Elizabeth Peters (Author)
Elizabeth Peters is a pen name of Barbara Mertz, who earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago's famed Oriental Institute. Over the course of her fifty-year career she wrote more than seventy mystery and suspense novels, and three nonfiction books on Egypt. She was the recipient of numerous writing awards, including grandmaster and lifetime achievement awards from the Mystery Writers of America, Malice Domestic, and Bouchercon. In 2012 she was given the first Amelia Peabody Award, created in her honor, at the Malice Domestic convention. She died in 2013, leaving a partially completed manuscript of The Painted Queen.

Joan Hess (Author)
Joan Hess is the author of the Claire Malloy Mysteries and the Arly Hanks Mysteries, formally known as the Maggody Mysteries. She is a winner of the American Mystery Award, the Agatha Award, for which she has been nominated five times, and is a member of Sisters in Crime and a former president of the American Crime Writers League. She lives in Austin, Texas.