Audrey Keown

Audrey Keown writes mysteries that connect family history, anxiety, and the hidden life of old buildings. Dust to Dust is the second Ivy Nichols Mystery, following the first Hotel 1911 mystery, and was published by Crooked Lane Books in 2021. Ivy works at a restored Chattanooga hotel whose elaborate historical setting is linked to her own unresolved past. When a group devoted to gravestone studies holds a conference there and a member is strangled, suspicion falls on the hotel's manager, Mr. Fig. Ivy's effort to clear him draws together old graves, strange drawings, family secrets, and another threat closer to home. Keown previously wrote professionally for periodicals, and she sets the series in the Tennessee city where she lives. She has also discussed drawing on her experience of anxiety to give Ivy's panic attacks specificity without reducing the character to a diagnosis. Dust to Dust deepens that approach by making historical discovery part of both the central puzzle and Ivy's pursuit of connection.