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Closer Than the Bones

About Specification

About the Author:

A seventh-generation Mississippian now transplanted to Texas,

Dean James grew up with scads of cousins all over the place, none of whom has

ever married one another as far as he knows. Sitting around on porches on hot

summer days, listening to adults telling stories, he decided he wanted to

tell stories, too. He wrote his first novel when he was twelve and has been

making up stories ever since. No matter where those stories are set,

something Southern creeps in, because he thinks that growing up Southern was

like living in the middle of every one of Shakespeare's plays all at once.

Comedy, drama, tragedy, farce — they're with you every day; all you have to do

is choose.

When he's not thinking up stories, Dean is the Manager of "Murder by the

Book", Houston's nationally known mystery specialty bookstore. He is the

co-author, with Jean Swanson, of By a Woman's Hand: A Guide to Mystery

Fiction by Women (second edition, Berkley Prime Crime, 1996). The first

edition of this popular reference book on contemporary women mystery writers

was nominated by the "Mystery Writers of America" for the Edgar Award for

Best Critical-Biographical Work, and it won the Agatha and Macavity Awards

for Best Non-Fiction. The second edition was nominated for both the Agatha

and Anthony Awards.

With Jan Grape, he is the co-editor of Deadly Women , another volume on women

mystery writers, published by Carroll & Graf in 1997. Deadly Women was

nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work and won the

Macavity Award for Best Non-Fiction from Mystery Readers International. In

1998, Berkley Prime Crime published Killer Books: A Reader's Guide to

Exploring the Popular World of Mystery and Suspense, which he wrote with

Jean Swanson. His first mystery short story, "The Village Vampire and the

Oboe of Death," was published by Avon Books in September 1998 in the Malice

Domestic 7 anthology; it was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Short

Story. Other stories have appeared in Canine Crimes and A Canine Christmas,

both published by Ballantine Books. Two new stories will be published in

summer 2000, in the anthologies Magnolias and Mayhem (Silver Dagger

Mysteries) and A Confederacy of Crime (NAL/Signet). His first novel for

Silver Dagger is Cruel As The Grave.