JOE AVERY (The Twenty-Year Death)
Since studying both fine art and illustration, Joe Avery has worked in a range of media and styles as an illustrator for various magazines and newspapers as well as contributing to art exhibitions and journals. He was selected for the BP Portrait Prize and shortlisted for the BP Travel Award in 2006. Avery’s first foray into the world of pulp cover art was with the ironic The Reprisalizer and Draw. In addition to illustration work, Joe works as photorealist painter for Damien Hirst.

TERRY BEATTY (Deadly Beloved)
Illustrator and sculptor Terry Beatty is, together with Max Allan Collins, one of the co-creators of 'Ms. Tree,' the star not only of the Hard Case Crime novel Deadly Beloved but also of the longest-running series of private eye comics in comics history. Beatty’s work has also graced numerous other comics, including Batman, and has appeared in magazines such as Scary Monsters. He previously worked with Max Allan Collins on Johnny Dynamite and on Mickey Spillane’s Mike Danger.

LAUREL BLECHMAN (Quarry In The Black, Turn On the Heat, The Last Stand, Shills Can't Cash Chips)
Laurel Blechman is an acclaimed painter and art instructor based in California. Her work has graced the covers of numerous books, comics, and graphic novels. Influences she cites include Aubrey Beardsley and Alphonse Mucha, as well as paperback illustrators such as James Bama. She frequently collaborated with Hard Case Crime cover painter Glen Orbik, with whom she lived until his death in 2015.

CLAUDIA CARANFA (Five Decembers, The Next Time I Die, The Hot Beat, Nobody's Angel)
Claudia Caranfa is a traditional and digital artist born and based in Italy. Her work has graced the covers of numerous books, comic books and graphic novels including THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, MS. TREE, BLADE RUNNER 2029, VIKINGS, TORCHWOOD and DR. WHO.

JOE DEVITO (Gun Work)
Joe DeVito has worked as a professional illustrator for more than 24 years, painting covers for books by hundreds of authors including Robert Bloch, Piers Anthony, and Robert Heinlein, as well as comic book and magazine covers and posters and concept art for movies. Joe has also sculpted classic statues of Doc Savage, Tarzan, Superman and Batman, among other pulp characters. His work has won numerous awards, including Gold and Silver Awards from Spectrum, and his paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators in New York City.

MARK EASTBROOK (Two For the Money, Skim Deep, Double Down, Tough Tender, Mad Money)
Based in the UK, Mark Eastbrook is best known for his editorial illustrations, particularly in the sports field. He has also created paintings based on classic films, which provided the perfect background for creating the cinema-inspired covers for all the Nolan heist novels by Max Allan Collins.

PATRICK FARICY (Snatch)
Patrick Faricy is a graduate of Art Center College of Design in California and has been creating images professionally for over 25 years. His clients range from publications such as Reader’s Digest and Boys Life to major consumer brands such as Coca-Cola and Pillsbury, as well as book publishers such as Harper Collins and Simon & Schuster. He has received awards from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, and the Junior Library Guild and was nominated for an Image Award by the NAACP.

RICHARD B. FARRELL (The Confession, Home Is the Sailor, 361, Dutch Uncle, The Gutter and the Grave, Bust, Lemons Never Lie, Robbie's Wife, Slide, No House Limit)
Richard Farrell’s oil paintings have been featured in memorable movie and television campaigns from many major Hollywood studios, including Columbia Pictures, Disney, MGM, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Brothers, as well as Super Bowl promotions for the National Football League. His work has also appeared in magazines ranging from Time and Redbook to Road and Track, and has been exhibited by the New York Society of Illustrators and the NFL Hall of Fame.

TIM GABOR (Night Walker)
Tim Gabor’s work has appeared in many publications, including Time, Spy, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, as well as on album covers for a variety of musicians including Foo Fighters, The Posies, and Anthrax. He also produced a series of illustrations for a video collaboration between Elvis Costello and John Cleese of "Monty Python" fame. Among other awards, he has received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators.

WILLIAM GEORGE (The Last Match)
William George is a world-famous illustrator who studied with Norman Rockwell and began his career painting covers for magazines such as Argosy and Cavalier, as well as for paperback westerns and crime novels by authors such as Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. He has been commissioned to paint portraits of figures ranging from Charlton Heston and Bette Davis to Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra and his art has appeared in publications ranging from Reader’s Digest to The Saturday Evening Post and Life magazine. His work can currently be found in a number of art galleries.

TYLER JACOBSON (The Wrong Quarry)
Tyler Jacobson graduated from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco with an MFA in Illustration and currently works as both a freelance illustrator and a concept artist, with a particular interest in fantasy and science-fiction art. In addition to book publishers such as Penguin and Simon & Schuster, his clients have included NBC, Rolling Stone, and Scientific American.

MICHAEL KOELSCH (Say It With Bullets, Somebody Owes Me Money, Blood On the Mink, The Cocktail Waitress, Borderline, PIMP, Sinner Man)
Michael Koelsch is an acclaimed painter whose work is influenced and inspired by the great illustrators of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Coby Whitmore and Austin Briggs. He has painted numerous book covers, including the Hugo Award-nominated cover for Jonathan Lethem’s first novel, Gun With Occasional Music, as well as illustrations for a wide range of children’s and young-adult books, games, trading cards, and advertising campaigns for clients ranging from American Express and Burger King to the Animal Planet television network.

GREGG KREUTZ (Fake I.D.)
Gregg Kreutz is an award-winning oil painter based in New York City. In addition to teaching at the Art Students League and many other art schools around the country throughout the year, he literally wrote the book on oil painting technique—Problem Solving for Oil Paintings, the classic artist’s guide that has been in print and in use for more than 20 years. Honors he has received include the Frank C. Wright Award, the Hudson Valley Art Association Award, the Medal of Merit and the Grumbacher Award from Knickerbocker Artists, the Council of American Artists Award from the Salmagundi Club and the 2005 Merit Award from the National Portrait Society of America.

KEN LAAGER (The Murderer Vine, The First Quarry, The Cutie, Catch and Release)
Ken Laager has been illustrating masculine adventure subjects for over 30 years. He trained under Will Eisner at the School Of Visual Arts, then settled in Pennsylvania to study the work of Howard Pyle. His clients have included Bantam, Ballantine, Signet, and Dell, among other paperback publishers, as well as periodicals such as Reader’s Digest and Pro Sècurité (a French police journal). It is Outdoor Life, however, that has been his principal magazine client. Laager served a long hitch as Artist-At-Large, painting covers and interior art and drawing the feature strip This Happened To Me. In addition, Laager has painted western historical works for museum and private collections.

RON LESSER (Honey In His Mouth, Quarry In The Middle, Quarry's Blood)
In addition to painting covers for numerous paperback crime novels in the 1950s and 60s, Ron Lesser is a successful and versatile historical artist and created Western movie art for High Plains Drifter, Paint Your Wagon, and The Way West, and the storyboards for the dream sequence in A Man Called Horse. The highly respected New York Art Directors Club, in existence since 1921, has twice honored Lesser for Best Movie Art of the Year and The Society of Illustrators, founded in 1901, has bestowed on him numerous Gold Medals for his paintings.

ROBERT MAGUIRE (SoHo Sins, Turn On the Heat, So Many Doors, How Like a God)
Robert Maguire (1921-2005) was one of the giants of paperback illustration, painting the covers for more than one thousand books, including some of the most famous in the crime genre. He began his education at Duke University and completed it at the Art Students League after returning from service in World War II. Although he never painted an original cover for Hard Case Crime, he did consult with editor Charles Ardai when the line debuted in 2004, and we consider him one of our guiding lights. We thank his daughter, Lynn, for unearthing some of her father’s previously unseen work and allowing us to use it as the basis of new covers in his honor.

GREGORY MANCHESS (Fade to Blonde, Home Is the Sailor, The Vengeful Virgin, Passport to Peril, Getting Off, Quarry's Ex, The Comedy Is Finished, Zero Cool, The Venom Business, Drug of Choice, Grave Descend, So Nude, So Dead, Later, Into the Night)
The recipient of numerous awards for his artwork (including half a dozen gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators), Gregory Manchess has painted covers for Time and The Atlantic Monthly and interior art for Newsweek, Playboy, Omni, and Smithsonian. He has also painted movie posters for Paramount and Disney, as well as a portrait of the young Sean Connery for Warner Brothers’ "Finding Forrester." Manchess has worked for the National Geographic Society on many occasions, has illustrated three children’s books, and has exhibited his paintings in galleries around the world. Aside from his illustration work, Manchess pursues interests in environmental issues, hiking, and ninjutsu, a 900-year-old rare form of Japanese martial arts.

PAUL MANN (Forever and a Death, Help I Am Being Held Prisoner, Understudy for Death, Charlesgate Confidential, Brothers Keepers, The Colorado Kid, Blood Sugar, Killing Quarry, Double Feature, Are Snakes Necessary?, Killer, Come Back to Me, Later, Castle In The Air, Call Me a Cab, The Big Bundle, Too Many Bullets, Death Comes Too Late)
Paul Mann has been an illustrator for more than 40 years, inspired by the work of classic painters of the Golden Age of Illustration such as Tom Lovell, Frank McCarthy, Howard Terpning and Robert McGinnis. Perhaps best known for his Western art and his movie poster re-imaginings for films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars, Mann has also made a name for himself as a painter of religious and fine art. He lives in Utah.

ROBERT MCGINNIS (Little Girl Lost, Plunder of the Sun, The Girl With the Long Green Heart, The Last Quarry, The Peddler, Kill Now, Pay Later, Baby Moll, Stop This Man!, Losers Live Longer, Murder Is My Business, 69 Barrow Street/Strange Embrace, The Consummata, Joyland, Quarry's Choice, Quarry, Quarry's List, Quarry's Deal, Quarry's Cut, Quarry's Vote, Cut Me In, The Knife Slipped, Quarry's Climax, The Count of 9, So Many Doors, The Triumph of the Spider Monkey, Seed on the Wind)
Robert McGinnis is one of the most famous cover painters in the history of paperback publishing, having illustrated more than 1,200 books over the past half century. He is also the creator of many legendary movie posters, including the posters for the original Sean Connery James Bond movies and for "Breakfast at Tiffany’s." In 1993, McGinnis was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, whose other inductees have included artists such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington, and N.C Wyeth.

RICKY MUJICA (Casino Moon, The Corpse Wore Pasties, The Twenty-Year Death, Fools Die on Friday, How Like a God)
An accomplished classical oil painter and much-in-demand book cover illustrator, Ricky Mujica is also an accomplished stage performer, having appeared in shows such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express, and a former Golden Gloves boxer. He lives with his wife and daughter in New York City.

BILL NELSON (Top of the Heap)
Bill Nelson has won over 500 accolades for his illustrations, including two gold medals from the New York Art Director’s Club, two silver medals from the Society of Illustrators, and more than 200 National Awards of Merit and Excellence presented by Communication Arts, Print, Graphis, and others. His work has appeared in magazines such as Time, Newsweek, TV Guide, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker, and he was chosen to illustrate the popular "Big Band" series of postage stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, the original art for which was later exhibited at the Norman Rockwell Museum. In addition to his impressive illustration career, Nelson is a nationally recognized doll-maker whose one-of-a-kind art dolls have made their way into the private collections of Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, David Copperfield, and Bruce Willis, among others.

GLEN ORBIK (Branded Woman, The Wounded and the Slain, Blackmailer, Songs of Innocence, Money Shot, The Max, Fifty-to-One, House Dick, The Valley of Fear, Memory, Choke Hold, False Negative, Seduction of the Innocent, Web of the City, Joyland, The Secret Lives of Married Women, Odds On, Scratch One, Easy Go, Binary, Brainquake, Easy Death, Thieves Fall Out, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, Quarry In The Black)
Glen Orbik was a freelance illustrator for over twenty years. He studied with master illustrator and classic movie poster artist Fred Fixler, eventually taking over many of Fixler’s classes upon his retirement. Glen continued to teach for over 12 years. Specializing primarily in covers for comics and paperbacks, Glen painted for clients including Marvel and DC Comics, Sony, TSR, Berkley Books and Avon Books (including for two Ray Bradbury titles). He also painted collectible imagery for Warner Bros./DC Studios, as well as preliminary poster work for the Spider-Man and Hulk movies. He painted more than two dozen covers for Hard Case Crime over a period of a decade, and was one of our most beloved artists. He died of cancer on May 11, 2015.

CHUCK PYLE (Grifter's Game, Kiss Her Goodbye, A Touch of Death, Straight Cut, Lucky At Cards, A Diet of Treacle, The Dead Man's Brother, The Twenty-Year Death)
Educated at the Academy of Art College, San Francisco, where he is now a drawing instructor and Director of the College’s School of Illustration, Chuck Pyle has been working as a freelance artist since 1976. His work, for clients from New York to Tokyo, has appeared in public and private collections, as well as on the cover of books and magazines, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

LARRY SCHWINGER (Witness To Myself, The Guns of Heaven, Shooting Star/Spiderweb)
Larry Schwinger’s moody and evocative paintings have illustrated many books, including the outstanding series of reprints of Cornell Woolrich’s novels published by Ballantine Books in the 1980s. In his biography of Woolrich, mystery writer and scholar Francis M. Nevins called Schwinger’s work "stunning," writing that it "captures the essence of the [noir] world in a single darkly beautiful image: night, the city, light and shadow, a man alone."

TONY STELLA (Lowdown Road)
Based in Germany, Tony Stella is a renowned illustrator and graphic designer best known for his work in the world of international cinema, including film posters and package art. He has also created the covers for a variety of books and record albums.

DREW STRUZAN (A Bloody Business)
Drew Struzan is one of the most famous movie poster painters of all time; his work has included the iconic posters for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, as well as films such as Back to the Future, Blade Runner, E.T., and The Shawshank Redemption. His artwork has also graced the album covers of musicians such as The Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, and Earth, Wind and Fire, as well as numerous book covers. Collections of his work include DREW STRUZAN: OEUVRE and THE MOVIE POSTERS OF DREW STRUZAN.

ARTHUR SUYDAM (Fright, Dead Street, Shooting Star/Spiderweb)
Arthur Suydam is a classical painter from an impressive artistic lineage: His great-uncles included the renowned Hudson River painter James Augustus Suydam and pioneering architectural artist Edward Henry Suydam. (Another relative, James Suydam, studied under Norman Rockwell.) Arthur’s art has been featured in numerous comic books and magazines, and he played a leading role in overseeing the art direction of the great illustrated magazine Heavy Metal. In addition to his work as a painter, Suydam is also an award-winning writer, a tournament-caliber tennis player, and a professional musician. In 2005, he received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the University of Maryland and the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, as well as the Spectrum Gold Medal for artistic excellence.

SHARIF TARABAY (Killing Castro)
Sharif Tarabay is a Montreal-based painter who has achieved international recognition for his realistic illustration style. His work, which has earned him numerous awards including C.A.P.I.C., Addy, A.O.I., and Communication Arts prizes, is influenced by the works and underlying principles of the old masters, particularly Van Dyck, Da Vinci, and 19th century Neo-Classicists such as David and Ingres. Although he works in many media, his preferences are for oil, acrylic on stretched linen, and the "encaustic" technique, a wax medium which was mostly used 2,000 years ago by the Egyptians and the Greeks.