In-Person: Clean Kill by Anne Laughlin

For this event, Anne will be joined in conversation by Claudine Guertin-Ceric.

Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required. By registering, you agree to wear a face mask throughout the duration of this event, per W&CF's Covid-19 policies.

Nicky Sullivan is the resident manager of a sober living home in Chicago. There she rides herd on ten newly sober addicts and alcoholics, trying to point them in the right direction while keeping their chaos to a minimum. But when one of her residents is murdered, Nicky turns to the investigative skills honed during her past career as a homicide detective. She calls on her old police partner who has been assigned the murder investigation along with his new partner, a woman beautiful enough to give Nicky pause. The body count starts to mount as it becomes clear a serial killer is at work, targeting newly relapsed women, all of whom have some connection to Nicky. Each death makes her feel she's wielded the knife herself. In the midst of the tragedy, she finds herself falling in love.

With the lives of fragile women in the balance, Nicky finds her own sobriety threatened. Can Nicky save her lover and find the killer? How many others must die before she does?

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Anne Laughlin is the author of seven crime fiction novels. Four of her books won Goldie Awards and she's been short-listed three times for a Lambda Literary Award. In 2022 she was awarded the Alice B. Medal for excellence in lesbian fiction. She has attended residencies at Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, and others and in 2008 and 2014 she was asked to attend the Lambda Literary retreat. Her short stories have appeared in many anthologies and her story It Only Occurred to Me Later was a finalist in the Saints & Sinners Short Fiction contest. When not writing, Anne reviews books for the Lambda Literary Review and the Gay & Lesbian Review and contributes to columns on queer crime writing at CrimeReads. She lives in Chicago with her wife, Linda.

Claudine Guertin-Ceric is a Chicago-based fiction writer and volunteer critic for Pencilhouse, a nonprofit organization that supports the literary community by providing writers with high-quality feedback on their work. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Her writing has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Zero Readers, The Digital Americana and other journals. Her author interviews have appeared in the Chicago Review of Books. You can connect with her or learn more at claudineguertinceric.com.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.