M.M. Chouinard also writing as Michelle Chouinard is the USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and San Francisco Chronicle bestselling author of the Detective Jo Fournier series, The Vacation, and the amateur-sleuth series The Serial-Killer Guide to San Francisco. She has a Ph.D in developmental psychology from Stanford University and was one of the founding faculty members of the first American research university of the new millennium, U.C. Merced. She enjoys caffeine in all forms, amateur genealogy, crafting, baking, and anything to do with Halloween or the zombie apocalypse. She has three cats, a dog, and a husband who technically keeps her from being a crazy cat lady.