July 20 – 26: “What is the primary job of a thriller?”

Entertainment? Escapism? To provoke thought? This week we ask ITW members Lisa Harris, Otho Eskin, Dave Wickenden, Elizabeth Goddard, Haris Orkin, Buzz Bernard, Timothy Jay Smith, Jeffrey B. Burton, Elizabeth Rose, Paul D. Marks, Colin Campbell, Martin Roy Hill, Kit Frick, Carole Lawrence, TG Wolff, Mary Keliikoa, Emily Liebert and Laurie Stevens what is the primary job of a thriller? Check out this great group of authors and their latest novels below, and scroll down to the “comments” section to follow along. You won’t want to miss it!

Paul D. Marks is the author of the Shamus Award-Winning mystery-thriller White Heat. His short stories have won numerous awards: Windward was included in the Best American Mystery Stories of 2018 and won the Macavity Award. His story Ghosts of Bunker Hill was voted #1 in the 2016 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award. Brendan DuBois, NY Times best-selling author, says Paul’s latest novel The Blues Don’t Care is “finely written” and “highly recommended.”

Multi-published in romance and romantic suspense, Elisabeth Rose lives very happily in Canberra with her musician husband. Travel is a big part of their lives now that the family has left home. Elisabeth’s original training was in clarinet performance, but she was also a tai chi instructor for 25 years. An avid reader, her preference is for a happy ending regardless of genre, and she is most annoyed if a main character dies or leaves—unless, of course, it’s the villain.

A lawyer and former diplomat, Otho Eskin served in the US Army and in the United States Foreign Service in Washington and in Syria, Yugoslavia, Iceland and Berlin (then the capital of the German Democratic Republic). He was Vice-Chairman of the US delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, participated in the negotiations on the International Space Station, was principal US negotiator of several international agreements on seabed mining and was the US representative to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. He speaks French, German and Serbo-Croatian. He was a frequent speaker at conferences and has testified before the US Congress and commissions. Otho Eskin has also written plays including: Act of God, Murder As A Fine Art, Duet, Julie, Final Analysis, Season In Hell, among others, which have been professionally produced in Washington, New York and in Europe. Otho is married and lives in Washington, DC.

Emily Liebert is the USA Today bestselling author of seven books—Facebook Fairytales, You Knew Me When, When We Fall, Those Secrets We Keep, Some Women, Pretty Revenge, and Perfectly Famous. Emily is also the Books Correspondent for Moffly Media, a Connecticut magazine conglomerate. She’s been featured often in the press by outlets such as: Today Show, The Rachael Ray Show, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, InStyle, and Good Housekeeping.

Ex-army, retired cop, and former scenes of crime officer, Colin Campbell served with the West Yorkshire police for 30 years. He is the author of the UK crime novels Blue Knight, White Cross and Northern Ex, and the US thrillers featuring rogue Yorkshire cop Jim Grant.

Haris Orkin is an author, playwright, screenwriter, and game writer. His play Dada premiered at The La Jolla Playhouse. A Saintly Switch was produced by Disney and directed by Peter Bogdanovich. His games have been nominated for the WGA Award and the BAFTA. His debut novel, You Only Live Once, was published by Imajin Books in 2018. The sequel, Once is Never Enough, was released in April.

Elizabeth Goddard is the bestselling author of more than 40 books, including Never Let Go, Always Look Twice, and the Carol Award–winning The Camera Never Lies. Her Mountain Cove series books have been finalists in the Daphne du Maurier Awards and the Carol Awards. Goddard is a seventh-generation Texan.

TG Wolff writes thrillers and mysteries that play within the gray area between good and bad, right and wrong. Cause and effect drive the stories, drawing from 20+ years’ experience in civil engineering, where “cause” is more often a symptom of a bigger, more challenging problem. Diverse characters mirror the complexities of real life and real people, balanced with a healthy dose of entertainment. T G Wolff holds a master’s degree in civil engineering and is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime.

Dave Wickenden has spent time in the Canadian Armed Forces before the Fire Service, so he’s as comfortable with a rocket launcher as a fire hose. He has brought six people back from the dead utilizing CPR and a defibrillator and has assisted in rescuing people in crisis. He has learnt to lead men and women in extreme environments. He loves to cook, read, and draw. Dave ran his own home-based custom art business creating highly detailed wood and paper burnings called pyrography. One of his pictures of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien graces the walls of Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

H. W. “Buzz” Bernard is a bestselling, award-winning novelist. Before becoming a novelist, Buzz worked at the Weather Channel as a senior meteorologist for 13 years. Prior to that, he served as a weather officer in the US Air Force for over three decades. He attained the rank of colonel and received, among other awards, the Legion of Merit. Buzz is a past president of the Southeastern Writers Association as well as a member of International Thriller Writers, the Atlanta Writers Club, Military Society Writers of America, and Willamette Writers.

Raised crisscrossing America pulling a small green trailer behind the family car, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that has taken him around the world many times. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian Chiefs and Indian tailors: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that saw him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, represent the U.S. at the highest levels of foreign governments, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-days crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.

​Jeffrey B. Burton was born in Long Beach, California, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and received his BA in Journalism at the University of Minnesota. Novels in Burton’s Agent Drew Cady mystery series include: THE CHESSMAN, THE LYNCHPIN, and THE EULOGIST. His short stories have appeared in dozens of magazines. Jeff is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and the Horror Writers Association. He lives in St. Paul with his wife, an irate Pomeranian named Lucy, and a goofball of a Beagle named Milo.

Martin Roy Hill is the author of the Linus Schag, NCIS, thrillers, the Peter Brandt thrillers, DUTY: Suspense and Mystery Stories from the Cold War and Beyond, EDEN: A Sci-Fi Novella, Polar Melt: A Novel, and WAR STORIES, a nonfiction book on military history. His latest Linus Schag thriller, The Butcher’s Bill, was named the Best Mystery/Suspense Novel of 2017 by the Best Independent Book Awards, and received the Clue Award for Best Suspense Thriller from the Chanticleer International Book Awards and the Silver Medal for Thrillers from Readers Favorite Book Awards, and was the Winner for Adult Fiction in the 2018 California Authors Project.

Kit Frick is a novelist, poet, and MacDowell Colony fellow from Pittsburgh, Penn. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. When she isn’t putting complicated characters in impossible situations, Kit edits poetry and literary fiction for a small press and edits for private clients. She is the author of the young adult novels See All the Stars and All Eyes on Us, both from Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry Books, as well as the poetry collection A Small Rising Up in the Lungs from New American Press. Her third YA thriller, I KILLED ZOE SPANOS, will release on June 2, 2020.

Carole Lawrence is an award-winning novelist, poet, composer, playwright, and author of Edinburgh Twilight and Edinburgh Dusk in the Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton series, as well as six novellas and dozens of short stories, articles, and poems—many of which appear in translation internationally. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry and winner of the Euphoria Poetry Prize, the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award, the Maxim Mazumdar playwriting prize, the Jerry Jazz Musician award for short fiction, and the Chronogram Literary Fiction Award. Her plays and musicals have been produced in several countries, as well as on NPR; her physics play Strings, nominated for an Innovative Theatre Award, was produced at the Kennedy Center. A Hawthornden Fellow, she is on the faculty of NYU and Gotham Writers, as well as the Cape Cod Writers Center and San Miguel Writers’ Conferences. She enjoys hiking, biking, horseback riding, and hunting for wild mushrooms.

Mary Keliikoa spent the first 18 years of her adult life working around lawyers. Combining her love of all things legal and books, she creates a twisting mystery where justice prevails. She is the author of the PI Kelly Pruett mystery series, which debuts with DERAILED in May 2020. At home in Washington, she enjoys spending time with her family and her writing companions/fur-kids, Bella, a bossy golden retriever, and August, her mischievous kitty. When she’s not at home, you can find Mary on a beach on the Big Island where she and her husband recharge. But even under the palm trees and blazing sun she’s plotting her next murder—novel, that is.

Laurie Stevens is the author of the Gabriel McRay thriller series. The books have won 12 awards, among them Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 and a Random House Editors’ Book of the Month. When it comes to writing the “ultimate cat-and-mouse thriller” Suspense Magazine finds “Laurie Stevens to be the leader of the pack.” Laurie lives near the setting of her books, the Santa Monica Mountains, with her husband, two snakes, and a cat.

Lisa Harris is a bestselling author, a Christy Award winner, and the winner of the Best Inspirational Suspense Novel from Romantic Times for her novels Blood Covenant and Vendetta. The author of more than 40 books, including The Nikki Boyd Files and the Southern Crimes series, as well as Vanishing Point, A Secret to Die For, and Deadly Intentions. Harris and her family have spent over 16 years living as missionaries in southern Africa.