 Susan McBride is the author of THE DEBS, the first in a new young adult series from Random House featuring four prep school seniors in Houston, Texas, during their debutante season. LOVE, LIES & TEXAS DIPS will follow in June of 2009, and Susan has signed to pen two more DEBS books. She has also written five Debutante Dropout Mysteries for HarperCollins/Avon. Once called "The Lou's Whodunit Queen" by Sauce Magazine in St. Louis, Susan was selected as one of the city's "top singles" in 2005 by St. Louis Magazine but is single no more. She tied the knot in late February of 2008.
The Debutante Dropout Mysteries feature Andrea "Andy" Kendricks, a 30-year-old Dallas web designer, reluctant heiress and deb ball refugee, and her dyed-in-the-wool Chanel-wearing socialite mother Cissy. The latest in the series, TOO PRETTY TO DIE, hit bookstores on February 1, 2008.
The debut, BLUE BLOOD (2004), won the Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery and received an Anthony Award nomination for Best Paperback Original. BLUE BLOOD spent three months on the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association's top ten best-sellers list, has gone into multiple printings, and was published in large print by Thorndike Press.
THE GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER (2005), was a BookSense pick, an IMBA bestseller, and an Anthony Award nominee for Best PBO. THE LONE STAR LONELY HEARTS CLUB (2006) was one of three finalists for the William Rockhill Nelson Award, presented to Kansas and Missouri authors for excellence in literature. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEB (2007) was an IMBA best-seller as well.
The Deb Dropout books have been featured alternate selections of the Mystery Guild. THE LONE STAR LONELY HEARTS CLUB has been translated into Turkish (believe it or not!). NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEB and TOO PRETTY TO DIE are also available as e-books.
Susan has a Journalism degree from the University of Kansas, but always dreamed of making up stories rather than reporting them. The idea for the Debutante Dropout series came from her memories of pledging Pi Beta Phi at the University of Texas in Austin and watching the Dallas debutantes practice their curtsies in study hall. Susan lived in Texas for 20 years before moving to St. Louis in 1996, so she claims to have the Lone Star State tattooed on her heart, right beside the Gateway Arch.
Susan's first novel, AND THEN SHE WAS GONE, was published by a small traditional press in 1999 and went into a second printing in 2000. The book was a finalist in the St. Martin's Press Malice Domestic contest and won the National Writers Association's Best Novel Contest. It was nominated for a Reviewer's Choice Award for Best First Mystery by RT BookReviews Magazine. The second in the Maggie Ryan series, OVERKILL, was an RT Top Pick.
Susan's short fiction and essays have appeared in several anthologies, including THE SPIRIT OF WRITING: CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS CELEBRATING THE WRITING LIFE and MAYHEM IN THE MIDLANDS. |
A Woman's Triumphant Valor. Delicious Language. Award Winning Novel.
