross” for this month’s podcast. This engrossing first entry in a historical series, which appeared in the August 2010 EQMM, is set on board ship during the first voyage of Columbus.

Award-winning short story writer Tom Tolnay reads his story “Fun and Games at the Carousel Mall” (from the September/October 2002 EQMM) for us this month. Like many of the stories this versatile author writes, it pushes the boundaries of our genre.

Award-winning short story writer and novelist Dana Cameron reads the second installment in her multi-award-nominated series featuring sixteenth century tavern owner Anna Hoyt. The story, full of accurate period detail and informed by the keen historical sensibility that is the Massachusetts author’s hallmark, is from the June 2011 EQMM.

http://www.danacameron.com/

An award-winning author of both novels and short stories, Mary Jane Maffini joins with author James Lincoln Warren in this reading of her story “So Much in Common,” from the September/October 2010 issue of EQMM. The story is the most recent winner of the Agatha Award for Best Short Story.

http://www.maryjanemaffini.ca/

This month two celebrated crime writers, Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, join forces for a podcast reading of a story they wrote collaboratively. It's from a series set in 1890s San Francisco, starring former Secret Service agent John Quincannon and former Pinkerton agent Sabina Carpenter. There's a little bit of a love interest between the fictional couple, which works well in a series written by a husband and wife who are at the top of their profession, just as Quincannon and Carpenter are in theirs! The story is from the current issue of EQMM: June 2011.

www.marciamuller.com
http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Pronzini/e/B000APAM6W

Multiple EQMM Readers Award winner Doug Allyn is also a talented professional musician. For this podcast of his story “Famous Last Words,” from the November 2009 EQMM, he’s composed and performed a song and instrumental music. Reading the story is author, critic, and EQMM reviewer Steve Steinbock.

*UPDATED VERSION

http://us.macmillan.com/author/dougallyn

Award-winning mystery and Western fiction writer Bill Crider, a native Texan who wrote a PhD dissertation on the hardboiled detective novel, is known to many in the mystery field for his reviews, columns, and critical work. But he’s also one of our genre’s best storytellers. Here he is reading his story “The Case of the Headless Man,” from the March 1998 EQMM.