Author Spotlight: April Henry

About April Henry: 
I write mysteries and thrillers. I live in Portland, Oregon with my family.

If you've read one of my books, I would love to hear from you. Hearing from readers makes me eager to keep writing.

When I was 12, I sent a short story about a six-foot tall frog who loved peanut butter to Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He liked it so much he arranged to have it published in an international children's magazine.

My dream of writing went dormant until I was in my 30s, working at a corporate job, and started writing books on the side. Those first few years are now thankfully a blur. Now I'm very lucky to make a living doing what I love. I have written 20 novels for adults and teens, with more on the way. My books have gotten starred reviews, been picked for Booksense, translated into six languages, been named to state reading lists, and won the Oregon Book Award. 

Newest Book: A killer is on the loose, and only one girl has the power to find him. But in this genre-bending YA thriller, she must first manage to avoid becoming a target herself.

For Adele, the dead aren’t really dead. She can see them and even talk to them. But she’s spent years denying her gift. When she encounters her ex best friend Tori in a shallow grave in the woods and realizes that Tori is actually dead -- that gift turns into a curse. Without an alibi, Adele becomes the prime suspect in Tori’s murder. She must work with Tori’s ghost to find the real killer. But what if the killer finds Adele first?

This book comes out tomorrow!

Author Research:
What would you do for research? April Henry takes a hands on approach to her research.
Here are just some of things she's done for her books:

• Taken out everything from under the kitchen sink and crawled under it to prove to the copy editor that you could so fit a dead body under there.  
• Taken a knife throwing class
• Taken a knife fighting class
• Taken a class on how to respond to an active shooter situation. 
• Taken classes with Multnomah County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue. 
• Was the first novelist to attend the Urban Escape and Evasion class, where I learned how to get out of duct tape, rope, zip ties and handcuffs as well as a million other useful things. 
• Spent a day with Portland police criminologists.  

That's dedication to your craft!

She comes from a long line of criminals - check out the family stories here.

Up Next: I'm already looking forward to her next book coming out August 2019. Check out the tagline: What if the high-stakes drama of Die Hard met the varied cast of Breakfast Club? Doesn't that sound good?