Michael Kurland

A plump, middle-aged man with greying hair and mild, hazel eyes looking out from behind wire-rim glasses, Author Michael Kurland has the perpetually nervous look of a rabbit invited to lunch at the Lions' Club. He has been a teacher of obscure subjects to disinterested children, the editor of a magazine even more idiosyncratic than himself, a seeker of absent persons, a magical explainer, and guest lecturer at numerous unrelated events. But he has never wandered far from his chosen profession of scrivener for very long, since he finds the fawning idolatry of his fans a useful counterbalance to the disinterest of landlords and the disapproval of bank managers.

In Kurland's over 30 books he has romped through a variety of fields. His non-fiction works cover topics as diverse as forensic science, criminal law, espionage, amateur radio, and the history of crime in America, and have been selections of the Military Book Club, the Readers' Digest Book Club and the Writers' Digest Book Club, among others.

Among the fiction works in print at the moment are Ten Little Wizards and A Study in Sorcery, tales set in Randall Garrett's Angevin Empire, where Richard the Lion Hearted survived his crossbow wound, the Plantagenets are still on the throne, and magic works. The Princes of Earth, a Literary Guild Young Adult Book Club selection, is available as part of a Wildside Press double volume, the other half being Richard Lupoff's delightful werewolf novel, Lisa Kane.

Nonfiction books currently available are Irrefutable Evidence: Adventures in the History of Forensic Science and How to Solve a Murder: the Forensic Handbook.

Kurland has written a dozen or so science fiction novels which will shortly be in print again, notably Perchance, and The Unicorn Girl, which was nominated for a Hugo. He now writes mysteries, including A Plague of Spies, which was nominated for an Edgar, and Too Soon Dead and The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes, set in the 1930s and chronicling the mystery-solving talents of Alexander Brass, a columnist for the New York World.

The Infernal Device a Professor Moriarty novel was nominated for both an Edgar and an American Book award. The novels featuring Professor Moriarty now include Death By Gaslight, The Great Game, The Empress of India, and the forthcoming Who Thinks Evil.

A couple of his books, notably The Last President, and Button Bright fit tenuously into that nondescript category known as "mainstream."

His works have been translated into Czech, Chinese, French German, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Portugese, Spanish, Swedish, and some alphabet full of hooks and buckets that he can’t make out.