firstCLUE reviews are written by industry-expert founders Henrietta (Etta) Verma and Brian Kenney and Contributing Editors Jeff Ayers and Wilda (Willy) Williams. Sales and marketing efforts are planned by Chris Kahn.
Henrietta (Etta) Thornton, firstCLUE co-founder, is a librarian with over 20 years’ experience in libraries and magazine and database publishing. From 2006-2015, she worked at School Library Journal (SLJ) and Library Journal (LJ), eventually heading LJ’s review section. As well as being a cofounder of firstCLUE, she reviews and edits for Booklist and LJ and is Information Literacy Content and Strategy Manager at Infobase, developing materials that help students and faculty use libraries and artificial intelligence.
Etta, who is from Ireland, lives in New York City. Her daughter, Priya, attends college in Florida, while her son, Henry, is a middle-schooler who lives with Etta and their cats Neko, Yuki, and Mei. As well as devouring two mystery novels a week, Etta enjoys biographies and popular science books on audio.
Brian Kenney, firstCLUE co-founder, is a librarian and editor, having worked for a decade at the Brooklyn Public Library and another decade as an editor at LJ, editor in chief of SLJ, and editorial director of LJ, SLJ, and Publishers Weekly (PW). Today he’s the director of the White Plains Public Library (NY), where he hosts a monthly crime-fiction discussion group, Book ‘Em.
Brian lives in Jackson Heights, Queens with his husband, Ozzie; two cats; and multiple e-reading devices.
Contributing Editor Jeff Ayers has been a book reviewer for The Associated Press, Library Journal, and Booklist. He co-hosted a podcast for Suspense Magazine and has interviewed many authors, including Dan Brown, Michael Connelly, and Harlan Coben.
Jeff is currently the Co-Executive Director of Thrillerfest for the International Thriller Writers. He has written several fiction and nonfiction books and, with Jon Land, has a two-book deal for a National Park thriller series for Minotaur Books. The first one, Leave No Trace, comes out in the Spring of 2024.
Contributing editor Wilda (Willy) Williams, who went to library school on her wise grandmother’s
advice, was a book review editor at Library Journal for 27 years. As Fiction Editor, she assigned popular
genre fiction, including mysteries and thrillers. She now freelances as a sponsored content writer for
Choice magazine, pens book and film reviews respectively for Kirkus and film-foward.com, and blogs at
WildaBookBeast.
Chris Kahn worked with Brian, Etta, and Willy during the 15-plus years he spent as the Western Advertising Director (at various times) for LJ, SLJ and PW.
He left PW to join NuvoMedia as the publishing liaison for the Rocket eBook, the first commercially viable ebook device and content distribution system—the direct predecessor to the Kindle. He returned to the magazines and worked for all three magazines until their sale by Reed-Elsevier. From 2009 to 2017, he worked with Nora Rawlinson, PW, LJ, and SLJ’s former editor-in-chief, on her website and newsletter EarlyWord.com.
He lives in Orangevale, CA with his wife and their cats Elly and Wee Chef. He is the president of the Friends of the Orangevale Public Library.