My first novel, A Field of Darkness, is now available from Hachette Book Group's Mysterious Press, and has been chosen as one of the top ten crime books of 2006 by Booklist magazine. It's been summarized as the story of “a tough-talking, shotgun-toting, ex-debutante about to get in over her head in a twenty-year-old murder investigation.” I just call it "WASP Noir."

Before Field had found a publisher, the lovely and talented Lee Child was kind enough to list it as one of his five favorite reads of 2004 at Mystery Ink Online, saying that it "hits the first pitch out of the park. Wry, hip, knowing, lyrical, and a fine mystery too." If you've read this far, I hope you'll run out and buy fifty copies of each splendid novel this man has written. There are currently nine of them, so that's only 450 books and you'd totally get free shipping from Amazon.

Better yet, come buy them in person next spring. Lee has invited me to tag along on the book tour for his tenth Jack Reacher novel, The Hard Way, which will be available in U.S. bookstores on May 16, 2006. Four cities are now planned for our joint appearances on this tour: Houston, Scottsdale, Los Angeles, and Seattle. If you'd like further details please visit http://www.corneliaread.com.

Without the support and encouragement of the fine writers I came to know through Epinions, A Field of Darkness would not exist. You guys gave me my chops back.

The Bio I Started Here With:

I have circumnavigated the globe, throwing up in many of the world's airports as I hate to fly. I was born in Manhattan, and spent my childhood racketing around from New York to California to Oahu.

I am now at home molding the characters (evil laugh here) of my eleven-year-old twin girls, the younger of whom has autism. I am the world's worst housewife, nicknamed by my intrepid spouse "a lighting rod for entropy in the universe."

I like to read a lot, being especially fond of the backs of cereal boxes and badly garbled assembly instructions written by persons for whom English is not the language of choice (although my all-time favorite bit of writing was contained in the song list on a bootleg Dylan tape in Hong Kong, which claimed "Bowling in the Wind" was the first cut on side A).

For the last several generations, my family's motto has been "Never a Dull Moment." None of us know how you would say this in Latin. I subscribe to my sister's gustatory philosophy, which is that "there are two kinds of food in the world: food that's good, and food that needs more salt."

My two favorite songs are Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams" and that little bit of Bach Glenn Gould plays right when the Tralfamadorians are coming out of the stars to kidnap Billy Pilgrim and his old dog Spot in the movie version of Slaughterhouse Five. The Rolling Stones doing "King Bee" gets an honorable mention.

I would like to be Winston Churchill when I grow up.