Sharyn McCrumb is an internationally acclaimed New York Times bestselling author whose work has been honored with all five of the major awards in crime fiction (Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and Nero)—and two Best Appalachian Novel awards. She is the creator of the Ballad Novel series, which began with If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O. The most recent installment in her satirical mystery series featuring forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson is If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him . . . . She is also the author of the short story collection Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

Ms. McCrumb lives in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband, David, and their two younger children, less than a hundred miles from the Smoky Mountain valley where her ancestors settled in 1790.