Kate Flora

Kate Flora, a recovering attorney who was raised on a chicken farm in Maine, is the author of 24 mystery and nonfiction books. Her true crimes Finding Amy and Death Dealer have been Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony finalists. Research for Death Dealer, a story with a body hidden deep in the woods of Eastern Canada led to an ATV adventure deep in those woods, finding the bad guy on a stakeout, and getting to go shooting with the police. Redemption and And Grant You Peace, two of her Joe Burgess police procedurals, won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Her titles include ten Thea Kozak mysteries and seven books in the starred-review Joe Burgess police series. Her latest fiction includes: Death Warmed Over, her eighth Thea Kozak mystery, and And Led Astray, her fifth Joe Burgess. Her collaboration with Maine game warden Roger Guay on his memoir, A Good Man with a Dog, involved some down and dirty research such as getting lost in the woods and being found by trained search and rescue dogs. It was a Maine Literary Award finalist. Her story featuring former First Lady Michelle Obama, "Michelle in Hot Water," appears in the anthology The Obama Inheritance:Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir, edited by Gary Phillips. Her story about an alternate history of Huey Long, "Long Live Long," in the anthology The Faking of the President from Three Rooms Press. She also collaborated with retired Portland, Maine assistant chief Joseph K. Loughlin on Shots Fired: The misunderstandings, misconceptions, and myths about police shootings Kate is a founding member the New England Crime Bake and Maine Crime Wave conferences, a founder of Level Best Books where she worked as an editor and publisher for seven years and has served as international president of Sisters in Crime. She coordinates the Maine Crime Writers blog. In an earlier life she was an attorney, protecting battered kids and chasing deadbeat dads for the Maine attorney general's office, and representing the Maine Human Rights Commission. There she learned all a crime writer needs to know about the human propensity to commit horrible acts. When she's not riding an ATV through the Canadian woods or hiding in a tick-infested field waiting to be found by search and rescue dogs as research for her books, Kate can be found toiling at her desk on the coast of Maine. She sometimes teaches writing at Grub Street in Boston.