James Lee Burke is the author of forty novels and two collections of short stories. Three books, Heaven's Prisoners, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, and Two for Texas, were adapted as motion pictures. Over the years, he has also worked as a pipeliner, land surveyor, social worker, newspaper reporter, and creative writing teacher. Burke has won two Edgar Awards, the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction, and the Louisiana Writer Award. A native of Houston, he grew up on the Louisiana-Texas coast. He now resides in Missoula, Montana.