ul, lush with green trees, sun-sparkled waters, wide-open spaces and white-capped mountains. It's also rich with darkness, gunmetal gray skies, rain-slicked streets, and deep shadows that give cover to its darkest secrets. Small wonder that this corner of America is a high-demand lifestyle destination - and, not so long ago, the serial killer and Sasquatch-conspiracy capital of the country.

The Killing Rain captures that delicious dichotomy in all its deliciously dark glory, through short stories ranging from the cozy to the hardboiled, all charged with depicting Seattle as a real or imagined place. These crime tales have been collected in conjunction with "Seattle Shakedown" - the name we've given to the return of Left Coast Crime to the Pacific Northwest. It takes place from April 10-14 in Bellevue, Washington, just a hop and skip from Seattle across Lake Washington.

And, with enticing forewords from LCC Guest of Honor Megan Abbott and top-rank thriller author Jennifer Hillier, The Killing Rain will be the perfect shivery companion for what's (almost) sure to be the Seattle area's shivery early-spring weather. Edited by Jim Thomsen, who grew up on an island near Seattle and went to boarding school in the shadows of the nearby Green River, at a time America's most prolific serial killer was just getting started. Coincidence? Good crime fiction doesn't allow for it!