Mystery Melange

The Australian Crime Writers Association has announced the 2015 winners of the Ned Kelly Awards, which are voted on by booksellers, book industry luminaries, readers, critics, reviewers and commentators. This year's winner for Best Novel is Eden by Candice Fox; Best First Novel: Quota by Jock Serong; True crime: This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial by Helen Garner; and the S.D. Harvey short story award: "Short Term People" by Andrea Gillum.

J. E. Irvin won the inaugural Jeremiah Healy Mystery Writing Award on Saturday, August 15, during the annual Mystery Writers Key West Fest, a three day mystery genre festival set in the tropical paradise of the Florida Keys. The other finalists were Jack Bates for All Hocked Up; Gregory S. Dew for Portside Screw; and Lewis Haskell (a/k/a Crichton Lewis) for Square Grouper.

Tomorrow evening, Mystery Readers NorCal is hosting a Literary Salon featuring international mysteries set in present day China and Thailand with Lisa Brackmann & Timothy Hallinan. There is limited space, but you can RVSP via Janet Rudolph's Mystery Fanfare blog.

Hat tip to Paul D. Brazill for taking note of ALIBI, the first Slovenian festival of Crime and Noir literature, where Brazill will be one of the featured authors, along with Richard Godwin, Eddie Vega, Andrej Predin, Neven Škrgatić.

The 2016 Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel is accepting submissions until December 31 of this year. Any author of a first novel by a North American woman published by an American publisher during the 2015 calendar year is eligible. For more information, check out the award website.

After searching through Agatha Christie's archives, theater producer Julius Green unearthed ten previously unknown plays by the author, which will be published by HarperCollins on September 10 in Green's book, Curtain Up: Agatha Christie - A Life in Theatre.  

This year's Library of Congress National Book Festival (at the Washington Convention Center on September 5) will have increased broadcast coverage. In addition to C-SPAN's Book TV, PBS will offer a live-stream broadcast via PBS.org from noon to 6 p.m. hosted by Jeffrey Brown, senior correspondent and chief arts correspondent of PBS NewsHour, and Rich Fahle of the Detroit public station's Book View Now. The media project is spearheaded by Fahle, who has also brought such coverage to the Miami Book Fair, the Los Angeles Times of Books, BookExpo America, and BookCon. (Hat tip to Shelf Awareness.)

Crime fiction author Laura Lippman penned a heartfelt essay for Tin House about her hometown of Baltimore, noting that it took the city a long time to recover from the riots of 1968 and wondering how long it will take "Charm City" to get anywhere close to that name again after the recent riots and unrest.

BBC Magazine profiled the enduring relevance of Eric Ambler's 1930s spy novels such as The Mask of Dimitrios, which created a new type of thriller and how reading Ambler today, you can't help having a sense of deja vu with the cycles of history returning to something not so very different from Ambler's Europe.

Jezebel investigated Investigation Discovery (ID) and its lineup of grisly true-crime documentary programming, wondering why women are "obsessed" with the network. ID has become the third-most-watched ad-supported network among women ages 25-54 in just seven years on air, according to Nielsen, and is currently the 11th most popular network on all of cable television.

Speaking of true crime, Harold Schecht spoke with the True Clime blog about his new book based on Alfred Packer, the Wild West cannibal who became an unlikely folk hero.

Book Riot's Leila Roy is on a virtual trip around the world via female crime writers. Her first stop is Norway, where she takes a look at the land of canned mackerel for breakfast, fjords and authors Anne Holt, Karin Fossum, Kjersti Scheen, and Pernille Rygg.

Suspense Magazine's August issue has interviews with Gayle Lynds, Todd Moss, Shane Gericke, Sean Chercover, and Sandra Campbell, as well as D.P. Lyle on forensics, a look at social media, and book excerpts, reviews, stories, and more.  

The latest issue of the e-zine Mysterical-E is out, with nine thrilling new short stories and the usual entertaining interviews and columns by Gerald So, Christine Verstraete, and more. You can read it for free via the zine's website.

Also new and free for your reading pleasure is the latest issue of Yellow Mama, with original noir stories, poetry and other dark goodies in an issue "dedicated to the majestic Cecil the lion."

The new crime poem at the 5-2 is "A Fall to Grace" by Elizabeth Lash.

In the Q&A roundup, Peter Robinson spoke with the Huffington Post about his crime novels set in Yorkshire featuring Inspector Alan Banks; Brad Parks was grilled by The Mystery People about his series with New Jersey newspaper journalist Carter Ross; the Mystery People also chatted with Richard Goodfellow about his debut thriller, The Collector Of Secrets, set in Japan; and Omnimystery News welcomed author David Hagerty about his new mystery, They Tell Me You Are Wicked.