Authors

Festival Authors

Announcing the authors for Montréal Mystery / Montréal Mystère 2026!

Guest of Honour: Kathy Reichs

Faye Arcand
Chloé Archambault
Nicole Blades
Jean Brassard
Chrystine Brouillet
May Cobb
Angela Douglas
Laurie L. Dove
Helen Faradji
Alex Finlay
Eric Forbes
Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau

Eva Jurczyk
Catherine Lafrance
Jean Lemieux
Nicole Lundrigan
Catherine Mack
Bianca Marais
Rick Mofina
Guillaume Morrissette
Jinwoo Park
Greg Wands
Ashley Winstead
Olivia Worley

Presenting in English

Photo: Marie-Reine Mattera

Kathy Reichs, Guest of Honour
Kathy Reichs’s first novel, Déjà Dead, catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Dr. Reichs was also a producer of the hit Fox TV series, Bones, which is based on her work and her novels. Her latest Temperance Brennan book is Evil Bones.

From teaching FBI agents how to detect and recover human remains, to separating and identifying commingled body parts in her Montreal lab, as a forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs has brought her own dramatic work experience to her mesmerizing forensic thrillers. For years she consulted to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and to the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Québec.

Dr. Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. at Northwestern. She now
divides her time between Charlotte, NC and Montreal, Québec.

Faye Arcand
Faye Arcand is an award-winning author who embraces the gritty reality in characters and situations. She writes contemporary domestic suspense and thrillers. Arcand worked for several years within the Canadian criminal justice system, witnessing and experiencing what most do not. As an author, Arcand doesn’t question the motivation or direction of her muse, she just knows everyone has a story worth telling. While not writing or eavesdropping, she enjoys a purring cat, quality chocolate and ‘reality’ television. Arcand lives somewhere in the wilds of British Columbia.

Nicole Blades
Nicole Blades is a novelist and journalist with nearly two decades of experience in the media industry. Her cover stories and features have been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Runner’s World, Women's Health, and more. Her novels often focus on the façade and filters people put on to face the world. Would I Lie to You?, Nicole’s debut domestic thriller, joins her previous novels, Have You Met Nora?, The Thunder Beneath Us, and Earth's Waters. A proud Caribbean-Canadian, Nicole currently lives in New England with her husband and their son.

Jean Brassard
Recipient of an Earphones Award and included on Audiofiles magazine's "Best of 2024" list for his narration of Louise Penny's novel The Grey Wolf, Jean has read over 80 audiobooks in English and French, including the 2018 Prix Goncourt winner And Their Children After Them by Nicolas Mathieu, Emmanuel Macron's Revolution, thrillers by James Paterson, Eric Dupont's international saga The American Fiancée, and the gothic novel The Werewolf of Paris.

On screen, he can be seen in Paul Schrader's film Oh, Canada, Ari Selinger's On the End, and soon in the series The Artist on The Network. Jean has also appeared in several HBO television series, such as The Staircase and John Adams; CBS's MacGyver; NBC's The Blacklist; and many more. The New York Times praised his stage presence in Manhattan, among other places, for his performance as the Ambassador in the play Film Chinois at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre and Theater Pizzaz for The Lears.

He was honored with the Bistro and Aggie awards from the New York cabaret scene for Le gamin de Paris – Jean Brassard chante Montand, with whom he toured the United States, Canada, and Europe. He is, of course, very well known in the wrestling world for his commentary on WWE alongside his colleague Raymond Rougeau.

May Cobb
May Cobb is the bestselling author of The Hunting Wives, a series currently available on Netflix, as well as All The Little Houses, The Hollywood Assistant, My Summer Darlings, A Likeable Woman, and Big Woods. Her books have received attention from Book of The Month, The Today Show, O, The Oprah Magazine, and more. She has an M.A. from San Francisco State University and her essays and interviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Texas Highways, and more. She lives in Austin with her family where she has a love/hate relationship with the summer heat.

Angela Douglas
Angela Douglas is an award-winning Canadian author who lives in the Okanagan region of BC with her husband and kids. Her debut novel and psychological thriller, EVERY FALL, was published in January 2025 and was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence award in two categories: Suspense and Cross-Genre. She is a member of International Thriller Writers, Crime Writers of Canada, the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and Sisters in Crime. She is also the founder of Eyes on Books, a book marketing community. When she isn’t working or hanging out with her family, she hides in her studio, writing her next book.

Laurie L. Dove
Angela Douglas is an award-winning Canadian author who lives in the Okanagan region of BC with her husband and kids. Her debut novel and psychological thriller, EVERY FALL, was published in January 2025 and was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence award in two categories: Suspense and Cross-Genre. She is a member of International Thriller Writers, Crime Writers of Canada, the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and Sisters in Crime. She is also the founder of Eyes on Books, a book marketing community. When she isn’t working or hanging out with her family, she hides in her studio, writing her next book.

Alex Finlay
Alex Finlay is the bestselling author of several acclaimed novels, including the 2025
instant national bestseller, Parents Weekend. Alex’s novels are regularly on best of the
year lists and have been translated into twenty-five languages and sold around the
world. All of Alex’s books have been optioned or in development for film and television,
including Parents Weekend, which Hollywood recently scooped up for adaption to the
screen. His next novel, The Anniversary, arrives in stores on May 12, 2026. Alex lives in Washington, DC.

Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau
Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau is a bilingual French author based in the U.S. She has previously published novels and nonfiction books for teens, which have been translated into over twelve languages. The French Honeymoon is her debut adult novel. After graduating university in France, she moved to Amsterdam to begin a career in advertising. She then spent a few years in Melbourne before settling in New York City, where she lives with her French-Australian-American family, two gorgeous cats, and a whole lot of passports. Find her on social media @asjouhanneau.

Photo: Jenna-Marie Wakani

Eva Jurczyk
Eva Jurczyk was born in Poland and wound up halfway around the world in a Canadian city that often masquerades as New York in the movies. As her day job, she buys books, building library collections for the University of Toronto Libraries, and by night she writes mystery novels. Her previous work includes the best-selling The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, and That Night In the Library. Her latest novel, 6:40 to Montreal was a Barnes & Noble Monthly Pick and a USA Today Best Seller. The highly anticipated The Paris Files will be published in late 2026. She lives in Toronto with her husband and son.

Nicole Lundrigan
Nicole Lundrigan is a national bestselling author, and has been twice-nominated for the Crime Writers of Canada’s Best Crime Novel award. Her work has appeared on “best of” selections from The Globe and Mail, Amazon, Chatelaine, NOW Magazine, and others. The Case Study, her tenth novel, will be released in May 2026.

Photo: Fany Ducharme

Catherine Mack
CATHERINE MACK (she/her) is the pseudonym for the USA Today and Globe & Mail bestselling author Catherine McKenzie. Her books are approaching two million copies sold worldwide and have been translated into multiple languages. Television rights to Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies and its sequels sold in a major auction to Fox TV for development into a series. A dual Canadian and US citizen, she splits her time between Canada and various warmer locations in the United States.

Bianca Marais
Bianca Marais is a USA Today bestselling author who cohosts the popular podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing which is aimed at helping emerging writers get published. She teaches creative writing through the podcast and was named a winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she loves playing escape-room games and writing about strong female protagonists.

Rick Mofina
RICK MOFINA is a USA TODAY, Globe and Mail, and Toronto Star bestselling author of more than thirty crime fiction thrillers that have been published in nearly thirty countries. A former journalist, he has interviewed murderers on death row, flown over Los Angeles with the LAPD and patrolled with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police near the Arctic. He has also reported from the Caribbean, Africa, Kuwait and Qatar. He is a two-time winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence, a Barry Award winner, and a multiple finalist for the International Thriller Writers Awards and the Shamus Award, presented by the Private Eye Writers of America. Library Journal calls him “one of the best thriller writers in the business.”

Jinwoo Park
Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He obtained his master’s in creative writing at the University of Oxford in 2015. In 2021 he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers’ Award for his first manuscript, Oxford Soju Club, which was published in September 2025. He has also been actively working as a literary translator after winning the Emerging Translator Award from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea in 2023.

Greg Wands
Greg Wands is the internationally bestselling co-author, along with Elizabeth Keenan, of three thriller novels under the pen name E.G. Scott, the first of which was optioned for television. Their books have been translated into a dozen languages and their latest title, Trust Issues, is out from Dutton Books. Greg also co-wrote the audio novella, The Gimlet Slip, with Fiona Davis. He spends his days between New York City and Westchester County and is at work on a solo novel.

Photo: Luis Noble

Ashley Winstead
Ashley Winstead is the national bestselling author of This Book Will Bury Me, Midnight is the Darkest Hour, The Last Housewife, In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, The Boyfriend Candidate, and Fool Me Once. Her books have been Library Read picks, Loan Star picks, Best of Amazon picks, Best of Apple Books picks, and have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage, and Library Journal.

Her work has been covered by New York Times, Washington Post, CrimeReads, Parade, Cosmopolitan, Good Morning America, Good Housekeeping, Seattle Times, and Southern Review of Fiction, among others. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages worldwide and optioned for television. Ashley holds a Ph.D. in contemporary American literature and lives in Houston.

Olivia Worley
Olivia Worley is an author born and raised in New Orleans. A graduate of Northwestern University, she now lives in New York City, where she spends her time writing thrillers, over-analyzing episodes of The Bachelor, and hoping someone will romanticize her for reading on the subway. She is the author of SO HAPPY TOGETHER, and her next thriller, MAN OF MY DREAMS, will be published by Minotaur Books in June 2026. Her young adult thrillers include PEOPLE TO FOLLOW, THE DEBUTANTES, and FINAL CUT.

Presenting in French

Photo: Julia Marois

Chloé Archambault
Montrealer CHLOÉ ARCHAMBAULT is passionate about reading and writing. She studied English literature and art history at McGill University, then went on to law school. In 1995, she sold a script for a short film and disappeared into the legal world. She left it twenty-five years later and returned to writing. Francophone but perfectly bilingual, Chloé writes, in French and English, spy stories where the visual is omnipresent, the preponderance of the image being a distinctive facet of her writing style. Her novels are, to date, largely set in Montreal. Her novel Alias Nina P. earned her the Jacques-Mayer Prize for Best First Crime Novel: Saint-Pacôme Crime Writers’ Society, 2025. Her next novel, L’atout, will be published in 2026.

Photo: Melany Bernier

Chrystine Brouillet
Chrystine Brouillet was born in Québec City in 1958 and won the Robert-Cliche prize in 1982 for her first novel, Chère voisine (“Dear Neighbour”). She then created the character of Maud Graham, who leads police investigations in Quebec City. Twenty-two titles feature this famous detective. Chrystine Brouillet also wrote a historical trilogy, Marie Laflamme, novels for youth and various other works where gastronomy plays a role, such as Chambre 1002 (“Room 1002”) and Couleur champagne (“Champagne Colour”), as well as guides on Paris, where she lived for 13 years. Her novel Le Collectionneur (“The Collector”) was brought to the screen by Jean Beaudin, and Chère voisine as well, adapted by Jacob Tierney as Good Neighbours. She now lives in Montreal and collaborates on the TV show Salut Bonjour as a literary critic, and on the radio show Il restera toujours la culture on Radio-Canada.

Photo: Julia Marois

Helen Faradji
Born in Strasbourg, Helen Faradji has lived in Quebec since 1999. She is a film critic and columnist, notably for Radio-Canada. She is also the programming director of the Quebec City Film Festival. La Corde blanche (The White Rope) is her first novel.

Photo: Charlie Marois

Eric Forbes
Éric Forbes grew up in the town of Amqui, Quebec and now lives in Montreal. For his book Amqui, he received the Jacques Mayer Award for Best First Crime Fiction. Le fugitif, le flic et Bill Ballantine (The Fugitive, the Cop, and Bill Ballantine) is his second novel.

Photo: Antidote

Catherine Lafrance
Catherine Lafrance was born in Montreal, but her work as a journalist led her to live for a time in Toronto, Ottawa, and even Yellowknife. She worked as a journalist for over 30 years, primarily at Radio-Canada.

In parallel, she became a writer, specializing in crime fiction. To date, she has written six novels and contributed to three short story collections. She is also a screenwriter, having co-written a series broadcast on several channels and a streaming platform. Today, she writes full-time. Her next crime novel is expected to be published in the spring of 2026.

Jean Lemieux
Jean Lemieux was born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in 1954 and has lived in Quebec City since 1994. A physician, he has published some twenty novels in which he explores themes of the search for identity, family ties, and the precariousness of love.

His books have earned him numerous awards, including the France/Quebec Prize for On finit toujours par payer (We Always End Up Paying), which was adapted for the screen, the Brive/Montreal 12-17 Prize, and the Christie Prize for Le Trésor de Brion (The Treasure of Brion), as well as two Arthur Ellis Awards.

Among his most recent titles is La Dame de la rue des Messieurs (The Lady of Gentlemen's Street) (2022) and L’Affaire des Montants (The Amounts Case) (2024), which won the 2025 Saint-Pacôme Prize for Crime Fiction. The ninth title in the Surprising series, Un monde sans dieux (A World Without Gods), will be published in April 2026. His crime novels have been adapted into the television series Surprising Detective. Jean Lemieux's works have been translated into English, Spanish, and German. Website: www.jeanlemieux.com.

Guillaume Morrissette
Guillaume Morrissette, born in Hull, Quebec, on October 2, 1975, is a Canadian polymath from the province of Quebec and author of critically acclaimed crime novels. In addition to being a musician, screenwriter, lecturer, consultant, entrepreneur, and teacher, he actively advocates for the acceptance of giftedness in children.