Do you love the safe thrill of a good mystery book? Are you smarter than Hercule Poirot? Are you sure that the butler did it? Come to the Amherst Town Library at 7 p.m. on Oct. 23 to learn about making a mystery with authors Jeannette de Beauvoir, Kate Flora, Arlene Kay and Sarah Smith. In this interactive program, the authors representing different sub-genres, including cozy/traditional and thriller/suspense, will brainstorm on their feet to create a brand new mystery using suggestions provided by the audience. Fun, fast-paced, and fascinating, this improv game offers important insights into mystery writers’ minds and the conventions of the genre.

Jeannette de Beauvoir is an award-winning novelist whose work has appeared in 15 countries and has been translated into 12 languages. She writes about characters confronting challenging situations – and uncovering hidden secrets and dark truths.

Attorney Kate Flora’s many books include eight Thea Kozak mysteries, five gritty police procedurals; a suspense thriller (written as Katharine Clark) and two true crime books. She has also co-written a Maine Game Warden’s memoir. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, and she is a former editor and publisher at Level Best Books, former international president of Sisters in Crime, and a founding member of the New England Crime Bake conference and the Maine Crime Wave. She teaches writing for Grub Street in Boston.

A former Senior Executive with the Federal Government servant, Arlene Kay’s experience in offices around the nation allowed her to observe both human and corporate foibles and rejoice in unintentional humor. The locations and the characters she encountered are celebrated in a series of mysteries including INTRUSION, DIE LAUGHING, and THE ABACUS PRIZE. She is also the author of SWANN SERIES (SWANN DIVE; MANTRAP; and GILT TRIP, and SWANN SONG). Her latest book is DEATH BY DOG SHOW, the first in a new series of Creature Comfort Mysteries.

An Agatha winner and Massachusetts Book Award winner for her most recent novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF DARK, Sarah Smith has been interested in ghosts and storytelling since she was four. She studied English at Harvard, where she hung out in the library reading mysteries, and film in London. She has written a bestselling adult mystery series set in the Edwardian period; two of the books were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year, one was a London Times Book of the Year, and the first, THE VANISHED CHILD, is being made into a musical. Her standalone novel about the Shakespeare authorship, CHASING SHAKESPEARES, is being made into a play. She has just finished a novel about the TITANIC.

All four authors are members of Sisters in Crime New England, a chapter of the international organization Sisters in Crime.

All adult programs offered at the Amherst Town Library are free and open to the public. However, registration is REQUIRED for each program due to space limitations. You can register for these events listed above by calling 673-2288 or by visiting the website at www.amherstlibrary.org and selecting the “Community Services” tab, then click on drop down “Sign-Up for Programs.”

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