Prolific children's mystery writer Joan Lowery Nixon passed away on June 30, of cancer. She was 76.
After graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, the author found there were no jobs available in journalism, so she went back to school to get her teaching certificate and taught kindergarten for three years.
She published her first children's book in 1964, The Mystery of Hurricane Castle, and by 1994 she had 100 books published. She is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, and most recently she worked on two series of historical novels, the Orphan Train Adventures and the Ellis Island novels. She was past president of the Mystery Writers of America.
