In some areas of the country, kids are going back to school this week. It seems so early, with another month of summer. As an adult, you might not have the summer off. Whether or not you do, you can still take time for a cozy getaway. Shari Randall recently wrote about “New England Cozy Mysteries: 7 New England Destinations for Armchair Mystery Lovers.” Her article is featured in CriminalElement.com. https://bit.ly/2OIBoKN
Randall herself has a new Lobster Shack mystery, Against the Claw. Once you’ve read her article, you can order her book, or any of the other titles covered. Check out the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com
If you take the time to watch the Del Rey Books Panel from the San Diego Comic-Con, you’ll recognize some familiar faces and authors. Local favorite Kevin Hearne is on the panel, along with his co-author for Kill the Farm Boy, Delilah S. Dawson. Once you read the short summary, you might want to watch the video and check out their books. Don’t forget to check the Web Store for the books, including signed copies of Kill the Farm Boy. https://store.poisonedpen.com
Here’s the information about the Del Rey panel.
Adventure, SFF, and fairy tale authors discuss their new and upcoming books. Featuring Katherine Arden (The Winternight trilogy), Pierce Brown (Red Rising series), Delilah S. Dawson (Kill the Farm Boy), Christie Golden (World of Warcraft: Before the Storm), Kevin Hearne (Kill the Farm Boy), Sylvain Neuvel (The Themis Files), and Naomi Novik (Spinning Silver). Moderated by Tricia Narwani (Del Rey editorial director).
This is the one Georgie’s fans have been waiting to read. And, Poisoned Pen’s copies come with a special wedding invitation designed for readers who buy from the Web Store. You can order your copy here. https://bit.ly/2LV4U1i
Here’s the summary of Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding.
In the days leading up to her wedding to Darcy O’Mara, Lady Georgiana Rannoch takes on the responsibilities of a grand estate, but proving she can run a household just may be the death of her in the new Royal Spyness Mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of On Her Majesty’s Frightfully Secret Service.
If only Darcy and I had eloped! What I thought would be a simple wedding has been transformed into a grand affair, thanks to the attendance of the queen, who has offered up the princesses as bridesmaids. Silly me! I thought that withdrawing from the royal line of succession would simplify my life. But before Darcy and I tie the knot in front of queen and country, we have to find a place to live as man and wife…
House hunting turns out to be a pretty grim affair. Just as we start to lose hope, my globetrotting godfather offers us his fully staffed country estate. Mistress of Eynsleigh I shall be! With Darcy off in parts unknown, I head to Eynsleigh alone, only to have my hopes dashed. The grounds are in disarray and the small staff is suspiciously incompetent. Not to mention the gas tap leak in my bedroom, which I can only imagine was an attempt on my life. Something rotten is afoot–and bringing the place up to snuff may put me six feet under before I even get a chance to walk down the aisle…
Poisoned Pen Press author Sulari Gentill continues to appear on award lists in Australia. Her novel, Crossing the Lines, is still on the shortlist for the Ned Kelly Awards. You can order Crossing the Lines, and Gentill’s other novels through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2N5KsYB
The Australian Crime Writers Association just announced the shortlists for the 21st Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Fiction. The Ned Kelly Awards celebrate the best in Australian crime fiction and true crime. The shortlists have been drawn from over seventy five entries across three award categories.
Six exceptional crime novels made it onto the shortlist of the the Best Crime Fiction Award. The list includes multiple Ned Kelly Award winners Garry Disher and Candice Fox as well as newcomers to the shortlist. The shortlist includes:
Marlborough Man by Alan Carter
Under Cold Bright Lights by Garry Disher
Redemption Point by Candice Fox
Crossing the Lines by Sulari Gentill
The Lone Child by Anna George
The Student by Iain Ryan
There are two other categories of Ned Kelly Awards.
The shortlist for the Best Debut Crime has four entries from writers who are already being widely recognized for their contribution to the genre:
Wimmera by Mark Brandi
The Dark Lake by Sarah Bailey
The Girl in Kellers Way by Megan Goldin
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
The Best True Crime shortlist is a mix of academic, adventure, historic and courtroom stories:
The Contractor by Mark Abernethy
Unmaking a Murder: The Mysterious Death of Anna-Jane Cheney by Graham Archer
The Suitcase Baby by Tanya Bretherton
The Fatalist by Campbell McConachie
Whiteley on Trial by Gabriella Coslovich
The winners will be announced during the Melbourne Writers Festival with the awards ceremony on August 26th.
*****
Congratulations to Sulari Gentill for making the shortlist for the Ned Kelly Awards. Here’s the description of Gentill’s Crossing the Lines.
“As one for whom certain story lines and characters have become as real as life itself, Crossing the Lines was a pure delight, a swift yet psychologically complex read, cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed.” –Dean Koontz, New York Times Bestselling author
Sulari Gentill, author of the 1930s Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, jumps to the post-modern in Crossing the Lines.
A successful writer, Madeleine, creates a character, Edward, and begins to imagine his life. He, too, is an author. Edward is in love with a woman, Willow, who’s married to a man Edward loathes, and who loathes him, but he and Willow stay close friends. She’s an artist. As Madeleine develops the plot, Edward attends a gallery show where a scummy critic is flung down a flight of fire stairs…murdered. Madeleine, still stressed from her miscarriages and grieving her inability to have a child, grows more and more enamored of Edward, spending more and more time with him and the progress of the investigation and less with her physician husband, Hugh, who in turn may be developing secrets of his own.
As Madeline engages more with Edward, he begins to engage back. A crisis comes when Madeleine chooses the killer in Edward’s story and Hugh begins to question her immersion in her novel. Yet Crossing the Lines is not about collecting clues and solving crimes. Rather it’s about the process of creation, a gradual undermining of the authority of the author as the act of writing spirals away and merges with the story being told, a self-referring narrative crossing over boundaries leaving in question who to trust, and who and what is true.
For fans of Paul Auster, Jesse Kellerman, Vera Caspary’s Laura, Martin Amis, Haruki Murakami, Marisha Pessl.
In the August edition of Booknews you’ll find a listing of events for authors Rhys Bowen, Diana Gabaldon with Susanna Kearsley, William Kent Krueger & Jeff Parker, Hank Phillippi Ryan and Steve Hamilton, plus many more as well as a rich selection of Signed Books, Our Paperback recommendations, Classics, and an extra helping of British fiction, crime and otherwise. Click here to view the PDF
The Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) recently announced the shortlists for the prestigious annual Dagger awards for crime writing. The Crime Writers’ Association had announced earlier that Michael Connelly is to receive the 2018 CWA Diamond Dagger, the highest honor in British crime writing. The Dagger award recognizes authors whose crime writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre.
Michael Connelly
Here are the shortlists for the other Dagger awards. The winners of the CWA Daggers will be announced at the Dagger Awards dinner in London on October 25. This gives you plenty of time to read nominated books. Don’t forget to look for these titles in the Web Store! https://store.poisonedpen.com/
THE GOLD DAGGER
The Gold Dagger is awarded to the best crime novel of the year.
The CWA Gold Dagger 2018 Shortlist
Author Title
Steve Cavanagh The Liar
Mick Herron London Rules
Dennis Lehane Since We Fell
Attica Locke Bluebird, Bluebird
Abir Mukherjee A Necessary Evil
Emma Viskic Resurrection Bay
THE CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER
Emily Koch If I Die Before I Wake
Attica Locke Bluebird, Bluebird
Colette McBeth An Act of Silence
CJ Tudor The Chalk Man
Don Winslow The Force
THE CWA JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER
William Boyle Gravesend
Joe Ide I.Q.
Danya Kukafka Girl in Snow
Melissa Scrivner Love Lola
Khurrum Rahman East of Hounslow
Emma Viskic Resurrection Bay
THE CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
Piu Eatwell Black Dahlia Red Rose
David Grann Killers of the Flower Moon
Thomas Harding Blood on the Page
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich The Fact of a Body
Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong A False Report
Laura Thompson Rex V Edith Thompson
THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER
Abir Mukherjee A Necessary Evil
L. C. Tyler Fire
Thomas Mullen Lightning Men
Ngaio Marsh & Stella Duffy Money in the Morgue
Nicola Upson Nine Lessons
Rory Clements Nucleus
THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER
Author, Translator Title
Oliver Bottini, tr Jamie Bulloch Zen and the Art of Murder
Pierre Lemaitre, tr France Wynne Three Days and a Life
Henning Mankell, tr Marlaine Delargy After the Fire
Jon Michelet, tr Don Bartlett The Frozen Woman
Dolores Redondo, tr Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garzia Offering to the Storm
Fred Vargas, tr Sian Reynolds The Accordionist
THE CWA SHORT STORY DAGGER
“The Last Siege of Bothwell Castle” by Chris Brookmyre Bloody Scotland
“Second Son” by Lee Child No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories
“Smoking Kills” by Erin Kelly “The Body” Killer Women Crime Club Anthology 2
“Nemo Me Impune Lacessit” by Denise Mina Bloody Scotland
“Accounting for Murder” by Christine Poulson Mystery Tour: CWA Anthology of Short Stories
THE CWA DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY
Nominated by libraries.
Martin Edwards
Nicci French
Edward Marston
Peter May
Rebecca Tope
Simon Kernick
THE CWA DEBUT DAGGER
For the opening of a crime novel from a writer without a traditional publishing contract.
The Eternal Life of Ezra Ben Simeon by Bill Crotty
Flynn Berry’s novel, A Double Life, is the current Hot Book of the Week at the Poisoned Pen. Berry appears at the Poisoned Pen on Tuesday, July 31 at 7 PM, but, if you can’t make it, you can still order a signed copy of A Double Life through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2v2409L
If you’d like to read a review of the book, Karen Valby wrote one for The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/2mwXWkA
Here’s the summary of A Double Life, as it appears in the Web Store.
“A thrilling page-turner.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
“Breathtaking . . . As shocking as it is satisfying.” —The New York Times Book Review
A gripping, intense, stunningly written novel of psychological suspense from the award-winning author of Under the Harrow
Claire is a hardworking doctor leading a simple, quiet life in London. She is also the daughter of the most notorious murder suspect in the country, though no one knows it.
Nearly thirty years ago, while Claire and her brother slept upstairs, a brutal crime was committed in her family’s townhouse. The next morning, her father’s car was found abandoned near the English Channel, with bloodstains on the front seat. Her mother insisted she’d seen him in the house that night, but his powerful, privileged friends maintained his innocence. The first lord accused of murder in more than a century, he has been missing ever since.
When the police tell Claire they’ve found him, her carefully calibrated existence begins to fracture. She doesn’t know if she’s the daughter of a murderer or a wronged man, but Claire will soon learn how far she’ll go to finally find the truth.
Loosely inspired by one of the most notorious unsolved crimes of the 20th century ““ the Lord Lucan case ““ A Double Life is at once a riveting page-turner and a moving reflection on women and violence, trauma and memory, and class and privilege.
Named a Must-Read Book of the Summer by O Magazine, BBC, CrimeReads, and PureWow
It’s a special ticketed Pop Up Event at the Poisoned Pen on Friday, August 10 at 7 PM. Susanna Kearsley signs Bellewether, while Diana Gabaldon will host and sign her Introduction to The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, The Celebrated California Bandit, as well as her collection of Outlander short fiction, Seven Stones to Stand or Fall.
Here are the details.
Friday, August 10, 7:00 PM
Location: The Poisoned Pen
Tickets Required ($20 each)
Purchase themby calling the store ““ 480 947 2974 or 888 560 9919
Your ticket entitles you to one copy of the three paperbacks listed above. Other books by both authors are available for purchase as well including the hardcover edition of Bellewether.
Susanna Kearsley signs Bellewether (Sourcebooks $16.99 or $26.99)
Parallel suspense between today and 1760s America revolving around a Colonial era home now a museum and two French officers quartered there on a family as the French and the British fought for control of Canada, a battle concluded in 1763.
*****
“I’ve loved every one of Susanna’s books! She has bedrock research and a butterfly’s delicate touch with characters—sure recipe for historical fiction that sucks you in and won’t let go!”— DIANA GABALDON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outlander
“The house, when I first saw it, seemed intent on guarding what it knew; but we all learned, by the end of it, that secrets aren’t such easy things to keep.”
It’s late summer, war is raging, and families are torn apart by divided loyalties and deadly secrets. In this complex and dangerous time, a young French Canadian lieutenant is captured and billeted with a Long Island family, an unwilling and unwelcome guest. As he begins to pitch in with the never-ending household tasks and farm chores, Jean-Philippe de Sabran finds himself drawn to the daughter of the house. Slowly, Lydia Wilde comes to lean on Jean-Philippe, true soldier and gentleman, until their lives become inextricably intertwined. Legend has it that the forbidden love between Jean-Philippe and Lydia ended tragically, but centuries later, the clues they left behind slowly unveil the true story.
*****
John Rollin Ridge.The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (Penguin, $17.00) With a new foreword by Diana Gabaldon, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series!
The first novel to feature a Mexican American hero: an adventure tale about Mexicans rising up against U.S. rule in California, based on the real-life bandit who inspired the creation of Zorro, the Lone Ranger, and Batman
An action-packed blend of folk tale, romance, epic, and myth, The Life and Adventures of JoaquÃn Murieta tells the story of the Gold Rush-era Mexican immigrant JoaquÃn Murieta, whose efforts to find fortune and happiness are thwarted by white settlers who murder his family and drive him off his land. In retaliation, Murieta organizes a band of more than 2,000 outlaws”“including the sadistic “Three-Fingered Jack””“who take revenge by murdering, stealing horses, and robbing miners, all with the ultimate goal of reconquering California.
The first novel written by a Native American and the first novel published in California, The Life and Adventures of JoaquÃn Murieta speaks to the ways in which ethical questions of national security and racialized police violence have long been a part of U.S. history. This edition features excerpts from popular rewritings of the novel, including Johnston McCulley’s first novel about Zorro, The Curse of Capistrano (also known as The Mark of Zorro).
Are you familiar with the Miss Fisher mysteries written by Kerry Greenwood? The books, set in Australia in the 1920s, are published by Poisoned Pen Press. You can order them through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2JfL7W5 Of course, the books have also been made into an Australian television series. Here’s just a little information about the first book in the series, Cocaine Blues.
This is where it all started! The first classic Phryne Fisher mystery, featuring our delectable heroine, cocaine, communism and adventure. Phryne leaves the tedium of English high society for Melbourne, Australia, and never looks back. The London season is in full fling at the end of the 1920s, but the Honorable Phryne Fisher—she of the green-gray eyes, diamant garters and outfits that should not be sprung suddenly on those of nervous dispositions—is rapidly tiring of the tedium of arranging flowers, making polite conversations with retired colonels, and dancing with weak-chinned men. Instead, Phryne decides it might be rather amusing to try her hand at being a lady detective in Melbourne, Australia. Almost immediately from the time she books into the Windsor Hotel, Phryne is embroiled in mystery: poisoned wives, cocaine smuggling rings, corrupt cops and communism—not to mention erotic encounters with the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse—until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
*****
Now, we have news of a spin-off. According to TV Tonight,
“Seven has announced a spin-off of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries to centre around the niece of Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis).
Ms. Fisher’s MODern Murder Mysteries will be 4 telemovies set in Melbourne in the 1960s with “˜Peregrine Fisher’ in the title role, created by Every Cloud Productions’ Deb Cox and Fiona Eagger.
Set in 1964, audiences will meet the gorgeously reckless Peregrine Fisher who inherits a windfall when the famous aunt she never knew goes missing over the highlands of New Guinea. Peregrine must prove herself brilliant enough to become a world class private detective in her own right.”
It’s Friday! Let’s have a little fun with Lisa Scottoline’s soon-to-be-released novel, Feared.
Scottoline will be at the Poisoned Pen on Monday, Aug. 13 at 17 PM to discuss and sign her books. She’s always entertaining, so you won’t want to miss the program. If you have to miss it, though, you can pre-order a signed copy of Fearedthrough the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2qOXXCb
Here’s the summary of Feared.
In the new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, Mary DiNunzio’s ruthless nemesis Nick Machiavelli is back…with a vengeance.
When three men announce that they are suing the Rosato & DiNunzio law firm for reverse sex discrimination—claiming that they were not hired because they were men—Mary DiNunzio and Bennie Rosato are outraged. To make matters worse, their one male employee, John Foxman, intends to resign, claiming that there is some truth to this case.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer is Nick Machiavelli, who has already lost to Mary once and is now back with a vengeance —determined not to not only win, but destroy the firm. It soon becomes clear that Machiavelli will do anything in his power to achieve his end…even after the case turns deadly. The stakes have never been higher for Mary and her associates as they try to keep Machiavelli at bay, solve a murder, and save the law firm they love…or they could lose everything they’ve worked for. Told with Scottoline’s trademark gift for twists, turns, heart, and humanity, this latest thriller asks the question: Is it better to be loved, or feared…
Feared, the sixth entry in the acclaimed Rosato & DiNunzio series, expertly explores what happens when we are tempted to give in to our own inner darkness.
Praise for the Rosato & DiNunzio series:
“Fast paced, heart-tugging…readers will enjoy seeing how it all plays out.” —Publishers Weekly on Exposed
“The final curtain will find you cheering, and Scottoline will have earned every hurrah.” —Kirkus (starred review) on Exposed
“[The Rosato and DiNunzio stories] are always her best works and this newest is the best of the best in this series.” —Huffington Post on Exposed
*****
Now, what about the fun, besides Scottoline’s appearance here? It’s been a while since we shared one of Adam Wagner’s Gifnotes. Wagner regularly appears on CriminalElement.com with his amusing summaries of books. This time, he addresses Feared. https://bit.ly/2LNtE8p
