For our January book club – meeting on Sunday, January 18 at 2 p.m. eastern – we’ll be hosting three outstanding cozy writers who between them have written 80 (yes, that’s 80) books. We’ll be discussing the past, present and future of the cozy novel as well as talking to some really wonderful women. This all takes place on zoom, and all are welcome to join. Message me on facebook or instagram for a zoom link. Check the website for reviews of many of their novels.
Our guests:
Leslie Budewitz blends her passion for food, great mysteries, and the Northwest in two light-hearted mystery series: the Spice Shop Mysteries, set in Seattle, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in northwest Montana. She also loves exploring the history of her home state through historical fiction. Her books focus on strong women who share her passions, and have a talent for finding trouble!
As Alicia Beckman, she also writes moody suspense.
Leslie is a three-time Agatha Award winner: 2011 Best Nonfiction for her guide for writers, Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure; 2013 Best First Novel for Death al Dente (making her the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction); and 2018 Best Short Story (in a tie) for “All God’s Sparrows,” her first historical fiction. Her work has also won or been nominated for Spur, Derringer, Anthony, and Macavity awards. The collection All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection, including the award-winning title story and other stories, is a finalist for the 2025 High Plains International Book Awards, in the short story category.
A Montana native, Leslie graduated from Seattle University and Notre Dame Law School. After practicing in Seattle for several years—and shopping and eating her way through the Pike Place Market regularly—she returned to Montana, where she practiced civil litigation and employment law, with an unhealthy dose of criminal law. Killing people—on the page—is more fun.
Leslie served four years on the national board of Mystery Writers of America. She served as president of Sisters in Crime in 2015-16, and is a founding member of the Guppies, the SinC chapter for new and unpublished writers. She is also a member of the Authors of the Flathead, Women Writing the West, and Western Writers of America.
Leslie loves to cook, eat, hike, travel, garden, and paint—not necessarily in that order. She lives in northwest Montana with her husband, Don Beans, a singer-songwriter and doctor of natural medicine, and their gray tuxedo, officially named Squirt but affectionately called Mr. Kitten.
Ellen Byron is a USA Today bestselling author and recipient of multiple Agatha and Lefty awards for her Cajun Country Mysteries, Vintage Cookbook Mysteries, Catering Hall Mysteries (as Maria DiRico,) and Golden Motel Mysteries. She is also a two-time Anthony Award nominee.
Ellen is an award-winning playwright and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like WINGS, JUST SHOOT ME, and FAIRLY ODD PARENTS. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.
She blogs with Chicks on the Case, is a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America, and serves on the national board of Mystery Writers of America.
A native New Yorker, Ellen is a graduate of New Orleans’ Tulane University, hence her love of both cities. She lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, daughter, and a rotating crew of rescue pups.
Amanda Flower is a USA Today bestselling and three-time Agatha Award-winning author of over fifty mystery novels. Her novels have received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Romantic Times, and she has been featured in USA Today, First for Women, and Woman’s World. Her first Emily Dickinson Mystery, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, was an 
Agatha Award winner and Mary Higgins Clark Nominee. Her first mystery featuring the Wright Brothers, To Slip the Bonds of 
Earth, was an Agatha Award and Ohio Book Award winner. A former librarian, Flower and her husband own a farm and recording studio, and they live in Northeast Ohio with their adorable cats.