For more information about our chapter authors, follow the links to their websites. The covers of their most recent publications are displayed below. If you are a chapter member, please send your information to sincndsecretary@gmail.com to be included on this page.
Lisanne Davidson
Jennifer Marra
Recent or upcoming works by Chapter Authors
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May 1952. Mobsters, molls, and muscle are meeting in Kansas City to carve out territory, make deals, assert influence. They come from Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, Detroit … By plane, by car, and, in the case of mid-level heavy Mike Abati, by train from San Francisco.
The FBI sees an opportunity. A chance to get close to the man, gather information, and have eyes and ears on the conference. A honey trap. Tom Keegan, San Francisco PD homicide detective, knows the right woman for the job. She’s smart and cool. Seductive. Fearless. A rare and fiery combination of brass and sass. Would she agree to put her life on the line? If her cover is blown, she’s dead.
Besides, Vivian Davis, aka professional assassin Gunselle, doesn’t do favors for cops. But Tom’s doing the asking and it makes Vivian’s heart beat a little faster. The job isn’t all it appears to be. It comes with a side of betrayal. Because, after all, a girl has to look out for herself. Kansas City Breakdown is the sizzling follow-up to Bop City Swing, and the new joint project of Russell Thayer, author of the Gunselle stories, and M.E. Proctor, author of the Declan Shaw PI series. -
What connects these twenty-four stories is an exploration of place. It can be a location nearby like in Boardwalk Oracle where a clanging candy dispensing machine plays matchmaker in a story that flirts with magical realism. Or the depth of a glacier on a faraway planet in Icebound, where science fiction turns into crime fiction. Or a tourist destination with dark ancient roots in Where the Gods Live.
The collection opens with A Book to Live By, a dystopian tale of love and childhood preserved, fragments that ache to be knitted together. It closes with Willowmore, part fantasy, part mystery, and a salute to book collectors who know better than anybody what secrets are hidden between the pages. -
When a Halloween chase leads to a dead body, September Day and her loyal German Shepherd Shadow are thrust into a web of lies, suspects, and dangerous secrets. To protect her family and friends, she must confront forbidden magic from her past and expose a killer before it’s too late.
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Welcome to Los Angeles—where anything can happen, and usually does.
From botched intelligence ops to holiday parties with murder on the menu, a PI chasing a missing wife, sinister secrets at a legendary theatre, and yes…someone’s killing clowns. These suspenseful tales take you across LA’s airports, suburbs, city streets, and gilded enclaves—crime lurks everywhere.All royalties benefit the California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Recovery Fund—read great stories, do real good.
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This is book two in the Johnson and Nance Mystery Series.
In The Hidden River, Special Agent Alison Nance and Clarence Johnson investigate the mysterious drowning of artist Hezekiah Freeman, only to uncover cryptic clues hidden in his paintings that point to a buried history within the Everglades. As they delve deeper into the conspiracy, danger escalates and the secrets of the past entwine with the present in a race to expose the truth before it’s lost forever.
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Book 2 of the Declan Shaw PI series takes Houston-based detective Declan Shaw to New England for a twisty tale that veers between a thirty-year-old murder case and the aftermath of the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980s.
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Danielle will inherit twenty-million dollars if she can win her great-aunt’s version of the “Old Maid” card game. All she has to do is not get married until after her sisters have done so. But each sister finds it awkward to explain to potential mates why they can’t wed yet, and when someone realizes that funerals can end the game as effectively as weddings, Danielle discovers what a truly dangerous game “Old Maid” can be.
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Item description
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A retro-noir novel of Jazz and San Fransicso.
Reviews say:
“A wild ride down the neon-lit streets of post-WWII America, with bebop wailing in the nightclub on the corner, the white witch pumping through the veins of the junkie on the barstool, three slugs draining the life from the charismatic politician with a shady past, and enough snappy dialogue to light up the faces of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain.”
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In The Devil’s Kitchen, a murder at Yellowstone Canyon draws park ranger Clarence Johnson and Special Agent Alison Nance into a chilling investigation that unearths a centuries-old conspiracy tied to a lost relic from the French Revolution. As suspects vanish and danger escalates, the duo must race through the wilds of Yellowstone to unravel a mystery where history refuses to stay buried.
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Bean to chocolate maker Felicity Koerber has been invited to be part of a chocolate festival in Tokyo.
It’s intimidating enough to be giving a class on chocolate making with the help of a translator – she also stumbles across the scene of a murder, where a quirky group of international actors and stunt performers are making a monster movie. Felicity has already solved half a dozen murders back in Texas, so at this point her friends basically expect her to get involved – even before the young media influencer in Felicity’s group becomes the main suspect. Felicity has taken on the role of chaperone for Chloe, so she can’t imagine how she could explain what went wrong to the girl’s mother. Which gives her even more motivation to figure out the real killer.
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When Chief Deputy Miller gets a call from a tourist saying that her mother, Marguerite, is missing from the local B and B, he soon realizes the question may not be where Marguerite went—it’s whether she was ever there at all.
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Amazon purchase link
Computer whiz Mat Briscoe is hired to look behind the fairy-tale façade of candidate David Pedersen before he is appointed to an ambassadorial position. As she investigates David and his ex-wife Liz, she meets Liz’s best friend Alicia, her husband Chang Zhou and their children Mei Lin, Yulan and Min. Before long she discovers a maze of relationships and a murder committed 30 years ago.
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A Thanksgiving themed story writen by M.E. Proctor, a good read between the turkey and the casserole!
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M.E. Proctor’s story “Drop Dead Gorgeous” is published in the JANIE’S GOT A GUN Anthology with stories inspired by the music of Aerosmith. Proctor’s story features an obsessed Private Investigator.
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Enemies surround her. To vindicate her guilt, she’ll need canine help to bring them to justice before they kill again.
September Day’s new Family complicates her world. Ashamed, but resolved to set right their wrongs, she’s determined to dismantle the sinister crime syndicate before her cop fiancé discovers the tainted relationship.
When a past trafficking victim confronts her and demands immediate justice, she’s mortified with guilt. Outraged her loved ones are also taken by the killer, September agrees to the ransom. She relies on her German Shepherd Shadow to locate the missing, but must reluctantly accept help from her new untrustworthy “Family.”
Can September and Shadow dodge the kidnapper’s deadly aim, and seize justice for the innocents?
PLAY OR PAY is the electrifying 8th book in the September & Shadow series. If you like indomitable survivors, nonstop action, and heroic pets, then you’ll love Amy Shojai’s hair-raising read.
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From author and global energy expert L.A. Starks, comes Winner's Curse - a pulse-pounding new thriller that will grab and hurl you through the eye-opening and unexpectedly dramatic world of the oil and gas sector. While taking you from the desolate, windswept plains of west Texas to the salons of Hungary, Starks expertly infuses her insider knowledge of this trillion-dollar industry, and her experiences of being female in a male-dominated field into this science adventure. The first-ever woman to lead the drilling division of TriCoast Energy, protagonist Lynn Dayton is determined to prove herself capable but finds herself facing more than just the usual water cooler backstabbing.
Undercutting her at every turn is former TriCoast Executive, Henry Vandervoost, who blames her for his humiliating fall from power. Ruthlessly competing with Lynn for control of Bradshaw Energy, his own playboy son's company that has revolutionary energy technology, Vandervoost enlists the help of attractive young chemist Hannah Bosko to assist him in taking over the company. Lynn must battle Vandervoost and international power players who conspire to eliminate her and her colleagues, foil conspiracies to sabotage natural gas plants, and complete a merger that will ensure that the technology remains in the hands of those who will use it to benefit the world.
Winner's Curse is an energy technothriller that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. And, while this is the fourth book in the Lynn Dayton thriller series, each can be read as a stand-alone novel.
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When a woman reports she shot a burglar dressed like the county’s infamous Bunnyman—a six-foot-tall axe-wielding rabbit—Detective Sutcliffe will soon learn that it’s easier to kill a man than an urban legend.
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The murder of jazz singer April Easton makes no sense, and yet she appears to have been targeted. Who ordered the hit and why? Steve Robledo, the Houston cop in charge of the investigation, has nothing to work with. Local P.I. Declan Shaw who spent the night with April has little to contribute. He’d just met her and she was asleep when he left. The case seems doomed to remain unsolved, forever open, and quickly erased from the headlines. And it would be if Declan’s accidental connection with the murder didn’t have unexpected consequences. The men responsible for April’s death are worried. Declan is known to be stubborn and resourceful. There is no telling what he’ll find if he starts digging. He must be watched. He might have to be stopped. He’s a risk the killers cannot afford. The stakes are high: a major trial with the death penalty written all over it.
None of it goes as planned. Because people can’t leave well enough alone. Because when given an opportunity to do mischief, some just cannot resist.
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Falling into despair and depression, Jane Nelson kills her innocent son, leaving her husband Tom to face a “failure to protect” charge. With the help of charismatic attorney, Tom’s defense explores her family’s troubled past and seeks to create reasonable doubt with a provocative theory: Jane’s genetic predisposition contributed to her sudden snap.
JANEOLOGY is the companion novel to Karen's acclaimed young-adult work, SURE SIGNS OF CRAZY, which tells the story of Jane's daughter as she navigates growing up under the shadow of a notorious mother and finds solace in writing letters to Atticus Finch of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
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A spaceship’s artificial intelligence has three major problems:
It was programmed to be curious.
The sole human aboard is up to no good.
One of them must operate by the rule that “thou shalt not kill”—and it isn’t the human.
Will either of them get back to port intact?
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In a bid to heal from the grief of a personal loss, forensic genealogist, RaeJean Hunter, takes on a straightforward case —identify human remains found on a nearby college campus, believed to be the 180-year-old remains of Mary Rogers, a woman who died mysteriously in 1841 and was believed to have been buried in the nearby cemetery that had washed away. It should be simple enough, a project to get her back in the game.
Unfortunately, it quickly becomes anything but. In fact, it becomes downright dangerous.
Someone doesn't want RaeJean to investigate the puzzling death of the woman whose death inspired Edgar Allan Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Roget." As she follows clues through four states and discovers living family members who both help and hinder her search, she quickly realizes that the secrets of Mary Rogers' demise were never meant to be exposed.
What lengths will someone go to keep the truth buried in the past? As threats escalate and RaeJean and her family's lives become endangered, she's forced to follow every lead and use every skill she has to find the answers she needs before it's too late. Using DNA from two famous New England families, historical data, modern genealogical techniques, and a little guidance from a seemingly mystical antique desk, RaeJean takes on the cold case despite being given every reason to abandon it.
After all, what truths have been hidden for 180 years that would be worth bribery, kidnapping, and even murder?
RaeJean Hunter is about to find out.m description
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Do you love mystery stories? Suspense?
Do you need to know who done it?
Detectives, Sleuths, and Nosy Neighbors is a mystery anthology with short stories which range between the classic nosy neighbor and detective to a space sleuth.
Curated and edited by A Balsamo, these tales twist and turn until the very end.
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When Nora arrives at her uncle’s annual St. Patrick’s Day treasure hunt and finds he’s missing, she starts searching for answers—but she’ll need the luck of the Irish if she’s going to catch a killer.
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A photo assignment at the cemetery leads Callie Cassidy to a corpse—this one above ground. Now, her search for the killer unearths some long-buried secrets…
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Tips for dealing with older cats that could be helpful for mystery writers whose books include mature kitties.
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Fluffy has simple goals—devour catnip, drink fresh water, and avenge the murder of his human caretaker. But the killer has ambitions of his own, and woe betide the pesky cat who tries to get in a murderer’s way.
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When Janelle receives a bone transplant, she isn’t expecting its last owner to come along for the ride. He makes it clear that the only way either of them are going to get any peace is to solve his murder, but she has to wonder, just how far will the killer go to keep from getting caught?
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Mike thinks nothing ruins a nice day in the woods with your wife like her stumbling over a fresh corpse—until the cops show up, they ID the victim, and it turns out you and your wife both had a motive to kill the guy.
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Seventy-five years following the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry, an elderly Nisei hires Ava Rome to find out how his best friend, a Japanese-American Buddhist priest, died in the Tule Lake Internment Camp.
In the course of her investigation she uncovers another cold case, the rape and murder of a Japanese-American teenager on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack. Was the same person responsible for both crimes? Ava suspects so. She travels to the Tule Lake site in Northern California where an attack on her life proves that the cold cases are deadly hot. Other people close to the case are murdered on orders from a powerful individual, whose reach stretches from Hawaii to halfway across the continental United States, and who will kill to keep the past secret.
Returning to Honolulu, Ava experiences a devastating act of betrayal before solving the murders and revealing a seven decades-long history of evil.
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P.I. Jesse Morgan is used to ghosts asking him to solve their murders, but Jesse has always played by his own rules, and they don’t include fair play—for the living or the dead.
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There’s just something about Texas … May you have as much fun with these ten tales of murder and deception as I did, and may you remember them long afterward. As Carl Sandberg said, “Texas is a blend of valor and swagger.” So are these stories.
—from the Foreword by JOHN M. FLOYD
Welcome to the second anthology by the chapter members of Sisters In Crime North Dallas. The city of Dallas and surrounding locales offer great fodder for mystery writers—and readers. These inspire the stories contained in Reckless in Texas: Metroplex Mysteries Volume II.
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Almost as soon as recent divorcee Amy Morrison begins her dream job as librarian aboard the world's most expensive luxury cruise liner, she nearly sinks it. She's tasked with hosting the debut of a painting celebrated but hidden for nearly sixty years. But the artist claims the painting isn't hers. And then, the artist goes missing. With the help of a retired academic couple lecturing aboard the ship, a dashing IT manager, and a housekeeping staff with a love of literature, Amy tries to solve the art fraud and kidnapping while rediscovering the adventurous side of herself.
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Sparks takes her gift for nail-biting drama to a new level with a cold case of a missing girl suddenly gone red-hot. This “enthralling page-turner” (Lisa Regan) is perfect for fans of Melinda Leigh and Lisa Gardner.
The stunning landscape of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains are among our greatest natural treasures. But there are deadly secrets lurking in the craggy heights, and FBI Special Agent Kendall Beck and Denver Homicide Detective Adam Taylor team up to investigate a kidnapping. When Taylor’s niece, Frankie, suddenly vanishes at a local hockey rink, it’s clear that there’s a predator on the loose—and now, the case has turned personal.
One discovery after another leads Beck and Taylor closer to the truth, as they close in on the devastating truth about the fates of the missing girls—and the many who came before them. Will they be able to find Frankie before it’s too late? In this thrilling story, Leanne Kale Sparks weaves the threads of this harrowing drama and builds the intensity to a fever pitch.
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Item description
Good News to Share!
SISTERS IN CRIME NORTH DALLAS releases Boots, BBQ, and Bloodshed, our 2026 anthology, on July 1, 2026. Look for some of our local authors to sign your copy at Barnes & Noble Rockwall on Sunday, July 19th at 1PM.
AMBER ROYER has signed with Joffee Books as of June 2026. In a 9-book deal, her Bean to Bar cozy mystery series found a home. Congratulations!
L.A.STARKS’ Winner’s Curse: A Lynn Dayton Thriller was announced as a finalist in the 2026 Indies Today Awards and is a Book of the Month Pick in July 2026 for the A Good Thriller Goodreads Group. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/23915571-botm-author-group-read-schedule-and-offers
AMY SHOJAI’s book #8 in the series PLAY OR PAY is back again, winning first prize (Maxwell Medallion) for the best fiction book in the Dog Writers Association of America contest in February 2026. Amy was invited as an author to sign/sell books @ the Denison, Texas library’s first Authorfest.
AMY SHOJAI’s book #8 in the series PLAY OR PAY won a prestigious Muse Medallion award for the audiobook from the Cat’s Writer’s Association.
AMBER ROYER has announced the launch of her podcast, Story Like a Journalist on KTCP 98.7 (ktcp.org), a new radio station based in Temple, TX. Episodes will air every other Saturday at 2 PM, then available on Spotify the following Wednesday.
L.A. STARKS’ book, WINNER’S CURSE: A LYNN DAYTON THRILLER, was recently announced as a finalist in the Action category of the Independent Authors Network, 2025.
Authors of our SISTERS IN CRIME NORTH DALLAS 2025 Anthology, Trouble in Texas, will host a book signing event at Barnes & Noble Rockwall on Friday, October 24, 2025, @ 6-8 pm.
SISTERS IN CRIME NORTH DALLAS will have a table at the 2025 DFW Writers Conference on October 405th in Hurst, TX.
LIESE SHERWOOD-FABRE is presenting a session on Historical Research at the DFW Writers Conference (DFWCon) October 4-5th, 2025 in Hurst, TX.
AMY SHOJAI will be interviewed by EveryLibrary on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. 7pm EDT - Amy Shojai, CABC, featuring the audiobook of “PLAY OR PAY: A Dog Lover's Crime Thriller Suspense” (The September Day Series). Join host Becky Spratford from RA for All for a conversation with Amy brought to you by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and Furry Muse Publications.
Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/events/563851440106865
YouTube Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ausi8MFWrP4M.E. PROCTOR’s short story fiction, “Drop Dead Gorgeous” in Janie’s Got a Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Aerosmith, has been nominated for a Shamus award: Best P.I. Short Story.
LIESE SHERWOOD-FABRE’S short story, “Blood on the Bayou: Case Closed” was selected for the New Orleans Bouchercon anthology. There is a special signing on Thursday, September 4, 2025 night at the WWII Museum in New Orleans. The link is here.
L.A. STARKS is hosting a book signing of WINNER’S CURSE: A LYNN DAYTON THRILLER at the new Richardson UTD Barnes & Noble on Saturday, November 9, 2024 at 2 p.m. This novel is receiving high praise from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly/Booklife, and Independent Book Reviews, among others.
KAREN HARRINGTON'S "The Mysterious Disappearance of Jason Whetstone" was selected to appear in Best American Mystery & Suspense 2024. This story first appeared in our SincND chapter anthology, RECKLESS IN TEXAS.
SHANNON TAFT’S "Monster" was selected to appear in BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY & SUSPENSE 2024. This story first appeared in our SincND chapter anthology, RECKLESS IN TEXAS.
AMY SHOJAI won the 2023 DWAA Distinguished Service Award from the Dog Writer's Association of America.
AMY SHOJAI will be presenting at the Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. conference May 2-4. Presentations are Songwriting for Playwrights: How (and Why) to Turn Your Script Into a Musical, or Poem Into a Song and Writing Like Cats & Dogs: How to Include Believable Animal Characters in Your Writing Universe
MARK TROY’S book SPLINTERED LOYALTY is featured in the May issue of The Big Thrill.
LEANNA KALE SPARKS’ debut novel THE WRONG WOMAN was named a finalist for Best Thriller in the Colorado Book Awards.
LORI ROBERTS HERBST’s books PHOTO FINISHED and NEGATIVE REACTION were both named finalists in the 2023 Chanticleer International Book Awards Mystery and Mayhem contest.
KAREN HARRINGTON’s short story “Boo Radley College Prep” won the 2021 EQMM Readers' Choice Award. The story will appear in the May/June issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
DEREK WHEELESS’s book WE PLANNED A MURDER was chosen by Barnes & Noble as a YA Indie spotlight for April and May.
MARY LOU CONDIKE’s story “The Yellow Poster” won 2nd Place in the Tennessee Williams Short Story Contest, sponsored by the Key West Art & Historical Society, Inc.
Chapter Authors’ Publication Covers
