Author. A respected Detroit journalist, she is remembered for her 29 best-selling “The Cat Who…” mystery novels. Raised in a variety of places before settling in Michigan, she began working for the “Detroit News” and as a department store advertising copywriter while in her teens. Eventually Braun joined the “Detroit Free Press” where she was to be the lifestyle editor for more than 30 years; in 1968 she published “The Cat Who Could Read Backwards”, the first in her series of books in which crimes are solved by newspaper reporter Jim Qwilleran assisted by his Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum. Set in Pickax, a Moose County town located “400 miles north of everywhere”, Jim figures out “whodunit” with help from his two feline friends who have a knack of pulling appropriate books from the shelf and of literally digging-up clues. After producing her third novel, “The Cat Who Turned On and Off”, in 1968 Braun quit as she did not care to supply the sex and violence readers seemed to want; resuming work with 1986’s “The Cat Who Saw Red” she was to publish a book every year up to her final offering, the 2007 “The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers”. Braun was to see her cats make the “New York Times” bestseller list repeatedly and be translated into 16 languages; in 2007 she was even the subject of Robert Kaplow’s spoof “The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun”. After residing in Bad Axe, a town at the tip of Michigan’s “thumb” which many believe is the real-life Pickax, she spent her last years in Tyron, North Carolina, and died in a hospice of pulmonary disease. At her death her cats continued to be readily available. (bio by: Bob Hufford)