Kelli Stanley is an award-winning author of crime fiction (novels and short stories). She makes her home in Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco, a city she loves to write about. Kelli earned a Master's Degree in Classics, loves jazz, classic films, battered fedoras and speakeasies.

Kelli’s second novel CITY OF DRAGONS will be released by Thomas Dunne/Minotaur on February 2, 2010. Next Valentine's Day, you'll leave more than your heart behind in 1940 San Francisco ...

February, 1940. In San Francisco's Chinatown, fireworks explode as the city celebrates Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party, a three day-and-night carnival designed to raise money and support for China war relief.

Stuck in the crowd, Miranda Corbie, 33-year old private investigator, stumbles upon the fatally shot body of Eddie Takahashi. The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up. The cops acquiesce. All Miranda wants is justice--whatever it costs.

From Chinatown tenements, to a tattered tailor's shop in Little Osaka, to a high-class bordello draped in Southern Gothic, she shakes down the city--her city--seeking the truth.

"Children's Day", a short-story prequel to CITY OF DRAGONS, is included in the upcoming International Thriller Writers anthology FIRST THRILLS: HIGH-OCTANE STORIES FROM THE HOTTEST THRILLER AUTHORS, edited by Lee Child and releasing June 22, 2010 from Tor/Forge.

Kelli Stanley's debut novel, NOX DORMIENDA (A Long Night for Sleeping), won the Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award (March, 2009), and was nominated for a Macavity Award (Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery, May, 2009).

NOX DORMIENDA marks the first of a new series and a new genre: Roman Noir. The City and County of San Francisco awarded Kelli a Certificate of Honor for her creation of the new subgenre, which combines a classic noir style with the rich texture of the ancient past.

CURSED, the sequel to NOX DORMIENDA, will be published in 2011 by Thomas Dunne/Minotaur.

For more information about Kelli and her writing, visit her website, follow her blog Writing in the Dark, or find her on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads or Red Room.