Cleo Coyle is the pen name for American mystery writers Alice Alfonsi in collaboration with her husband Marc Cerasini, best-known for the '' Coffeehouse Mysteries'' ( Berkley Prime Crime), a series of cozy mysteries set in and around a fictional coffeehouse in the

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

neighborhood of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Biography

Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini both grew up with

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

parents in working-class neighborhoods of

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

. Alfonsi graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Cerasini graduated from

Ohio University Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subseq ...

in Athens, Ohio. In New York, Alfonsi worked as a journalist and book author; Cerasini as a magazine editor, literary critic and fiction and nonfiction author. The couple met in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and married at the Little Church of the West in

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

. They live in New York City. Alfonsi was the

ghostwriter A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often ...

for ''

Hidden Passions ''Hidden Passions: Secrets from the Diaries of Tabitha Lenox'' is a tie-in novelization released by HarperEntertainment in 2001, loosely based on the NBC soap opera, ''Passions''. It delved into the backstories of several prominent characters on ...

'', a novelization of the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

Passions ''Passions'' is an American television soap opera that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1999, to September 7, 2007, and on DirecTV's The 101 Network from September 17, 2007, to August 7, 2008. Created by screenwriter James E. Reilly and ...

'', which spent seven weeks on the 2001 ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' hardcover fiction bestsellers list. Cerasini has written four novels in the '' 24: Declassified'' series of original

Jack Bauer Jack Bauer is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Fox television series '' 24''. His character has worked in various capacities on the show, often as a federal agent of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) based in Los Angeles, and w ...

adventures based on the Fox TV series '' 24''. He also wrote two original novels for

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is an American comic book publishing, publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Co ...

featuring

Wolverine The wolverine (), (''Gulo gulo''; ''Gulo'' is Latin for " glutton"), also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, or quickhatch (from East Cree, ''kwiihkwahaacheew''), is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is a muscul ...

. His nonfiction includes ''The Future of War: The Face of 21st Century Warfare'' (

Alpha Books Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Random House, is an American publisher best known for its Complete Idiot's Guides series. It began as a division of Macmillan. Pearson Education acquired Macmillan General Reference from Simon & Schuster in 1999 ...

, 2003). Among their co-authored projects are the Haunted Bookshop mysteries (

Penguin Group Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initi ...

), originally written under the pen name Alice Kimberly and later published under their Cleo Coyle name.Cozy Library profiles, Alice Kimberly/Cleo Coyle
/ref> The paranormal cozy mystery series is set in and around an independent bookstore in

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...

, and features the ghost of a

hardboiled Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...

PI from the 1940s who helps the modern-day bookshop owner solve crimes.

Novels

The Coffeehouse Mystery Series

*''On What Grounds'' (2003, ) *''Through the Grinder'' (2004, ) *''Latte Trouble'' (2005, ) *''Murder Most Frothy'' (2006, ) *''Decaffeinated Corpse'' (2007, ) *''French Pressed'' (2008, ) *''Espresso Shot'' (2008, ) *''Holiday Grind'' (2009, ) *''Roast Mortem'' (2010, ) *''Murder by Mocha'' (2011, ) *''A Brew to a Kill'' (August 2012, ) *''Holiday Buzz'' (November 2012, ) *''Billionaire Blend'' (December, 2013, ) *''Once Upon a Grind'' (December, 2014, ) *''Dead to the Last Drop'' (December, 2015, ) *''Dead Cold Brew'' (January, 2017, ) *''Shot In the Dark'' (April, 2018, ) *''Brewed Awakening'' (December 2019, ) *''Honey Roasted'' (January 2022, )

The Haunted Bookshop Mystery Series

*''The Ghost and Mrs. McClure'' *''The Ghost and the Dead Deb'' *''The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library'' *''The Ghost and the Femme Fatale'' *''The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion'' *''The Ghost and the Bogus Bestseller'' *''The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait'' *''The Ghost and the Stolen Tears'' *''The Ghost Goes to the Dogs''

Citations

External links

Official website''Gumshoe Review'' interview with Alice AlfonsiHarperCollins bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coyle, Cleo 21st-century American novelists Writers from Pittsburgh American mystery writers American women novelists Women mystery writers 21st-century American women writers Novelists from Pennsylvania