Mystery Melange, Halloween Edition

Congratulations to Oakmont, Pennsylvania's Mystery Lovers Bookshop, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary on Halloween with a free all-day event. Features will include author Nancy Martin reading from her new novel, Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything, and store founders Mary Alice Gorman and Richard Goldman will participate in a meet and greet and a "very special announcement." There will also be a 10-Cent Book Sale, with all proceeds going to charity. (HT to Shelf Awareness.)

Don Winslow has won the 2015 T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award for The Cartel. The other finalists in the annual award handed out by the the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association were Marry, Kiss, Kill by Anne Flett-Giordano and The Replacements by David Putnam.

Janet Rudolph has a list of dozens of Halloween Crime Fiction titles on her Mystery Fanfare blog for you, enough to haunt you for weeks.

Suspense Magazine kicked off the holiday season handing out treats like exclusive interviews with Karin Slaughter, Sandra Brown, Simon Toyne, Matthew Palmer, and Pan Jenoff. There are also columns on forensics from Dr. D.P. Lyle, thriller news from Jenny Milchman, and over 20 pages of book reviews, short stories, and other articles; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar talks about his new mystery featuring Mycroft Holmes; and much more.

If you're near Berkeley, California, tomorrow evening, join Mystery Readers NorCal for a panel on Jewish Noir. The panel is in celebration of a new anthology featuring contemporary tales of crime and other dark deeds and will feature editor, Kenneth Wishnia, and co-conspirators Summer Brenner, Michael J. Cooper, Steven Wishnia, Melanie Dante, Wendy Hornsby and Stephen Jay Schwartz.

The fall edition of Mystery Scene magazine features an Oline Cogdill interview with author Craig Johnson, as well as Robert Taylor, who plays the Johnson's Wyoming sheriff in the Netflix series Longmire; and Michael Mallory offers an overview of Bradbury’s early pulp short stories and innovative mystery novels.

Wondering what to serve at your Halloween party this year? Mashable has an assortment of Halloween cocktails inspired by your favorite horror movie villains, and the Mystery Lovers Kitchen has healthy Edible Witches' Brooms and decadent spider cookies.

If you're panicking over your Halloween costume and Jack o'Lantern carving, Book Riot has a scary array of literary Halloween costumes you can wear year 'round, and Mashable has three no-carve pumpkin ideas (no guts!).

If you're mood for a classic horror flick on Halloween the Classic Film and TV Cafe blog lists and ranks the Dracula films.

This obituary notice came too late for last week's Melange blog post, but mystery author Joyce Lavene, wife of Jim Lavene, has passed away. The couple authored over 60 novels including the Pumpkin Patch Mysteries; Purple Door Detective Agency, Taxi for the Dead Paranomal Mysteries, Retired Witches Mysteries, Missing Pieces Mysteries, Renaissance Faire Mysteries, Peggy Lee Garden Mysteries, and Sharyn Howard Mysteries, and much more.

The crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Ode to the Homicidal 'Gentlemen'" by Tonia Kalouria. Also, editor Gerald So put out a call for poems about James Bond, Ian Fieming, the theme songs, the movies vs. reality, etc. by November 6, 2015, the U.S. premiere date of SPECTRE. Accepted poems will appear on the site in December and beyond.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Jimmy Vargas taking Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; Kevin Hurley stopped by Ominimystery News to talk about his new thriller Cut and Cover; and the San Diego Tribune chatted with Elizabeth George about her latest book in the Inspector Lynley series, A Banquet of Consequences.