The inaugural Spymasters Book Prize 2025 revealed the titles that made the shortlist. The six finalists include: The Peacock and the Sparrow by IS Berry; Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd; Spy Hunter by HB Lyle; Honour Among Spies by Merle Nygate; Midnight in Vienna by Jane Thynne; and Shadow of Poison by Peter Tonkin. The award is open to any spy novel published in hardback or paperback in 2024, including both historical and modern spy thrillers. The winner, who will receive a cash prize of £500, will be announced at a ceremony on September 3.
Friends of the Milton Public Library is hosting the panel, "Make Mine Murder: A Killer Panel of New England Crime Writers Reveal the Secrets Behind the Page," September 11 in Milton, Massachusetts. Lucy Burdette, Elise Hart Kipness, Sarah Stewart Taylor, and moderator Hallie Ephron will offer behind the scenes details of bestselling whodunits, edge-of-your-seat thrillers, and literary mysteries and how they craft suspense and plot twists, and bring their unforgettable characters to life.
Sisters in Crime's Desert Sleuths chapter is holding a Write NOW! virtual conference, September 19-20. Special guests include Rhys Bowen, Allison Brennan, Christina Estes, Robyn Gigl, Deborah J Ledford, Wendy H. Jones, Edith Maxwell, Catriona McPherson, Karen Odden, Raquel V. Reyes, D.M. Rowell, Alex Segura, and Lois Winston. In addition to panels, there will be one-on-one 10-minute pitch sessions with an acquiring agent and an opportunity for an editor manuscript review. You can register in advance through the organization's website.
The University of South Carolina's Fall Literary Festival will include a talk on September 10 by C. M. "Chad" Kushins, author of Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard, who made use of the Library's Elmore Leonard Archives for the work. The archives contain drafts, manuscripts, and typescripts of Leonard’s novels, short stories, and screen adaptations and the research and notes related to the writing and publication of these works (including unpublished works). Also included in the collection are personal and professional correspondence, legal documents, and biographical items related to Leonard’s writing career, including typewriters, director’s chairs and awards. During the festival, there will be an exhibit of many of these materials, titled "The bad guys are the fun guys: Celebrating 100 years of Elmore Leonard."
Newberry College will host the Newberry Crime Writing Workshop (NCWW), an intensive four-week writers' workshop for developing crime and mystery authors to take place July 6-31, 2026. Attendees will participate in daily sessions where they will develop and share their work with one another, led by the 2026 instructors, Joe R. Lansdale, Cheryl Head, Michael Bracken, and Dr. Warren Moore. Part class, part writers' colony, NCWW is adapting the model of other successful workshops (such as the famed Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop). Fifteen applicants will be selected based on samples of work and statements of purpose, and writers of any level of publishing experience are welcome to apply. The workshop's $4,000 tuition will cover instruction and room and board for the four-week term, and some financial aid may be available. For more information and to apply, check out the NCWW website.
There have been some interesting call for papers on crime fiction topics recently for upcoming conferences: "(Re)generating the Genre: Unlikely Detectives and Reconstructed Crime Fiction," exploring how both contemporary and classic detective fiction (re)generates the genre by centering characters who have traditionally existed at the margins of cultural authority, with a deadline for abstracts of September 30th; "Virtual Crime and Detection," a special issue of Crime Fiction Studies themed around crime fiction and video games, with abstracts due November 15; the next International Crime Genre Research Network conference has a theme of "Crime Fiction: Retrospection, Futurity, Reinvention," or where crime fiction stands now and in the context of its long histories and potential futures, with abstracts due November 30; and the International Crime Fiction Association is seeking abstracts on the topic of "Captivating Criminality 13: Crime Fiction, Conflict, and Representation," due January 15, 2026.
Some sad news to report: Greg Iles, the Mississippi author of the "Natchez Burning" trilogy and other works, has died at the age of 65. He'd suffered from a decades-long battle with the blood cancer multiple myeloma, and on his website had posted a medical update shortly before the release of his last novel, Southern Man, Penn Cage Book 7. Iles wrote his first novel in 1993, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, which became the first of seventeen New York Times bestsellers. Primarily set in the Deep South, his later novels have been made into films, translated into more than twenty languages, and published in more than thirty-five countries worldwide. Iles also performed with the musical group The Rock Bottom Remainders along with popular authors Stephen King, Amy Tan and others.
The Crime Fiction Lover website team are offering a chance to win a special signed 15th anniversary edition of Slow Horses by Mick Herron. They will detail the specifics of the competition and how to enter on their Facebook page this Saturday morning, August 23.
This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Cold Dish" by Gary D. Rhodes.
In the Q&A roundup, multiple award-winning author Karin Slaughter spoke with Maine Public Radio about her new book, We Are All Guilty Here; crime author Brian Brady chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new crime fiction novel, Greed; and Sulari Gentill, whose Rowland Sinclair mysteries have won and/or been shortlisted for the Davitt Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, took the Page 69 test to her new novel, Five Found Dead.
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