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CAITLIN ROTHER
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Rother will be teaching "Making Scenes Come Alive" at UCSD Extension this summer and "Writer's Art of Interviewing" this fall. To check out course descriptions, click here.
CAITLIN ROTHER
crother@flash.net Rother has authored five books, both fiction and non-fiction, co-authored a sixth, and has several more in the pipeline.
A Pulitzer Prize nominee, Rother worked for 19 years as an investigative reporter for daily newspapers, and has made dozens of TV and radio appearances as a crime expert. She speaks to professional groups, works as an editorial consultant/book doctor, and teaches narrative non-fiction, interviewing, feature writing and creative writing at UCSD Extension in San Diego, where she lives. She draws from her years of experience reporting on a wide range of topics -- from addiction, suicide, mental illness and murder to politics and corruption at City Hall and in Congress.
Rother just forged a deal with Kensington/Pinnacle to release her upcoming book on the John Gardner rape and murder of beloved teenagers Chelsea King and Amber Dubois in San Diego County: THE MAKINGS OF A MONSTER. Rother's next book, DEAD RECKONING, will be out in February.
"We've finally found the next Ann Rule! Caitlin Rother writes with heart and suspense. DEAD RECKONING is a chilling read by a writer at the top of her game."
-- Gregg Olsen, author of "A Twisted Faith"
BODY PARTS is the true story of serial killer Wayne Adam Ford, a long-haul trucker who was convicted of killing four women -- and dismembering two of them -- in four California counties. He was sentenced in 2007 and is now sitting on Death Row in San Quentin state prison. Rother will offer a comprehensive look at the case, which took eight years to get to trial, and reveal new and exclusive details about Ford and his family. (Kensington/Pinnacle, March 2009)
"As with all of her nonfiction, Caitlin Rother delivers page-turning excitement and blood curdling terror once again with BODY PARTS, yet her skill screams loudest in covering the details of murder--sometimes the most ghastly crimes imaginable. Using a reporter's edge, novelist's eye, and a crime-scene investigator's nose for evidence, Rother's latest is all at once riveting, unbelievable, fast-paced, and sure to keep you up at night wondering how evil seems to top itself time and again."
-- M. William Phelps, author of "I'll Be Watching You"
TWISTED TRIANGLE: A Famous Crime Writer, a Lesbian Love Affair, and the FBI Husband's Violent Revenge is the crazy but factual account of a kidnapping, an attempted murder and a love triangle involving two married FBI agents, Margo and Gene Bennett, and crime novelist Patricia Cornwell. This story made national headlines when it broke in 1996, but Rother is the first writer to tell Margo's exclusive story. (Wiley/Jossey-Bass, April 2008. Now out in paperback.)
"Hitchcock wishes he'd dreamed it up. Capote wishes he'd written it. Rother's mesmerizing narrative chronicles a wife's heroic struggle against great odds to survive her psychopath husband's elaborate scheme to make her murder the perfect crime. This spellbinding tale offers an added treat -- it's true." -- Marcus Stern, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-author of "The Wrong Stuff"
"Hitchcock wishes he'd dreamed it up. Capote wishes he'd written it. Rother's mesmerizing narrative chronicles a wife's heroic struggle against great odds to survive her psychopath husband's elaborate scheme to make her murder the perfect crime. This spellbinding tale offers an added treat -- it's true." -- Marcus Stern, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-author of "The Wrong Stuff"
WHERE HOPE BEGINS: One Family's Journey Out of Tragedy and the Reporter Who Helped Them Make It -- TV reporter Alysia Sofios risked her entire career to help the surviving female members of the Marcus Wesson family recover from a cult-like life of polygamy, incest, abuse -- and the mass murder of their nine children. Together, they helped each other grow and bond into a new resilient family with a hopeful future. (Simon & Schuster, September 2009)
NAKED ADDICTION -- a fictional tale of sex, drugs and police detective Ken Goode's investigation into the murder of young beauty school students in two San Diego beach communities -- is Rother's first thriller. (Dorchester, Nov. 2007)
"With a journalist's eye for the telling details of life, Caitlin Rother is a keen architect of the most important part of storytelling: character. The people in her prose grip you tightly with their truth." -- Michael Connelly, Edgar-winner and NYT best-selling crime novelist
Buy at Mysterious Galaxy
POISONED LOVE is the true story of Kristin Rossum, an attractive and talented toxicologist convicted of poisoning her husband with drugs she stole from her lab at the San Diego County Medical Examiner?s Office. Rossum, who had been having an affair with her married boss, claimed her husband Greg de Villers had sprinkled red rose petals over his own body and then committed suicide because she was leaving him. (Kensington/Pinnacle, 2005, now in its seventh printing.)
"A true-crime thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat... a brilliant job of captivating the inner workings of a female killer." -- Aphrodite Jones, New York Times . best-selling crime author.