With her Art Center Mystery book trilogy now complete, retired English and Speech teacher and local author Susan Van Kirk’s third book in the series, ‘Death in a Ghostly Hue,’ has been nominated for the 2025 Anthony Award for Best Paranormal Mystery:

“Bouchercon is the conference in New Orleans, and it has been named for Anthony Boucher, who was a writer and a critic. The awards they give out are the Anthony Awards. People generally think these awards are voted on by all the readers, but they are not. They are voted on by the people that go to the conference. Last year, 1,500 people were at this conference and they voted for all of the 2024 books that had been traditionally published in different areas. My book would have been in the cozy list of 80 to 90 books, but it was also in the paranormal list of about 20 books. Then, people last year voted again to narrow that down to five books, so I am up against four other books in the paranormal.”
Van Kirk is currently working on her eleventh book called ‘Fabric of Lies,’ which is next in line of her Endurance Mystery Series.