The Spirit in Question is Cynthia Kuhn's third book in her Lila Maclean series, after The Semester of our Discontent and The Art of Vanishing, which I wrote about earlier here. Lots of humor, both in the voice and in the inside jokes. After reading this book, no one will ever want to teach at a small college.
River of Secrets (Minotaur, Aug 28, 2018) is the second book in the mystery series that started with Roger John's award-winning Dark River Rising. The series features Wallace Hartman, a female police detective in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The conference we think of as "Thrillerfest" is really the end-cap of a week of varied events. It started on Monday with the ATF pre-conference.
Every year the International Thriller Writer's organization (ITW) organizes various a series of events to encourage authors who have had their first book published in the preceding twelve months.