Mystery/Detective

Avery Daniels was born and raised in Colorado Springs, graduated from college with a degree in business administration and has worked in fortune 500 companies and the Department of Defense her entire life. Her most eventful job was apartment management for 352 units. She still resides in Colorado with two brother black cats as her spirited companions. She volunteers for a local cat shelter, enjoys scrapbooking and card making, photography, and painting in watercolor and acrylic. She inherited a love for reading from her mother and grandmother and grew up talking about books at the dinner table.

Nancy Atherton is the author of Aunt Dimity mysteries. With 25 titles, including many bestsellers, her cozy mystery series follows paranormal sleuth Aunt Dimity. Aunt Dimity's Death was voted "One of the Century's 100 Favorite Mysteries" by the Independent Booksellers Association. Nancy's next book, Aunt Dimity and the Parting Gift, will be published in 2024. Nancy lives, works, and plays in Colorado Springs. Nancy Atherton has been a longtime attendee of Mountain of Authors and was a panelist at the 2010 and 2016 events. To learn more about Nancy and Aunt Dimity, visit the website at www.aunt-dimity.com.

Cynthia Kuhn writes the Lila Maclean Academic Mysteries and Starlit Bookshop Mysteries. Her work has also appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Literary Mama, Copper Nickel, Prick of the Spindle, Mama PhD, Mystery Most Edible, Mystery Most Diabolical, and other publications. She is professor of English at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Barbara Nickless is the Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of the multi-award-winning Sydney Parnell crime novels. Her new series features forensic semiotician Dr. Evan Wilding—a man whose gift for interpreting the words and symbols left behind by killers has led him to consult on some of the world’s grisliest cases. Winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence, the Golden Quill Award, Suspense Magazine Best Debut of 2016, Amazon Editors’ Best Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense Novel, and a four-time recipient of the Colorado Authors League Writing Award, Barbara has been nominated for the Colorado Book Award five times and won three (including the anthology Denver Noir). Barbara lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains where she loves to hike, cave, snowshoe, and drink single malt Scotch. Her most recent travels—while conducting research for a novel—involved taking cover from rocket fire and being grilled at military checkpoints. 

I live in Colorado Springs with my husband and extra-large housecat. We all love the Pikes Peak region and the greater Southwest and often spend time in Santa Fe, where my mystery series is set.

Bert moved from Illinois to Colorado Springs in 1974 with his wife Nancy and sons Jeremy and Chad. He now has nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He started as a freelance photojournalist covering action sports and started writing as well as photographing nearly twenty years ago. He has worked as a photographer and writer for rodeo/bull riding, and a track photographer for Pikes Peak International Raceway. As a freelance writer and photographer, he has sold hundreds of articles to dozens of magazines and sold thousands of photographs. He has covered the rodeo, bull riding, and performance horse world for many years and has written on subjects as diverse as the meat packing industry, water rights, and family ranching.

Catherine Dilts has lived in Colorado for decades now, but spent her formative years in Oklahoma. Her new Rose Creek Mystery series is set in the Ozark foothills in northeastern Oklahoma. Author of the Rock Shop Mystery series set in Colorado, Catherine also writes for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories regularly appear in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.