Mystery Melange

The Goodreads Choice Awards winners were announced today, including those in the Mystery and Thriller category. The top vote-getter for 2025 was Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson. Coming in at second was The Tenant by Freida McFadden, and coming in at third was Richard Osman's The Impossible Fortune. You can check out all twenty of the winners and finalists via this link.


Harrogate International Festivals today announced bestselling psychological thriller writer, Lisa Jewell, as Festival Programming Chair for the 2026 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, the globally renowned celebration of crime fiction that will take place from July 23-26, 2026. Special Guests include David Baldacci, Nadine Matheson, Gillian McAllister, Steve Cavanagh and Alice Feeney, with more headliners to be revealed in early 2026. Lisa Jewell is the author of twenty-three novels, most recently the dark psychological thrillers Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs, None of This is True and Don’t Let Him In


The Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime is holding a "Mystery Authors Extravaganza" on Saturday, December 13 at the Reston, Virginia, regional library. Almost thirty Chessie Chapter authors will be talking about their novels and short stories published this year:  Jenny Adams, Donna Andrews, Paul Awad, Kathleen Bailey, Kathryn Prater Bomey, Maya Corrigan, Ginny Fite, Barb Goffman, Sherry Harris, Kirlagh James, Christina Kovac, Deborah Lacy, Con Lehane, Jane Limprecht, G.M. Malliet, EA Mayes, Eileen Haavik McIntire, Adam Meyer, Tom Milani, Melinda Mullet, Kathryn O’Sullivan, Josh Pachter, Jacque Rosman, Daphne Silver, DK Snyder, Art Taylor, Heather Weidner, Stacy Woodson, and Kristopher Zgorski. The event is free and open to the public.


Joffe Books has agreed to acquire Severn House, the genre fiction imprint focused on the U.S. library market, from Canongate Books, the three U.K.-based companies announced Monday. The acquisition builds on a five-year copublishing partnership between Joffe and Canongate that has sold almost two million ebooks, with Joffe relaunching digital editions of multiple Severn House backlist titles. Joffe CEO Jasper Joffe said the acquisition allows his company to combine digital strength with Severn House's print presence. Some of the crime fiction authors published by Severn include Simon Brett, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Candace Robb, David Hewson, Stella Cameron, Simon R. Green, Caro Ramsay and Qiu Xiaolong.


Congratulations to Elizabeth Foxwell upon the 20th anniversary of her Bunburyist blog. Foxwell, who also serves as an editor at McFarland and Co. on books that include many crime fiction-related nonfiction works, posted her top 10 posts based on views, also noting that her page with links to mystery course syllabi has also been popular.


More sad news via Mystery Fanfare: author Diane Stuckart passed away this week after a long illness. Diane was the author of the Georgia B&B Mysteries (writing as Anna Gerard) and the Black Cat Bookshop Mysteries (writing as Ali Brandon), the Tarot Cat Mysteries, and the Leonardo da Vinci Mysteries, as well as many short stories and historical romance novels.  


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Bedding Enemies" by A.C. Perri.


In the Q&A roundup, Marshall Karp, co-authored the first six books in the NYPD Red series with James Patterson, took the Page 69 Test about the latest novel in that series; Writers Digest spoke with Charles Todd (of the Inspector Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford novels) about "Writing History as Living Story"; Deborah Kalb chatted with Tod Goldberg, author of the new heist thriller, Only Way Out; and Career Authors interviewed Paula Munier about her latest Mercy Carr mystery, The Snow Lies Deep.