Mystery Melange

The winners of the Shirley Jackson Awards for outstanding literary achievement in psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic were announced last week. The top nod in the Best Novel category was Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng: A Horror Mystery of a Chinese American Crime Scene Cleaner, Serial Killers and Hungry Ghosts by Kylie Lee Baker. The supernatural crime novel was also listed as one of the New York Times' "100 Notable Books for 2025."


The deadline of July 31 is fast approaching to apply for the $2,000 Sisters in Crime Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers. Interested authors do not need to be a SinC member to apply, but applicants must not have published more than ten short pieces of fiction or two novels. Authors should submit a cover letter, biographical statement, and a short story of first chapter(s) of a manuscript-in-progress of 2,500 to 5,000 words and must not have not used generative AI to write, research, or brainstorm the work. For more information, follow this link.


July 31st is also the deadline to submit a short story for publication consideration in the latest anthology from the Malice Domestic conference. Stories should be in the traditional mystery vein, be no more than 5,000 words, and fit the theme of "Murder Most Musical." No generative AI should be used in the creation of the work. For more information, check out the official website.


One hundred years after the death of author Israel Zangwill (1864–1926), the Victorian Jewish Writers Project will be hosting an online symposium examining Zangwill’s writing, public career, and legacy on August 4th at noon (ET). Among Zangwill's works is the locked-room novel The Big Bow Mystery (1891), which served as the basis for three Hollywood film versions, and the short stories "Cheating the Gallows" (1893) and "The Memory Clearing House" (1892). He was sometimes called "the Dickens of the ghetto" for his stories of life in London's immigrant Jewish community. (HT to The Bunburyist)


Mystery Writers of America's SoCal chapter (in partnership with SoCal Sisters in Crime), is sponsoring a panel on Wednesday, September 9, at 7pm at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, California. Titled "Inventing the Page," the event will feature Meg Gardiner (the Evan Delaney novels), Jordan Harper (TV screenwriter and author of She Rides Shotgun), and Tess Gerritsen (Rizzoli & Isles) talking about their writing and how inspire newer authors with their insights. Follow this link for registration information.


Joseph S. Walker, President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, announced in the organization's newsgroup that Murderous Ink Press and editor John Connor will soon be launching SMFS Mystery Magazine. Current plans call for three issues a year, offering fiction, essays, interviews, and reviews highlighting the work of the organization's writers. The release of the first issue is scheduled for October, in time for the Calgary Bouchercon, and will include fiction from Ginny Swart, Eve Fisher, S. B. Watson, Vinnie Hansen, Jim Guigli, Kevin R. Tipple, Ed Teja, and Nikki Knight; interviews from Kevin Tipple and M. E. Proctor; an essay by N. M. Cedeno; and reviews by June Lorraine Roberts and Mat Coward.


Editor Janet Rudolph is seeking articles, reviews, and author essays for the next issue of Mystery Readers Journal. The theme is "cross-genre fiction," which blends the themes, tropes, and conventions of two or more distinct literary genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and Westerns that retain a central investigation or puzzle at its heart. However, she's not looking for historical mysteries, as there have been five historical mystery issues of the journal on that theme. The deadline for submissions is August 20, 2026. For more information, click on over here.


The editors of CrimeReads selected their list of fourteen of the best classic crime fiction reissues this summer. They range from Yukito Ayatsuji's The Clock House Murders, translated by Ho-Ling Wong (Pushkin Vertigo) to Georges Simenon's The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, translated by Siân Reynolds (Picador) to Three Crime Novels: Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo, and The Bobby Gold Stories by Anthony Bourdain (Bloomsbury).


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Forever Chemicals" by JK Miller.


In the Q&A roundup, Jackie McMahon applied the Page 69 Test to her novel, The Cloak and Dagger Club, the first in a new historical mystery series; ahead of his appearance at the upcoming St Hilda's conference, author Ajay Chowdhury (of the Detective Kamil Rahman series) spoke with Shotsmag Confidential about his writing and latest standalone thriller, Eden Falls; Allison Montclair, author of the Sparks and Bainbridge mysteries, also applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Fire Must Burn; and Shotsmag Confidential chatted with Martin Edwards, former Chair of the Crime Writers Association and current President of the Detection Club as well as a bestselling author and editor, about editing Guilty Secrets, the latest Crime Writers Association anthology.