Mystery Melange

If you're in New York City tonight, the Mysterious Bookshop is holding its annual Christmas party, with a book signing of the anthology Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop. Edited by Otto Penzler, it contains 17 stories originally printed in chapbooks and given to bookshop customers as Christmas gifts over the past 17 years. Some of the authors of those stories will be on hand, hopefully to include Charles Ardai, Lisa Atkinson, Lawrence Block, Mary Higgins Clark, Thomas H. Cook, Ron Goulart, Jeremiah Healy, Rupert Holmes, Andrew Klavan, Michael Malone, Anne Perry, S.J. Rozan, and Jonathan Santlofer.

Do Some Damage is hosting a Christmas Noir Flash Challenge. Submit 600 to1000 words of the "best Christmas noir, transgressive, caper or hardboiled fiction you've got" by December 19th, and the chosen stories will be posted starting Monday, December 20th, running until Monday, January 4th. Everyone who submits a story will be entered into a drawing for free books…and stuff.

Jen Forbus has another challenge for you, but it doesn't start until January and it lasts the entire year. She calls it the Inaugural Criminal Plots Reading Challenge. All you have to do is read six books within the six categories she lists (and you don't have to have a blog to do it). Everyone who completes the challenge will be entered for a chance at one of three prize packs.

A couple of December magazine releases:  Gumshoe Mystery Review, with news, reviews, and short fiction by Walter Giersbach.  And the Noir Journal has posted its latest book reviews, starting off with The Damage Done by Hilary Davidson.

If you're just discovering Scandinavian crime fiction thanks to Steig Larsson, then here's a handy primer of some of the other noteworthy authors writing in that chilly part of the world.

If you need some legal tips for your writing, or if you're just a fan of all things related to criminal justice, check out the 4th Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100, with favorite law-related blogs.

For all you Frankenstein fans, the handwritten first draft of Mary Shelley's masterpiece has gone on display in Britain for the first time. The exhibit also includes work by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary's parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. It's a cooperative venture of the Bodleian Libraries and the New York Public Library. After it ends its run in the UK in March, the exhibit will head to New York City.