Mystery Melange

The blog It’s a Crime announced that in honor of CWA’s National Crime Fiction Week in the UK, the Bodleian Library is donating a signed and slipcased edition of P D James’s Talking Detective Fiction for an auction during that week to raise money for The Book Trade Charity.

Mike Ripley’s latest Getting Away With Murder column for Shots is available online, with news about “the London season” (no Jane Austen this time), a look at forthcoming South African crime fiction, and a new anthology, Crimespotting, with “tartan noir” tales by Kate Atkinson, Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre, Margaret Atwood and Denise Mina, Alexander McCall Smith, and others.

Mystery Writers of America will be launching its newest anthology, Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris. The launch party will be held at The Mysterious Bookshop in New York on April 27th, as part of Edgar Week, and many of the 2010 Edgar Award nominees will also be on hand. It’s also not too late to register for the MWA Edgar Week Symposium on April 28th or the awards banquet on the 29th.

Short Sharp Shock, or S3, is looking for novellas for its POD digest anthologies, specifically commercial fiction. Why novellas?  “Many reasons, not the least of which being that the editor enjoys reading and writing them. This neglected format deserves more attention. Also, novellas are a great length for showcasing writers (long enough to allow a rich story to develop, but short enough to include multiple
authors in each issue).”