The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival announced the longlist for the 2018 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, with the winner to be announced at the festival in Harrogate in July. The prize was created to celebrate "the very best in crime fiction" and is open to UK and Irish crime authors. For the entire list of the eighteen finalist books, follow this link to the official festival website.
The Short Mystery Fiction Society announced this year's finalists for the Derringer Awards, honoring the best in mystery, thriller, and suspense short stories, with categories for Best Flash Fiction, Best Short Story, Best Long Story, and Best Novelette. The complete honoree list is available via the SMFS website, with the winners to be announced in May.
The ITW Thriller Fest Conference organizers announced that the 2018 Thriller Legends are Bob and Pat Gussin from Oceanview Publishing for their unparalleled contributions to the crime fiction world, the writers, and the art of the thrill. Oceanview Publishing was established in 2006 and has received many awards and nominations such as Independent Publishers Awards, Indie Excellence Awards, and ALA Book of the Year. The Gussins will be honored at the awards banquet on the Saturday evening of ThrillerFest, which runs July 10 – 14.
One of this year's Sarton Women's Book Awards that are sponsored by the Story Circle Network, an international nonprofit association of women writers, was Christine Evelyn Volker for her crime fiction work, Venetian Blood: Murder in a Sensuous City. The award program is named in honor of May Sarton, who is remembered for her outstanding contributions to women's literature as a memoirist, novelist, and poet.
The Florida Book Awards also announced this year's winners, including those in the Popular Fiction category. The Gold Winner was Patricia Gussin for her book Come Home (Oceanview Publishing); the Silver award went to Robert Macomber for An Honorable War (Pineapple Press); and the Bronze winner was Ward Larsen for Assassin’s Code (Forge Books).
Ace Atkins, the bestselling author of two dozen mysteries and thrillers, will receive the Hall-Waters Prize from Troy University on April 20, 2018 and speak the following day at the Alabama Book Festival, in Montgomery, Alabama. The award is presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts.
Tonight at St. Johnsbury, Vermont's Athenaeum, it's an "Evening of Pulp Fiction." Editor Dan Szczesny, along with authors S. J. Cahill and Judith Janoo, will hold a multi-media presentation including readings centered around Murder Ink, a three-volume anthology of newsroom detective short fiction told by authors from around New England.
Amazon’s Kindle Storyteller Award will return for a second year. Celebrating the work of self-published authors, independent of genre, the £20,000 prize drew thousands of entries in its inaugural year, and in 2018, Amazon will also award £5,000 to a second title in what it is calling a Judge’s Prize. The next Kindle Storyteller Award is open to all authors who publish their book through Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon.co.uk from May 1st to August 31st, 2018. Last year's winner was David Leadbeater for his Crime Thriller The Relic Hunters.
National Book Foundation’s "‘Book Rich Environments" is entering its second season. The program is designed to distribute free, new books to young readers through public housing authorities in the United States to combat lack of literary access, often termed "book deserts," by connecting communities with resources that help foster lifelong, joyful relationships between readers and books. The number of books handed out will jump from 270,000 last year to 422,000 this year, with programming at 37 sites in 19 states.
Crime fiction has become the most popular fiction genre for the first time in the UK, according to data revealed at The London Book Fair. Sales of crime and thriller books have increased by 19% since 2015, marking the first time the genre has overtaken sales of general and literary fiction. Last year some 18.7 million units of crime fiction were sold, compared to 18.1 million general and literary fiction, according to data from Nielsen BookScan.
Writing for The Guardian, Henry Sutton, a senior lecturer in creative writing at UEA and director of the MA Crime Fiction, also noted the reasons why "thrillers are leaving other books for dead," noting that crime fiction is "fast developing as the most versatile narrative of our times."
A librarian, hoping to solve an odd book mystery pointed out by one of her patrons, discovered the secret codes used by elderly library-goers.
The Washington Post reported on a book mystery of a different sort: why is a small town in Virginia, population 4,000, responsible for producing some 140 million books a year?
NPR reported on the Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and their sometimes-funny, sometimes-touching typewriter experiment that has resulted in the book Notes From a Public Typewriter.
The Paris Review took a look at William Shakespeare's Twitter account. You read that right.
The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Anatomy of a Good Thing Gone Bad" by John Dorroh. And don't forget to check out the 30 Days at the Five-Two series of posts celebrating National Poetry Month.
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