Mystery Melange

 

Canongate is launching a new crime fiction imprint called Black Thorn in May 2019, following its acquisition of fiction publisher Severn House in 2017. Publishing a wide range of titles from Severn House’s list into paperback for the first time, Black Thorn will release two of the list's paperbacks each month, beginning with Catherine O’Connell’s The Last Night Out, and The Savage Shore by David Hewson, author of The Killing trilogy.

Penn State Professor of English Emeritus Richard Kopley was recently presented with the Lifetime Achievement and Service Award by the Poe Studies Association at the 2018 International Poe and Hawthorne Conference in Kyoto, Japan. Kopley is an internationally known author and literary scholar with expertise in classic American literature and one of the world’s foremost experts on Edgar Allan Poe. His published works include Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries, which takes an in-depth look at Poe’s detective stories that helped inspire the entire detective genre.

Internationally acclaimed thriller author Ken Follett has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hertfordshire. More than 160 million copies of his 31 books have been sold in more than 80 countries and in 33 languages. In June this year, Follett was also made a CBE for services to literature and charity and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

From the truth is stranger than fiction department: Nancy L. Crampton Brophy, a romantic suspense author, was arrested for the murder of her culinary-instructor husband. Before her arrest, she had posted on Facebook about how devastated she was by his death and attended a candlelight vigil.

The New York Post reported on a political columnist, who also penned a spy novel, who was secretly a government spy.

Here's some happy bookseller news: Nearly one year after wildfires devastated communities in Northern California, bookstores have largely recovered, thanks to loyal customers, community support, and the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc). The Ann Arbor-based nonprofit aids booksellers around the country in times of need, but the foundation faced what it called unprecedented demand last year due to wildfires, floods, and mudslides. In 2017, the foundation distributed more than $234,000 to support 94 booksellers and booksellers’ families in need—more than Binc had distributed the two previous years combined.

The Feedspot website has a listing of crime fiction blogs and I'm pleased In Reference to Murder is listed among them. If you check out the link, you might find some new blogs of interest to follow.

Some "fun" true crime, for a change; is this quite possibly the worst robber of all time?

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "The Good Old Days" by Etta Abrahams.
 

In the Q&A roundup, Alex Aster quizzed The Woman in Cabin 10 author Ruth Ware about her writing process, next novel, and advice to young writers; authors Dietrich Kalteis (Poughkeepsie Shuffle) and Alex Shaw (Cold East) took Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; and Reed Farrel Coleman chatted with the Mystery People about his latest novel, Colorblind.