This year's Bouchercon organizers have announced the finalists for the annual Anthony Awards, with winners to be announced at the conference in St. Petersburg, Florida, September 5-9. The nods for Best Novel include The Late Show by Michael Connelly, Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz, Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke, Glass Houses by Louise Penny, and The Force by Don Winslow. For all the finalists in the various categories, head on over to the official conference website
Booklist has an annual "Best Crime Fiction Novels" list, but instead of a calendar year, the qualifying books are published from May of the previous year (2017) through April of the current year. You can find the organization's latest list of the top 10 crime novels and also the top 10 debut crime fiction titles via this link.
Kobo announced the finalists for its $10,000 emerging writer prize for Canadian writers, including the genre category. The nods there include the crime fiction titles Our Little Secret by Roz Nay; Full Curl: A Jenny Willson Mystery by Dave Butler; The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal; Ragged Lake: A Frank Yakabuski Mystery by Ron Corbett; and The Twelve Man Bilbo Choir, by Peter Staadecker.
RT Book Reviews announced the 2017 Reviewers' Choice and Career Achievement Winners, which include a career award to Catherine Coulter for Suspense novels, Christina Dodd for Romantic Suspense, and F. Paul Wilson for Thrillers. The winners of the this year's Mystery/Thriller/Suspense Reviewers' Choice Awards are The Guests on South Battery by Karen White (Mystery); The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes by Leonard Goldberg (Historical Mystery); A Room with a Brew by Joyce Tremel (Amateur Sleuth); Shattered by Allison Brennan (Suspense); and The Lost Order by Steve Berry (Thriller). The award ceremony will take place at the RT Booklovers Convention in Reno on Friday, May 18.
I missed this news tidbit back in March, but Friends of Mystery announced that the 2018 Spotted Owl Award Winner is Ingrid Thoft for her novel, Duplicity. The honor is handed out annually to an author whose primary residence in the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho or the Province of British Columbia. For the list of the 10 other finalists, check out the FOM awards page. (HT to Mystery Fanfare.)
The Daily Mail and Penguin Random House have launched the third year of their nationwide competition to search for a new writing talent. Submissions can be of any adult genre except for saga, science fiction and fantasy, and entrants must not have had a novel published before. The winner will receive a £20,000 advance and publishing contract with PRH imprint Century and the services of literary agent Luigi Bonomi. The inaugural winner was Amy Lloyd for her psychological thriller, The Innocent Wife.
Festival organizers announced last week that the second edition of the Mediterranean Book Festival, to be held in Croatia's Adriatic city of Split on May 9-13, will offer a number of workshops and panels and feature Norway's crime fiction superstar Jo Nesbø as a special guest.
Following controversy, scandal, and allegations of sexual misconduct against the husband of a Swedish Academy member, the Nobel Prize committee has decided not to award a Nobel for Literature this year. It will be the first time that the academy has declined to give out a literature prize since World War II.
Mystery Readers Journal editor, Janet Rudolph, has issued a call for articles for the next issue, which is themed around spies and secret agents. If you'd like to contribute a review, article, or Author! Author! essay, Janet has all the details on her Mystery Fanfare blog. The deadline is June 20.
May is Short Story Month, and to celebrate, the Short Mystery Fiction Society is highlighting one or more members' online stories per day. Check them out here.
"Listicles" - blog posts with lists of one kind or another - are all the rage right now, but some can be fun and serve as a bit of an overview or introduction to a particular book genre or sub-category of crime fiction. So, I give you Crime Fiction Lover's list of Five Nigerian Noir Books; Portside's "Radical Noir: 26 Activist Crime Novels"; Book Riot's "50 Must-Read Young Adult Mysteries" and "10 Murder Mystery Comics"; and Barnes and Noble's "10 of the Best Political Thrillers Ever." Enjoy!
Some unhappy magazine news: unless Crime Syndicate editor Michael Pool can find someone else to take over the editorial duties, the magazine will be closing its virtual doors, and the fourth issue won't be published. Pool is leaving the post to focus more on his own writing but also continue to produce the Crime Syndicate Podcast.
NPR reported on "The Right to Browse": what happened when one library put its books into storage and made the readers cry foul.
Did you ever notice that there's one thing most serial killers seem to have in common?
They do say truth is stranger than fiction, as some FBI agents may have recently discovered. Let's just say that the title of a new movie coming soon could well be "The Drone Wars."
I am truly awed and inspired by this - and something for all of us to aspire to in life.
The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Grime" by Patricia Lacy.
In the Q&A roundup, Elena Hartwell interviewed Jenny Milchman, the author of Cover of Snow which won the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and As Night Falls, the recipient of the 2015 Silver Falchion award for best novel, about her latest work, Wicked River, which was inspired by the author's aborted honeymoon in 1994; Hot Press quizzed David Baldacci about his latest novel, The Fallen, and tackling Trump's America; and the New Zealand Herald chatted with Jane Harper, author of the award-winning and critically-acclaimed novel, The Dry.
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