David J. Skal is the author of numerous books, including Hollywood Gothic, The Monster Show, Screams of Reason and Something in the Blood. Skal lives in Glendale, CA. His latest book is Fright…
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, Bram Stoker Award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’…
Natalie Zina Walschots is a writer and game designer whose work includes LARP scripts, heavy metal music journalism, video game lore, and weirder things classified as "interactive experiences." Her…
Lindsay Ellis is an author, Hugo finalist, and video essayist who creates online content about media, narrative, and film theory. After earning her bachelor's in Cinema Studies from NYU's Tisch School…
Elsa Hart is the author of several acclaimed mystery novels set in eighteenth-century China, including City of Ink, one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2018. She was born in Rome, but her…
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (who mostly goes by Jen) is the author of more than a dozen critically acclaimed young adult novels. She has advanced degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science…
Michael Zapata is a founding editor of the award-winning MAKE: Literary Magazine. He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Fiction; the City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Program…
Caroline B. Cooney is the bestselling author of teen suspense, mystery and romance novels that have sold over 15 million copies worldwide. Her latest novel, Before She Was Helen, is a mystery for…
Jody David Armour is a professor at the USC Gould School of Law. He has been a member of the faculty since 1995. Armour’s expertise ranges from personal injury claims to claims about the relationship…
Jon Wiener is a longtime Contributing Editor at The Nation and host and producer of “Start Making Sense,” the magazine’s weekly podcast. He is an Emeritus Professor of U.S. history at UC Irvine, and…
The first season of The Twilight Zone in 1960 included an episode written by show creator Rod Serling entitled “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Serling presented a block of homes, filled with “typical” American families, on a summer evening. There is a bright flash of light, whose origin...
Jody Armour is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He studies issues of race and legal decision-making as well as torts and tort reform movements. He also studies and teaches on the intersections of language, the law and ethics. His latest book directly...
The year is 1704 and Lady Cecily Kay has returned to London from her husband’s posting as a consul in Smyrna. Upon learning of her imminent return to the British Isles, Cecily sent a letter to Sir Barnaby Mayne, a renowned collector in London with one of the most expansive...
David Gerrold is speculative fiction royalty. His career spans six decades, over which he has won the Hugo and the Nebula awards. He has written more than 50 novels, worked on numerous television series and created cultural touchstones like tribbles (from Star Trek) and the Sleestak (from The Land of...
A pirate, a refugee, two pre-teen boys in love with speculative fiction stories, and two adult men who are friends and are each searching for what seems to be missing in their lives. Over the course of nearly a century, these disparate individuals will orbit the missing manuscript of a...
Halley's Comet is quite possibly the most famous, and infamous, comet currently known. It is a “periodic” comet, coming close enough to the earth for viewing approximately every 75 years. Over the centuries, the appearance of Halley’s Comet has been erroneously blamed for earthquakes, illnesses (including the Black Plague in...
In a "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery, a crime, or series of crimes, is committed under circumstances that appear, at least initially, impossible for said crime to have been enacted. Those same conditions will also seem to preclude the criminal entering or exiting the crime scene.The first “locked-room” mystery was...
In the early 1940s, a Scottish professor of mathematics devises a mathematical definition of the murder mystery story and writes seven provocative stories as proof of his theory. He publishes a journal article regarding his ideas and then self-publishes his seven stories in a small volume, entitled The White Murders.Decades...
What if Sasquatch is real? What if there actually is a large, hair-covered hominid that lives in the undeveloped areas of the Pacific Northwest and is occasionally sighted by unsuspecting humans? What if a natural disaster displaced these creatures and their prey, forcing them to move closer to human settlements...
As the days grow short and the nights grow longer, as the air gets cooler and the leaves on the trees shift in color from green to brown, red, and gold, we know that we have moved into autumn. And autumn is the time for movies that provide chills, from...
