April Henry

About April

I grew up in a small Oregon town, and I still remember my mom teaching me with alphabet flash cards. White with a picture of an object on one side and a letter on the other, those cards glowed with magic.

When I was 12, I sent Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a short story about a frog named Herman who loved peanut butter. The day he received it, Dahl had lunch with the editor of an international children's magazine and read her the story. She contacted me and asked to publish it. Click here to read more about it.

But as I got older, even though I read all the time, I didn't even dream of being a writer. It would have been like thinking I could fly by flapping my arms really, really hard. Then I got a hospital job with lots of down time and started thinking maybe I could try to write a book about the life and death that surrounded me every day.

That first book I wrote attracted no interest from agents. My second book got me an agent (and we're still together many years and many books later) and nice rejection letters from editors. My third book didn't even get nice rejection letters from editors. My fourth book sold in two days. It was a seven-year overnight success.

April Henry

Since then, I've written more than a dozen mysteries and thrillers for teens and adults. The first in the Triple Threat Club series, co-written with Lis Wiehl, was on the New York Times bestseller list for four weeks. It was followed by Hand of Fate and Heart of Ice.

My first young adult novel, Shock Point was an ALA Quick Pick, a Top 10 Books for Teens nominee, a New York Library's Books for the Teen Age book, named to the Texas Tayshas list, and a finalist for Philadelphia's Young Readers Choice Award. It was followed by two more teen thrillers: Torched and Girl, Stolen. Girl, Stolen was an ALA Quick Pick and an ALA Best Books for Young Adults and is a finalist for many state awards.

My books have been short-listed for the Agatha Award, the Anthony Award, and the Oregon Book Award, and chosen twice for Booksense by the independent booksellers of America. They have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, German, Polish, French and Turkish.

Look for two new books 2012. In April, the fourth Triple Threat Club mystery, Eyes of Justice, will be out. And also in April, look for my new thriller for teens, The Night She Disappeared, about a pizza delivery girl who goes out to make a delivery and doesn't come back.





Contact April

E-mail me at april@aprilhenrymysteries.com.






Fun facts about April:

  • I buy nearly all my clothes on e-Bay.
  • I can't parallel park.
  • My maternal great-grandfather was part of an arson gang.
  • My paternal great-grandfather gunned down my grandmother's boyfriend for kissing her. (A long-hidden family secret I uncovered just two years ago and that will probably make its way into a book.)
  • I took kajukenbo for two years and am now taking kung fu.
  • I speak German (slowly and with mistakes). And I know some sign language.
  • I'm pretty sure no one noticed me in high school.
  • I can make a cloverleaf shape with my tongue. It's supposed to be some rare genetic trait. When my kid showed me she could do it, I tried and tried until I could too.
cloverleaf tounge