Mystery Authors You May Have Missed
Carolyn Haines
Biography
Carolyn Haines followed in her parents’ footsteps by working as a journalist for many years. When doing an investigative report on Parchman State Prison in the Mississippi Delta, she discovered that the Delta would serve as a great setting for crime fiction. Her first two books, Summer of the Redeemers (1994) and Touched (1996) are slight mysteries, but it wasn’t until she had the idea for a female detective in Sarah Booth Delaney that she began her first indisputable mystery series. She has since published nineteen books of mystery and has won two author awards.
What she writes: Along with having written over thirty Harlequin Romances, she has written seven standalone mystery novels, and eleven in the Sarah Booth Delaney series. Her standalone novels take place in the early and mid-twentieth century. One of these, Summer of the Redeemers, is the story of murder which implicates a religious cult in 1960’s rural Mississippi. The Sarah Booth Delaney series features a female PI, takes place in the Mississippi Delta, is fast paced, and contains elements of the supernatural.
| List of works |
||
| Sarah Booth Delaney series | ||
| Them Bones (1999) | Ham Bones (2007) | |
| Buried Bones (2000) | Wishbones (2008) | |
| Splintered Bones (2003) | Greedy Bones (2009) | |
| Crossed Bones (2004) | Bone Appetit (2010) | |
| Hallowed Bones (2005) | Bones of a Feather (2011) | |
| Bones to Pick (2007) | Bonefire of the Vanities (2012) | |
| Other works | |
| Summer of the Redeemers (1994) | |
| Touched (1996) | |
| My Mother's Witness: The Peggy Morgan Story (2003) | |
| Judas Burning (2005) | |
| Penumbra (2006) | |
| Revenant (2007) | |
| Fever Moon (2007) | |
Awards
2009 - Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence
Received Alabama State Council on the Arts literary fellowship for her writing
2010 - Harper Lee Award winner for Alabama's Distinguished Writer of the Year
| What the critics say |
| Regarding Wishbones - "Wishbones is reminiscent in many ways of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels, only fresher with a bit more of an edge and none of the pretentiousness. Light, breezy, and just plain fun. Call Haines the queen of cozies." - Providence Journal-Bulletin |
| Regarding Wishbones - "Haines’s warmth, wit, and authenticity come through in her characters... Wishbones is a story about the bonds of friendship and the strength of Southern women and is also a good, old-fashioned, fast-moving whodunit." - Mobile Register |
| Regarding Bone Appetit - "A whole lot of Southern sass... Haines’s novel is definitely a page-turner." - Jackson Free Press |
| Regarding Bone Appetit - "Distinctive characters and a clever cooking background make Haines’s tenth Sarah Booth Delaney mystery the best yet in this Southern cozy series." - Publishers Weekly |
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