Thriller Conversation: Baby Queen by Ty Landers

​Join us for a conversation with Ty Landers, debut author of Baby Queen.

​About the book:

​In Noccalula, Alabama, three generations of women have kept the family honey farm running on discipline, silence, and a great deal that goes unsaid. Then a body turns up perfectly preserved in a drum of honey, and Natalie Link learns that her grandmother Lana — the woman who raised her, fed her, taught her the whole grave choreography of the hive — was something far more dangerous than a beekeeper. Nat is left standing between her grandmother’s most frightening associates, an ex-cop who has spent a career chasing the truth about Lana, and a mother home from Hollywood at precisely the wrong moment.

​About the author:

​Ty Landers holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside. Born and raised in Alabama, he spent more than twenty years in Nashville, Tennessee, before moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and sons. His debut novel BABY QUEEN, which comes out on November 17, 2026, is being adapted by HBO. For more on Ty Landers, visit: https://www.tylandersfiction.com/

​About the moderator:

​Mark Haskell Smith is the author of six novels with one-word titles including Moist, Salty, and Blown; as well as the non-fiction books Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup and Naked at Lunch: A Reluctant Nudist’s Adventures in the Clothing-Optional World. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Vulture, Alta, and Literary Hub. He is an associate professor in the MFA program from Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center.