Author Dean James will be the guest speaker at the Friends of the Sweet Briar College Library Gerhard Masur Memorial Lecture at 8 p.m. Friday, March 31 in the Boxwood Lounge at the College’s Florence Elston Inn and Conference Center. The event is free and open to public.

A seventh-generation Mississippian now transplanted to Texas, James published his first adult novel, “Cruel as the Grave,” in 2000, long after he left his job as a librarian to manage Murder by the Book, Houston’s nationally known mystery specialty bookstore. Two other novels, “Closer Than the Bones and “Death by Dissertation,” followed.

In 2002 James published the first of a series of four novels featuring gay American vampire, Simon Kirby-Jones, who resides in a small English village and who stumbles over bodies with a Fletcherian regularity. The most recent of these is “Baked to Death.”

In July 2005, James’ not-so-evil twin, Jimmie Ruth Evans, came out with the first in a series of “trailer-park cozies” with “Flamingo Fatale.” Evans is currently working on the third book in the trailer park series, while James is hatching ideas for another new series.

James also is co-author with fellow librarian Jean Swanson of “Killer Books: A Reader’s Guide to Exploring the Popular World of Mystery and Suspense” and “By a Woman’s Hand: A Guide to Mystery Fiction by Women,” a popular, award-winning reference book on contemporary women mystery writers. With Jan Grape, he is the co-editor of “Deadly Women,” another volume on women mystery writers.

For more information please e-mail jgjaffe@sbc.edu or call (434) 381-6139.