USA Today bestselling novelist Karen Odden earned her PhD in English at NYU, writing her dissertation on the literature and true history surrounding Victorian railway disasters. She taught English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has written introductions for novels for the Barnes & Noble Classics Series, and edited for the academic journal Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge UP). All her novels are set in 1870s London, with seedy Whitechapel, rowdy music halls, dangerous railway accidents, and the smelly Thames River.

Her first three novels, A LADY IN THE SMOKE, A DANGEROUS DUET, and A TRACE OF DECEIT have all won awards for mystery and historical fiction. Each features a different young woman protagonist—an earl’s daughter, a pianist, and a painter—who is drawn into a mystery when someone she loves is injured or murdered. Her newest book, DOWN A DARK RIVER (Crooked Lane Books), features former thief and bare-knuckles boxer Michael Corravan, an inspector at Scotland Yard who is faced with a series of murders of beautiful young women whose corpses are placed in small boats and sent floating down the Thames River. Karen is busy finishing the sequel, UNDER A VEILED MOON, to be published in November 2022.

Karen is a recipient of a grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and a member of both Arizona chapters of Sisters in Crime, Grand Canyon Writers and Desert Sleuths, where she serves as the programming chair for 2022. She has taught at the ASU Desert Nights, Rising Stars conference, and she offers webinars and workshops on the writing craft as a way of giving back to the writing community that has given her so much. Her book launches are at the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Old Town Scottsdale, and she is happy to visit book clubs (either local or via zoom). Her e-newsletter publishes every 6 weeks, featuring exclusive content and essays and giveaways by guest authors. You can connect with Karen at her website: www.karenodden.com.