In Reference to Murder

Mystery Melange, the (Mostly) Magazine Edition

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is celebrating is celebrating its 70th anniversary with a double issue titled "How Crime Flies," featuring stories by a number of Edgar and Shamus award-winning authors: Lia Matera, Brendan DuBois, Bill Pronzini, Jonathan King, Clark Howard, Loren D. Estleman, Cheryl Rogers, and more.

Crimespree Magazine issue 43 is also due out August 31st, with fiction by Kenneth Nicols, news, articles and reviews from Ayo Onatade, Avery Aames, Tony Hays, Sara Gran, Lisa Unger, Jen Jordan, Craig McDonald, Reed Farrel Coleman, and an interview of Dennis Lehane by Declan Burke. For subscription info, check out their web site.

The latest "Getting Away With Murder" column by Shots Ezine's Mike Ripley is available online. The Ripster previews the upcoming Reading Festival of Crime Writing; reviews John Lawton's novel A Lily of the Field; anticipates a couple of cinematic thrillers including Haywire, with an "ass-kickitrix" black ops super soldier seeking payback after she's betrayed and set up during a mission; and contemplates "the new Creasey" and "South Africa's Answer to Stieg Larsson."

Which graveyards are the most literary? Publishers Weekly takes a look at the top six.

If you have a hard time keeping up with all the latest social networking and "next big thing" online whatever, you're not alone. Spotify is a music-related site that recently migrated to the U.S. market, allowing you to create "mix tapes" of your favorites. Crime fiction author James Ellroy is a noted Beethoven fan, and Galley Cat created a Spotify playlist in his honor with a Beethoven musical primer.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Alexander Skarsgard (star of True Blood) is in talks to join Brit Marling in The East, a film about an eco-terrorist group of the same name. Skarsgard would portray its leader, with Marling starring as an FBI investigator who infiltrates the group. Marling is also co-writing the script with director Zat Batmanglij.

Robert Harris is adapting his novel The Fear Index, a thriller about an impending meltdown in the financial markets, as a screenplay. Fox Studios grabbed the rights to Harris's novel when he had written just six of its 19 chapters.

Author Tony Black is working with director Richard Jobson for a movie version of Long Time Dead, the latest book in Black's series featuring Gus Drury, a former journalist and alcoholic who becomes a reluctant crime investigator. Black and Jobson are hoping to line up Dougray Scott to play Drury.

TV

Apparently the pilot for Longmire—based on Craig Allen Johnson's novels featuring widowed Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire—was successful enough to get the go-ahead for a 10-episode order from A&E. Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) will play a deputy opposite Robert Taylor in the title role.

Shane Brennan, the executive producer of CBS' NCIS franchises, is developing a show pilot based on the "King and Maxwell" novel series by David Baldacci, which feature former Secret Service agents turned private investigators.

The BBC is bringing Denise Mina's The Field of Blood, the first in the Paddy Meehan series, to the small screen. The Glasgow-set series will star David Morrissey, Peter Capaldi, Jonas Armstrong and Jayd Johnson and is being directed/written by David Kane. (Hat tip to Crimespree.)

Another new BBC crime drama I don't believe I've mentioned in a MMM post yet is The Body Farm, starring Tara Fitzgerald as forensic doctor Eve Lockhart and Keith Allen as Detective Inspector Hale. This is to be a six-part series, a sequel to the hit BBC One series Waking The Dead. (Hat tip to EuroCrime.)

Breaking Bad's Giancarlo Esposito has joined the drama pilot Over/Under. The show stars Rescue Me's Steven Pasquale as Paul, a gambling addict who loses his Wall Street job after making a bad trade that costs his company millions and then starts a high-end bookie business. Esposito will play Oliver, "a dry-witted and sophisticated artist who once taught Paul's wife Georgette and maintains a special fondness for his former student."

Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde has inspired several movie projects in the past, and now it may be the source for a series on ABC after the network bought a pilot titled Hide from Sheldon Turner's company Vendetta. The plot has a modern take on the tale as Grant Hyde, a thirtysomething wallflower ER doctor with a degenerative eye condition who begins to experience a strange side effect after a treatment to fix his eye problem. After going to sleep, he turnes into Hyde, "a fearless, gregarious personality who takes control where Grant cannot."

Crimespree has a nice roundup for you of all of the movies to be part of season one of the TNT Mystery Movie Night, featuring TV dramas based on novels by Scott Turow, Sandra Brown, Lisa Gardner, Richard North Patterson, April Smith and Mary and Carol Higgins Clark.

TNT announced the fall premiere dates for several shows, including the crime dramas The Closer, Southland, Rizzoli & Isles and Leverage.

Charlie Brooker is creating a crime detective spoof for Sky1 in the UK. Titled A Touch of Cloth, the TV movie is described as "an all-encompassing parody of every police procedural ever written" and stars New Street Law and Rebus actor John Hannah as DCI Jack Cloth, a maverick, heavy drinking loner who has thrown himself into his work following the mysterious death of his wife.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Laura Lippman joined NPR's Diane Rehm Show to talk about her latest novel, The Most Dangerous Thing.

Kathy Reichs appeared on NBC's Today Show to discuss her latest effort, Flash and Bones.

Jo Nesbo talked with fellow crime fiction author Mark Lawson about his new standalone thriller Headhunters and how he views the recent tragic events in Norway. (The Q&A starts about 20 minutes into the feed). Nesbo also gave an interview on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show.

Friday's Forgotten Books - Murder Intercontinental

Long before the current wave of crime fiction flooding in from all parts of the world, authors from countries outside the U.S. and the U.K. were writing stories and novels set in a variety of locales. Even in the two mystery-mainstay countries, American and British authors have often used exotic settings to inspire and entertain. One anthology that takes a look at this globe-hopping in crime fiction stories is Murder Intercontinental, published in 1996.

Editors Cynthia Manson and Kathleen Halligan culled their choices from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and decided on twenty authors with stories spanning seven continents taking place over the course of a century. The book starts off with "the Missing House" by Hayford Peirce, set in Tahiti (which the editors mistakenly label as being part of the Caribbean), in which a Kansas-born PI, who is scrounging a living in Tahiti, must find a house the owner swears was stolen. That's followed by geographical sections divided into North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the Middle East, although some areas are only represented with one story.

There are well-known authors included: Agatha Christie's Poirot in Egypt, Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford in London; Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret in a small French village. Others are less familiar, such as Kenneth Gavrell's P.I. Carlos Banon investigating a drive-by shooting linked to a senatorial candiate in Puerto Rico; Shizuko Natsuki's Lieutenant Soto investigating a bank robbery in a Japanese resort town he links to the suicide of a temple employee; and Josh Pachter's Mahboob Chaudri solving a crime on the Muslim holy day of Ramadan in Bahrain.

Even the settings in North America are more exotic, with Native American-themed tales from Manly Wade Wellman and William T. Lowe, and a haunting little story from James Sarafin titled "The Word for Breaking August Sky," set in a remote Eskimo village in Alaska and featuring an
African-American chief of police, that might best be described as lyrical paranormal noir (and was also later included in the 2002 anthology The Mysterious North, edited by Dana Stabenow).

Here are the regions with their various contributions:

The Caribbean : The Missing House / Hayford Peirce

North America : A Knife Between Brothers / Manly Wade Wellman; There are No Snakes in Hawaii / Juanita Sheridan; The Word for Breaking August Sky / James Sarafin; Corollary / Hughes Allison; Kaddish / Batya Swift Yasgur; All Indians are Warriors / William T. Lowe

Latin American : There are No Stars over San Juan / Kenneth Gavrell; The Hair of the Widow / Robert Somerlott

Asia : The Sole of the Foot / Shizuko Natsuki; The Courage of Akira-kun / Ron Butler

Africa : To Catch a Wizard / Walter Satterthwait

Eastern Europe : Hide-and-seek, Russian style / Patricia McGerr

Europe : Journey into Time / Georges Simenon; Who Killed that Son of a Doge? / David Braly ; Suspect / Patricia Highsmith; The Mists of Ballyclough / Barbara Callahan; Inspector Wexford and the Winchurch Affair / Ruth Rendell

The Middle East : The Adventure of the Egyptian tomb / Agatha Christie; The Night of Power / Josh Pachter

This is the last of my "Hot August Anthology" mentions for Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books feature; next week, back to novels.

Mystery Melange

Two new (well, new-ish) anthologies to tell you about: the first was actually published in April and is titled Crimespotting. The stories include offerings from various bestselling crime writers including Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood, Denise Mina and Ian Rankin, all featuring a crime and set in Edinburgh. The other anthology was just released this week and is titled D*cked. Why the title, you ask? Because all the stories are inspired "by the most vexing juggernaut of modern American politics — Dick Cheney." Authors include Patti Abbott, Jedidiah Ayres, Greg Bardsley and Kieran Shea.

In case you missed it: the nominations for the annual Shamus Awards were announced. The awards are given by the private eye writers association, PWA, for excellence in that genre, and winners will be announced at the banquet during Bouchercon. The Crime Writers Association in the UK also announced the shortlists for the Gold Dagger top novel award, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller and also the John Creasey New Blood Dagger.

Ayo Onatade recapped the recent St Hilda's Crime & Mystery Weekend, which is more academic than most conferences, with each weekend based around a theme and participants staying together on the College grounds, "very reminiscent of being back in boarding school." Various papers and talks were given, including one by PD James who commented on the difficulties surrounding assisted dying. You can read about all the other interesting fodder in Ayo's detailed and entertaining blog post at Shotsmag.

New Zealand writer/blogger Craig Sisterson also reported on the recent "Setting the Stage for Murder" event in New Zealand and a panel (consisting of the four 2011 Ngaio Marsh Award finalists) that raised the question of whether to incorporate last year's devastating earthquake in an author's novels.

If you haven't been following Patti Abbott's regular feature "How I Came to Write This Book (or Story)," you can start with her latest, Glenn Gray talking about his short story "Bigorexia."

Elizabeth Foxwell pays tribute to "Five female mystery authors who left us too soon," all of whom died of tragic circumstances before reaching their full potential.

The Sisters in Crime organization is celebrating its 25th anniversary as "a non-profit organization to promote the professional development and advancement of women crime writers to achieve equality in the industry." As part of the commemoration, Barbara Fister issued a blog challenge for participants to write blog posts about works of crime fiction by women authors. Be on the lookout for those around the blogosphere heading into the fall.

Libby Fischer Hellman is holding crime writing workshops titled "Anatomy of a Crime Novel: The Craft of Crime Fiction" in Chicago during September and October. For more information, check out her web site link above. (Hat tip to the Rap Sheet.)

Quaking Good Crime

 

Thanks to our little earthquake yesterday, the jokes have been streaming fairly steadily in the Twitterverse and on Facebook. It also made me think of crime fiction books with an earthquake as a plot device or setting, but I'm not the only one making the literary connection; immediately after the temblor, our local library put up a display of earthquake-themed books. Have I told you how much I love my library?

So, here are a few suggestions for your earthquake-reading pleasure, first from the Golden Gate Mysteries site that has recommendations aplenty about the San Fran region. It's a list of books about the 1906 quake, starting with the 1908 Travers: A Story of the San Francisco Earthquake by Sara Dean, to Locked Rooms, the 2005 book by Laurie R. King.

Other authors have used earthquakes in other regions and times, including The Earthquake Bird by Susanna Jones, which is set in Japan; Aftershock by Peter Corris, set in Australia; and Earthquake Weather by Terrill Lee Lankford, involving the 1994 Northridge quake, and The Walk by Lee Goldberg, both set in Hollywood.

In case you haven't been following the "laughtershocks" on Twitter, you can check out some of the fun here and here.

All kidding aside, this is a good time to remember that two areas of the world were hit by devastating earthquakes in the past year, Japan and New Zealand, both of which are still struggling to recover. Two different story anthologies were put together to help raise funds, including Shaken: Stories for Japan, including authors Kelli Stanley, Brett Battles, Timothy Hallinan and more; and Tales for Canterbury, edited by Cassie Hart and Anna Caro, with the themes of survival, hope and future. Also, the Spirit of Hope Charity Anthology is a project from the British graphics novel community, with proceeds benefitting both earthquake-hit areas.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Actor Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) is developing a script he adapted from the mystery novel Home Again by David Wiltse. He's working with producer Mark Johnson to turn it into a movie, and will also serve as the film's director. Of the story, Cranston adds "It's basically a very strong father-son story and a murder-mystery."

Brad Pitt is going to star in the movie adaptation of The Gray Man, the thriller novel by Mark Greaney. Pitt will play a former CIA operative-turned-ultimate assassin who battles special forces teams from around the world in order to save the life of his handler and the handler's family. (Hat tip to Omnimystery.)

Director Brian De Palma's next film project is a thriller written by Joby Harold titled The Key Man. It's about a single father who is targeted by U.S. government agents because his body contains answers to important national secrets. De Palma's past crime drama-related projects included Scarface, The Untouchables, Carrie and Mission: Impossible.

More first-look photos and a trailer from the upcoming film adaptation of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig.

TV

Fox has ordered a pilot for a new hourlong project from Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and 20th TV. The new show, titled The Asset, is described as "a character-driven drama set in the New York office of the CIA, which centers on a female agent." Also getting the go-ahead from the studio are an alien-themed cop show titled Stranger Planet and an LAPD procedural, both yet to be cast.

Oscar nominee Julianne Moore is in negotiations to star in the HBO period drama based on the novel Dope by author Sara Gran, who is also writing the script. The movie takes place in 1950 in New York and follows a woman who rehabilitates herself on a farm following a heroin addiction and returns to society as a private eye.

The History Channel is gearing up for a miniseries about the infamous American feuding families the Hatfields and McCoys. Bill Paxton will play Randall McCoy opposite Kevin Costner, who will play "Devil" Anse Hatfield.

Get ready for Law & Order: Cape Town. Well, if you live in South Africa, anyway. The Cape Film Commission announced that 12 episodes have been ordered with filming set to begin on location, in Cape Town by May of 2012, with a cast and film crew that will be primarily South African.

CBS is planning on a crossover episode between two of its shows, Hawaii Five-0 and NCIS: LA, with NCIS actress Daniela Ruah appearing on H50.

The season opener of CSI:NY commemorates the 9/11 attacks around their ten-year anniversary, with flashbacks to that tragic day, showing viewers how Mac and his ill-fated wife and others were affected.

The BBC is bringing back Martin Shaw to 1960s Northumberland as Inspector George Gently, along with his headstrong, un-pc sidekick, Bacchus (Lee Ingleby), to appear in two TV movies this year and in 2012. The series is based on the books by Alan Hunter.  (Hat tip to Eurocrime.)

Fans of BritCrime should check out this comprehensive rundown of all new crime series coming to the BBC and ITV for the 2011/2012 broacast season. Some of these may make their way across the pond (Endeavor and Sherlock are already scheduled in the U.S.), and hopefully the others will too. Some are news to me, including Undisclosed, a four-part BBC1 thriller starring Philip Glenister (Mad Dogs, Life on Mars) as a small-time solicitor, Harry Venn, forced to delve into his murky past involving the death of his brother 12 years ago, (it also stars one of my favorites, David Suchet).

Are you or is someone on your Christmas gift list a fan of the original Law and Order? If so, and if you have $500 to $700 lying around, the entire 20 years and 456 episodes will be available on DVD November 8th.

THEATER

The Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, will host a production of City of Angels, the jazzy 1989 Tony Award-winning show with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by David Zippel and book by Larry Gelbart. The play is described as a "sexy noir musical comedy about a mystery writer named Stine (played by D.B. Bond) and his famous gumshone/alter ego, Stone (played by Burke Moses)."

The Eyes Have It

Tickets are available for the Private Writers of America Banquet in St. Louis, held in conjunction with Bouchercon. The event takes place Friday, September 16 from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m., and buses will leave from the Convention Hotel to the banquet site. The highlight of the evening will be the announcement of the annual Shamus Awards winners for excellence in the private eye genre. For more information or to order tickets, contact Robert Randisi, founder and president of the PWA.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Murder on the Run

In keeping with my "Hot August Anthologies" theme for Friday's Forgotten books this month, I offer a contribution from the Adams Round Table.  Mary Higgins Clark and Thomas Chastain founded the Adams Round Table in 1982, a monthly meeting where author members discuss the writing craft, plot a few literary murders and share writing experiences.

The group expanded to include other authors, and in addition to the over one hundred novels members have published individually, the Round Table has also published at least five anthologies of stories, beginning with Missing in Manhattan in 1986. 

Murder on the Run dates from 1998 and features, as you might expect, stories in which the criminal is on the lam or a travel theme is otherwise tied in. There are a few familiar series characters, as well as some standalone creations. The series contributions include Mary Higgins Clark (Alvirah and Willy) where a lottery millionare returns to her humble neighborhood roots to solve a murder, in "Lady Sleuth! Lady Sleuth! Run Away Home," while Lawrence Block chips in with a tongue-in-cheek story titled "Keller's Choice" about Block's workaholic hitman with too many choices and an ethical dilemma.

Other stories include Dorothy Salisbury Davis's tale of a young man who flees the scene of an accident, titled "The Scream," and Judith Kelman's "Morphing the Millenniun," which chronicles a phobic toy inventor's rise, fall and revenge. Warren Murphy's "Another Day, Another Dollar," is particularly touching, in which a black assembly-line worker sets about to solves her brother's murder.

There are 11 stories in all, and while they might not be the best representative work of the authors included, they make for entertaining reading appropriate for a month when most of the U.S. (Congress and the President, certainly) and Europe are traveling on vacation.

Mystery Melange

Gerald So, one of the editors of two anthologies titled The Lineup: Poems on Crime, announced that due to losing two co-editors due to busy schedules, he's instead created a weekly web page for crime-themed poetry. You can find submissions guidelines there.

Two terrific mystery conferences are coming up at the end of this month, Mystery Florida in Sarasota, August 24-25, and Killer Nashville, August 26-28. Special guests at the Florida event include Gayle Lynds, James O. Born, Don Bruns, Tim Dorsey, H. Terrell Griffin, David Hagberg, Chris Kuzneski, Ward Larsen, P.J. Parrish, Sharon Potts, James Swain, Les Standiford and Elaine Viets. The Nashville affair has Donald Bain and Robert Dugoni as the special guest authors. Registration is still open for both these conferences--a great way to catch a late-summer vacation at the same time!

Editors Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan just released the new anthology Pulp Ink, which uses the soundtrack and lines from the movie Pulp Fiction to create short stories. For a listing of stories and authors included, Thomas Brown has the rundown. (Hat tip, too, to Sandra Seamans.)

If you're on the hunt for more short story anthologies and single-author collections, Spinetingler's Brian Lindemuth has a nice listing of those books published so far in 2011. Sandra Seamans added to that list two current books from Snubnose Press (the anthology Speedloader and a collection from Keith Rawson called The Chaos We Knew) as well as two books coming soon (Monkey Justice from Patti Abbott and Gumbo Ya-Ya from Les Edgerton). 

For those of us who can't afford a vacation to Europe this year, Alexander McCall Smith takes you on a tour of Edinburgh's New Town, where many of his books are set. Also, Mysteries in Paradise is featuring a EuroPass crime fiction tour, with different entries each week from August through October that feature on one European country and some suggested books.

The Forth Worth Star-Telegram takes a look at African crime writers who are gaining attention outside of the continent, including Cape Town's Roger Smith, who article author Cary Darling says "writes with the brutal beauty of an Elmore Leonard in a very bad mood."

Janet Rudolph has been sponsoring an alphabetical look at crime fiction authors. Yesterday was "K," with Tracy Kiely, author of the Jane Austen inspired mystery series. Previous entries included Rennie Airth, Lawrence Block, Bruce DeSilva, Vicki Delany, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Jamie Freveletti, P. L. Gaus, Timothy Hallinan, Graham Ison, Sue Ann Jaffarian. Many of the entries offer book giveaways, too.
 
And now for something completely different...an American flag created entirely out of 30,000 bullets by artist Berta Leone, which took her two years to complete.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Millennium Films has optioned movie rights to The Bricklayer by Noah Boyd. Gerard Butler is set to star as retired FBI agent Steve Vail, who is working as a bricklayer in Chicago when he is called back into duty after a gang of criminals begins "demanding an escalating series of multi-million dollar ransom payments." The female role of FBI deputy director who is also Vail's partner has yet to be cast. (Hat tip to Omnimystery.)

Production may begin as early as November on the film Broken City, which was optioned by Mark Wahlberg who will also star and independently produce the movie. Wahlerb plays an ex-cop-turned-private detective hired by the mayor of New York to see if his wife is cheating on him, but instead ends up in the middle of murder and scandal. Russell Crowe has signed on to portray the mayor.

Morgan Freeman will play an ex-magician who has spent much of his life exposing illusionists' secrets, in the film Now You See Me from director Louis Letterier. Morgan teams up with Ruffalo's FBI agent trying to catch a team of illusionists, led by Jesse Eisenberg, who rob banks during their performances then rain their plunder down on their audiences.

French actress Stephanie Szostak is in negotiations for the film adaptation of the graphic novel R.I.P.D. She will play the wife of a murdered cop named Nick Walter (played by Ryan Reynolds) who enlists with the Rest In Peace Department in the afterlife. Walker teams up with a gunslinger from the old west (Jeff Bridges) to find the man who killed him (Kevin Bacon). Szostak's character can sense Nick's presence and he tries to get her to help solve the case.

20th Century Fox has signed a movie deal with Colton Harris-Moore, the "barefoot bandit" teen who gained cult status during a two-year, nine-state crime spree that included stealing airplanes and cars. Harris-Moore and his attorney says the money will go toward the minimum $1.4 million restitution Harris-Moore owes his victims.

Columbia Pictures has released a new trailer for its upcoming political thriller Anonymous, which combines the mystery behind the real identity of William Shakespeare, set amid cloak-and-dagger political intrigue and illicit romances in the Royal Court.

And here are your first images from the upcoming film J. Edgar with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.

TV

Shawn Ryan and Simon Mirren at Sony Pictures have sold an untitled project to CBS, a sort of cross between Criminal Minds and Showtime's Dexter. It's a procedural about a genetic scientist who uses his newfound discovery that he has the psychopath gene to help the FBI catch killers.

CBS has also ordered up a pilot from Goodfellas writer Nicholas Pilegg titled Ralph Lamb. Set in the early '60s, it's based on the true story of Ralph Lamb, a cowboy-turned-Las Vegas sheriff who modernized the department and assembled the city's first SWAT team, but was best known for his tough stance on the Mafia.

ABC is considering making a series based on The Lincoln Lawyer and Mickey Haller character created by author Michael Connelly. Connelly is working with John Romano to write a pilot script for Lionsgate, the same studio that produced the recent film based on Connelly's novel.

Twentieth Television bought the rights to the three-book series from Swedish criminologist and author Leif G.W. Persson. Screenwriter Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) will adapt the novels featuring Evert Backstrom, a cynical, racist, sexist and homophobic cop with a drinking problem who is disliked by many of his colleagues. Persson, a leading psychological profiler, will serve as an executive producer.

The man behind the TV version of True Blood, the series based on books by Charlaine Harris, is working with Cinemax to create a new scripted series, although it won't have a supernatural theme. Alan Ball's new project is titled Banshee, and will focus on an enigmatic ex-con who's also an expert in martial arts who poses as a murdered sheriff in a small town in Pennsylvania Amish Country.

Last week, I mentioned Endeavour, the new ITV made-for-TV prequel movie to the Inspector Morse series. It's been picked up by PBS to air in the U.S. sometime next year.

Diane Neal, who left Law & Order: SVU after season 9, is returning for several episodes in the upcoming season 13 this fall. Neal says the show will hark back to earlier seasons, and "It's back on track to what the original SVU was intended to be, which is about sex crimes and crimes against children. It's got more of a nitty-gritty feel."

Scott Wolf has joined NCIS for the Season 9 opener in the potentially recurring character of FBI Agent Casey Stratton. Executive producer Gary Glasberg says "Who he is and how he influences the NCIS team will come in due time, but I can promise you some unexpected surprises."

Spike TV has ordered three new reality shows including Big Easy Justice, which follows bounty hunter Tat-2 and his Elite Fugitive Recovery Team as they hunt down some of post-Katrina New Orleans' most elusive criminals, and Undercover Stings (from the producers of Cops) taking viewers "inside the high-stakes world of orchestrated busts and undercover police sting operations."

Fans of Warehouse 13 can breathe a sigh of relief, as Syfy renewed the series for a fourth season. Breaking Bad is also coming back for a final batch of 16 episodes. Fans of In Plain Sight, however, will be less happy at the news that USA is not renewing that series.

You can watch all three episodes of Zen available on the PBS web site, but hurry, because they apparently go away after August 30th.

Pull out your calendar or smartphone and start jotting down the nights you'll be glued in front of the TV with popcorn and your beverage of choice. The Hollywood Reporter has a handy complete broadcast premiere guide.