Carole Nelson Douglas

USA Today Bestselling writer Carole Nelson Douglas is the author of nearly 70 novels and numerous short stories, including the Irene Adler Victorian mystery series and the Midnight Louie cozy noir mystery series. She was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame in 2012. Romantic Times Book Reviews has also named her a Pioneer of Publishing. She is a four-time Romance Writers Rita Award finalist and is the winner of Romantic Times Book Reviews Career Achievement awards in Suspense, Mystery, and Versatility. Other awards include the Johnny Cat Litter-ary Award, many Catwriters' Association Muse Medallions, and special recognitions from Malice Domestic. In total, she has been the finalist or winner of as many as 50 awards in multiple genres, including high fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, mystery, and romance.

A graduate of the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, she was a finalist in Vogue magazine's Prix de Paris writing competition (won earlier by Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis) and earned degrees in English literature, Speech, and Theater, with a minor in philosophy. While working in journalism, she was the first woman elected to the executive board of The Newspaper Guild's Twin Cities local, the first woman show chairman of the local's annual Gridiron Show, and the first permanent woman member of the St. Paul Pioneer Press's Opinion Pages and Editorial Board. She was also the first woman to reinvent the Sherlock Holmes world from a female viewpoint with Good Night, Mr. Holmes, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and winner of American Mystery and Romantic Times magazine awards.

All of Douglas's novels use a mainstream matrix to blend elements of mystery or fantasy with contemporary issues and magical realism. A literary chameleon with an agenda, Douglas has reinvented the roles of women in a variety of fiction forms.

Carole's Irene Adler series features the only woman to outwit Sherlock Holmes, beginning with a re-telling of Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia" from Irene's point of view in GOOD NIGHT, MR. HOLMES. From there, Irene continues to adventure with her husband Godfrey Norton and spinster companion Nell Huxleigh as they go head to head--sometimes competing with, sometimes cooperating with--the great detective Sherlock Holmes himself.

The Midnight Louie mystery series is comprised of 28 books titled in alphabetical order, beginning with CAT IN AN ALPHABET SOUP (formerly titled CATNAP) and features feline detective extraordinaire, Midnight Louie, Esq., and his purrson Temple Barr. Although Midnight Louie has his own very distinct writing voice, he never deigns to actually speak to humans. He has been described as a "Sam Spade with hairballs" and plays a key role in a romantic quadrangle of human characters that spans the length of the series.

The Delilah Street Paranormal Investigator noir urban fantasies feature the alluring amateur detective Delilah Street as she solves mysteries in a world populated with werewolf mobsters and Sliver Screen zombies in Sin City, Las Vegas.

Although Carole unexpectedly passed away in 2021, her estate is working to convert her older fiction into e-book format. Stay tuned.