Alan Bradley & Michael McKinley with Andrew Pyper

After a career as Director of Television Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan media centre, Alan Bradley took early retirement to write in 1994. He has written children’s books and short stories, but is now best known for his CWA Dagger-winning international bestseller, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which was sold in 30 countries and included in the New York Times Best Mystery Books of 2009. Bradley presents book two in the Flavia de Luce series, The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag.

Journalist, documentary filmmaker, and screenwriter Michael McKinley is the author of Hockey: A People's History and four earlier books on hockey. While studying at the University of Oxford, he was Associate Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations. His journalism has appeared in major publications such as the Guardian, Sports Illustrated, Los Angeles Times, and National Post. The Penalty Killing, McKinley’s debut novel, is an action-packed murder mystery set in the fast and furious world of professional ice hockey.

Andrew Pyper is the author of four novels and a collection of short stories. His debut novel, Lost Girls, was an international bestseller and a Notable Book in the New York Times, Evening Standard and Globe and Mail. His most recent novel is The Killing Circle.

Martin Carter, a former hockey great who hasn’t played since he sustained a head injury 15 years ago, is now in charge of community relations for the New York St. Patricks. Although the St. Patricks haven’t won the Stanley Cup in almost 40 years, fans are thrilled that, this year, they are positioned for a chance at the chalice. But after two people are murdered – one a star forward of the Vancouver Sea Lions and the other burnt beyond recognition by a fire that destroyed Carter’s New Jersey apartment – their Stanley Cup dreams are put to a halt as police determine if Carter is the charred victim or the murderer. Moving from New York to Vancouver The Penalty Killing is a gripping fiction debut.

In this superbly entertaining follow up to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, plucky protagonist Flavia de Luce returns in another disarmingly sinister mystery. Master puppeteer Rupert Porson arrives in the humble hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey in a broken van but leaves – mid-performance, no less! – in a hearse. Flavia de Luce puts aside her nasty concoctions in her chemistry lab to piece together the clues behind what she believes is a murder.