Book sculpture by Guy Laramee
Denise Mina was honored with a rare repeat performance as winner of the Theakston Old Peculier Best Crime Novel Award for the second year in a row. Her novel Gods and Beasts edged out other nominated books by Mark Billingham, Chris Ewan, Peter May, Stuart Neville and Stav Sherez.
Needle Magazine's Summer Issue is available for the Kindle, bringing you noir short fiction at its best: Dennis Tafoya, Sarah Weinman, Clayton Lindemuth, Brad Green, Bruce Holsinger, Kieran Shea, Ed Kurtz, Jimmy Callaway, Scott Miles, C.J. Edwards, Amy Yolanda Castillo, Alan Orloff, B.A. Hoffman, and Neliza Drew. Back issues (including the Winter 2012 issue with my story "Push Comes to Shove") are also available.
After the recent Scandinavian invasion in crime fiction, there have been attempts by publishers around the world to take advantage of that success and put forth their own regional crime novels as "the next big thing." The latest in that line is French crime fiction, but the French may have weight to back it up: the Crime Writers Association awarded the 2013 International Dagger (a tie) to French authors Fred Vargas, for The Ghost Riders of Ordebec, and Pierre Lemaitre for Alex.
Bookvibe is looking to be the "next big thing" in online book discovery sites, competing with the likes of Goodreads, Library Things and Shelfari. The site offers up book recommendations to users by extracting data from their Twitter handle and may add recommendations from Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram (and even Goodreads and LibraryThing) down the road.
In the Q&A roundup this week, Jesse Giles Christiansen chats with Dark Phantom Review about his new novel Pelican Bay; Margaret Coel discusses her Wind River Mysteries with Omnimystery News; Jason Matthews talks to Omnivoracious about his spy career and how his debut novel, Red Sparrow, had to be fine-tooth-combed by the CIA's "publication review board"; and Jeff Pierce has a lengthy interview with prolific author Ed Gorman, originally for January Magazine, which Jeff reposted on his Rap Sheet blog.
Heads up to you bookstores out there. Researchers in Belgium discovered that shoppers are more likely to engage in leisurely browsing—and ultimately purchase books in certain popular genres, including romance novels—if the store is infused with the scent of chocolate. I could have told them that.
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