The organizers of Granite Noir have announced that Aberdeen’s crime fiction festival will return between February 19-21, 2021 as an online celebration of the very best of home grown and international crime writing. The lineup includes Jo Nesbo and Camilla Lackberg who will lead the Nordic contingent, as well as Scottish authors Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride and Peter May, and American authors David Baldacci from Virginia and Attica Locke in Los Angeles. There will be additional authors, bloggers, and podcasters joining in, and a Bold New Voices Panel featuring the ones to watch. (HT to Shots Magazine)
Also on February 19, a panel called "Criminal Minds" (part of the 2021 Auckland Fringe Festival) will present 10 crime writers in 100 thrilling minutes on Facebook Live. Covering a criminally large range of small town crime to international espionage and finishing with a sliver of paranormal tension, these ten authors represent some of New Zealand’s best crime writers. Those scheduled to appear include John Ling, Ngaio Marsh Award finalists Nathan Blackwell and Nikki Crutchley, ex Police Officer Ian Austein, Amazon bestseller Kirsten McKenzie, emerging author Madeleine Eskedahl, comic horror author Andrene Low, serving police officer Angus McLean, award winner Michael Bennett, and more.
The Romantic Novelists’ Association announced the shortlists for their prestigious 2021 Romantic Novel Awards. The winners of the awards will be presented by actor and presenter Larry Lamb in a digital event on Monday 8th March. Among the nominees are those in the Jackie Collins Romantic Thriller Award:
The Forgotten Sister, Nicola Cornick, HQ
The House by the Sea, Louise Douglas, Boldwood Books
Death Comes to Cornwall, Kate Johnson, Dash Digital, Orion
The Twins, Jane Lark, One More Chapter, HarperCollins
Escape to the Little Chateau, Marie Laval, Choc Lit
Combined print book and e-book sales hit 942 million units in 2020 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan (for the US market), a 9% increase over 2019 and the most unit sales recorded in a single year by BookScan since the service was created in 2004. In a webinar held last week, Kristen McLean, executive director of NPD Books, said the gain was due to a combination of strong sales of both print and digital books. While this is good news for some publishers due to online sales, the news for shuttered and/or partially opened brick-and-mortar bookstores hasn't been as rosy.
For those fans of U.S. football, Janet Rudolph's Mystery Fanfare blog gets ready for the "big game" with a list of "Murder at the Super Bowl and other Football Mysteries."
Sara Driscoll, the pen name of Jen J. Danna and Ann Vanderlaan who co-author the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries and the FBI K-9s series, applied the Page 69 Test to their latest FBI K-9s novel, Leave No Trace.
Via the Spybusters blog, "The Darwin Award for spying goes to..."
From the mysteries of science department comes this bit of fun news: Meet YInMn, the first new blue pigment in two centuries, created accidentally in 2009 by chemists at Oregon State University.
The featured monthly story at All Due Respect is "Any Deadly Thing" by Emily Bay Moore.
There's also a new story up at Punk Noir Magazine, "Shattered Delusions" by John Patrick Robbins.
The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Five Lips Kissing Back" by B. Frederick Foley.
In the Q&A spotlight, Joanna Schaffhausen, who holds a doctorate in psychology, stopped by Writer Interviews to reflect on her long-standing interest in the brain and to discuss her new novel, the fourth book in her Ellery Hathaway mystery series, Every Waking Hour.
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