Mystery /crime writer Stephen Mack Jones has won a 2022 Michigan Notable Book Award, and will be presenting his latest book Dead of Winter (new in paperback) at the Oak Park Public Library on Tuesday, May 24 at 6 pm. The Oak Park Library is located at 14200 Oak Park Blvd, just off Coolidge in Oak Park. Books will be provided for sale by Book Beat. Please call (248) 968-1190 for more information.
Stephen Mack Jones is the author of three award winning mystery-crime novels featuring ex-cop and detective August Snow, a beloved African-American-Mexican foodie, crime buster, millionaire, and community anti-hero from Detroit’s South side.
“Like Walter Mosley and Joe Ide, Jones builds a raucous and endearing cast of characters from his inner-city setting, fusing neighborhood camaraderie with streetwise know-how and head-banging action. This is a fine thriller in the grand hard-boiled tradition, but it’s also a sensitive, multifaceted portrait of race in America.”
—Booklist, Starred Review
“Readers should be prepared for a surfeit of foul-mouthed dialogue and a massive body count as the action builds to a violent lakeside showdown and troubling but conclusive revelations. Snow remains a distinctive lead capable of sustaining a long series.”
—Publishers Weekly
Stephen Mack Jones is a published poet, an award-winning playwright, and a recipient of the prestigious Hammett Prize, Nero Award, and the Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellowship. He was born in Lansing, Michigan, and currently lives in the suburbs of Detroit. Dead of Winter is his third novel.
In some ways, I’m the product of a home like August was raised in. My father was a hard-working blue-collar man who’d quit school in the 10th grade so he could work and contribute to his family–his mom and dad, brothers and sister. He never graduated from high school, but he was always a reader–everything for Carl Sandburg to Langston Hughes, to Shakespeare, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Studs Turkel.
My mom had a bit of college and a love of opera. She had a beautiful voice! She’d sing arias from Turandot, Carmen, or Tosca while ironing my dad’s work blues of cooking the Sunday beef roast. Both of my parents made sure my brother and I took reading and education seriously. In fact, they saw no difference between the two.
So, like August, I’ve had heroes in my life–my mom and dad–who lived everyday, quietly heroic lives in order to raise children above their own origin stories.
As to charting my so-called “career path,” let’s just say you could probably give a 2-year-old a fistful of candy, a crayon, and a blank sheet of paper, and they’d ending up charting my career path with 99 percent accuracy! Thirty years in advertising and marketing communications with stops at play-writing, poetry, selling Buicks, and making sandwiches.
–Stephen Mack Jones, from an interview at Lemuria Books
