Phineas Strange

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Phineas Strange is a pen name — and a fitting one for author Michael McDonald, who has published twelve post-apocalyptic novels and two children's books under his own name.

Behind the pen name is an independent author with roots deep in New England soil, a former prison chaplain, and a former child welfare specialist whose career was built on listening to people the world had largely stopped hearing. He has lived in New Hampshire long enough to know that the winters are long, the snow is deep, and the region has more dark history than its tidy village greens suggest.

As Phineas Strange, he is also the author of *A Curious Compendium of Strange Events*, a five-volume collection of true tales of oddities, mysteries, miracles, and madness from every corner of the world.

His true crime work begins with *True Crime New England* — a state-by-state series covering violent crime in the region between 1965 and 1995 — and is the first installment of a larger proposed project, *True Crime America*, which will bring the same approach to cases across the country.

These are not stories about killers. They are stories about the people who were taken, told with the care and specificity they were owed and rarely received.

He writes true crime in the tradition of Ann Rule — longform, grounded in documented fact, and committed to the idea that accuracy and readability are not in competition.

He and his wife write surrounded by their herd of cats in the wooded hills of New Hampshire.

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