The longlist for the third annual Warwick Prize for Women in Translation was announced, including the literary murder mystery, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tocarczu, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
On Saturday, October 26, the Texas Book Festival is sponsoring a Lit Crawl Austin, which includes events such as a Noir at the Bar at Cheer Up Charlies. The MysteryPeople will present a "round of hip, hard-boiled, nitty-gritty noir readings" by crime fiction authors Steph Cha, May Cobb, Gabino Iglesias, Joe Lansdale, Craig Johnson, Mike McCrary, and Alex Segura. Scott Montgomery will be taking on hosting duties for the evening.
The annual mystery fan conference Boucheron is coming up later this month in Dallas, but If you missed the inaugural Capital Crime conference in London recently, Ali Karim has a wrap-up for The Rap Sheet. Capital Crime is a celebration of books, films, and TV with a line-up that focuses on a mix of world class talent, rising stars, and newcomers. This year's headliners included David Baldacci, John Connolly, Ian Rankin, Anne Cleeves, and Anthony Horowitz.
If you're going to Bouchercon, you won't want to miss The Ghost Town Mortuary, a radio play by Anthony Boucher, performed by members of Mystery Writers of America NorCal, Friday, November 1, 11 am, at the Landmark Ballroom in the Hyatt Regency. Authors scheduled to participate include Laurie R. King, David Corbett, Kelli Stanley, Reece Hirsch, Randal Brands, Dale Berry, Gigi Pandian, James L'Etoile, and Terry Shames.
The Left Coast Crime National Committee is offering five scholarships to Left Coast Crime #30 in San Diego, California, March 12-15, 2020. The LCC Scholarships include a free registration to the convention in San Diego (currently $215) plus $500 expense money. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)
Serpent's Tail senior commissioning editor, Miranda Jewess, will launch a new crime imprint, Viper, at a launch party in London on November 7th. The 20 titles planned for its inaugural year include the very first title, the "haunting police procedural" A Famished Heart by Irish author Nicola White (due February 2020). Others in the pipeline include The Plague Letters by NPR senior editor Vikki Valentine, writing under her pen name V L Valentine, and David Jackson's standalone thriller, The Resident. Jewess, the former acquisitions and managing editor at Titan Books, joined the company as senior commissioning editor for Serpent’s Tail Crime in February to commission titles across the crime, thriller, and suspense genres.
The British Library has just issued its catalogue for the first half of next year, including half a dozen Crime Classics. Stand-out titles, according to editor Martin Edwards, will be The Woman in the Wardrobe by Peter Shaffer; John Dickson Carr's atmospheric Castle Skull, set in the Rhineland; Mary Kelly's The Spoilt Kill, which won her the CWA Gold Dagger when she was still in her early thirties, and many other upcoming mystery goodies.
The Fall/October issue of Flash Bang Mysteries, edited by B.J. and Brandon Bourg, is up and available online. I am thrilled and honored that my flash piece, "The Barbecue Pot" was chosen as the cover story and Editor's Choice, joining the talented company of authors Alan Orloff, Bruce Harris, and Herschel Cozine in the issue.
In a restored recording from 1954, Ngaio Marsh speaks about her first novel, A Man Lay Dead (1934); relates her "odd" (in her view) process of writing detective fiction; and provides her eyewitness account of the eventful inauguration of E. C. Bentley as Detection Club president in 1936 with Dorothy L. Sayers and John Rhode. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at the Bunburyist)
Georgia Public Broadcasting snagged Amaryllis Fox for a recent profile. Fox's book, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA, is a memoir about the author's time as a spy and is especially helpful for those of you who write spy thrillers (tip: eateries are key to spycraft).
What makes reading a good mystery so satisfying? Vulture collected thoughts and tips from thirteen crime novelists.
Do you like a little bit of the supernatural with your crime fiction? Author John Connolly offered up a defense of cross-genre writing (which includes his own latest work, A Book of Bones) for CrimeReads. And he didn't have to look too far, since Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and even Arthur Conan Doyle had some supernatural literary connections.
In honor of the new Nancy Drew series on the CW network, Book Riot has a "Which Nancy Drew Sidekick are You?" quiz and a list of Nancy Drew computer games for "every mood."
I have to admit it: I'm a closeted pun fan. And apparently, I'm not the only one, as these grammar puns will attest. (I'm sorry, and you're welcome.)
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Nocturne" by John Oughton.
In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element's Scott Adlerberg chatted with Jake Hinkson about his new novel, Dry County, as well as the influences of film noir in Jake's books and thoughts about the origins of evil; GQ's Writer of the Year, James Ellroy, spoke with the magazine about his latest Los Angeles-based noir thriller, reconciling with his second ex-wife, how his mother's murder shaped his writing and finding the "happy gene" via the twin mediums of coffee and "scantily clad young women; spy thriller author John le Carré spoke with The Guardian about Britain, Boris and Brexit; Joy Kluver interviewed William Ryan about his latest novel, A House of Ghosts; and CrimeReads featured one interview with William Kent Krueger on "Writing a New American Epic for the Mississippi River" and another with Lee Child about "Mortality, Sales, Rivals, and Successors."
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