Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Victoria Thompson Musings
Author Guest / May 3, 2016

A Day in the Life of Sarah Brandt Malloy… Malloy and I have been back from our honeymoon for several weeks now, and we’re both very grateful that my nursemaid, Maeve, and Malloy’s friend from the New York City Police Department, Gino Donatelli, started a detective agency while we were away. Without it, Malloy would’ve been bored to death, since he’d had to resign from the Police Department. Their first really interesting case after officially setting up an office turned out to be one they needed my help on, too. Thank heaven, because quite frankly, I was feeling a little bored myself. A young woman who was teaching at the Normal School had been murdered. The Normal School is a college for women that trains them to become teachers, and it should be the safest place in the world. Abigail Northrup’s parents had thought so when they agreed to let her work there, especially when she moved in with two of the other female professors. Malloy asked for my help because he thought I’d know more about college than he did because I was raised in a wealthy family. The truth is that the girls I’d grown up with hadn’t…

2016 Edgar Award Winners Announced
News / May 2, 2016

MWA Announces the 2016 Edgar® Award Winners Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce the winners of the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2015. The Edgar® Awards were presented to the winners at our 70th Gala Banquet, April 28, 2016 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City. BEST NOVEL Let Me Die in His Footsteps by Lori Roy (Penguin Random House – Dutton) BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Atlantic – Grove Press) BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow) BEST FACT CRIME Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search for My Twelve-Year-Old Bully by Allen Kurzweil (HarperCollins Publishers – Harper) BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins Publishers – HarperCollins) BEST SHORT STORY “Obits” – Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster – Scribner) BEST JUVENILE Footer Davis Probably is Crazy by Susan Vaught (Simon & Schuster – Paula Wiseman Books) BEST YOUNG ADULT A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis (HarperCollins Publishers – Katherine Tegen Books) BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY “Gently…

Betty Hechtman | The Sherlock Holmes Game
Author Guest / May 2, 2016

Instead of writing a blog about my new book SEAMS LIKE MURDER, the 10th in the Crochet series, I thought I’d offer you a chance to play something Molly Pink and her best friend Dinah Lyons call the Sherlock Holmes game. What it amounts to is listening, observing and then deducing the facts. The names have been removed to protect the innocent and to make it less confusing. Recently, I helped give a surprise party for a friend’s birthday. My job was to be the greeter and deal with the gifts. Guest 1 was the first to arrive and she handed me a rectangular package wrapped in silver paper with a silver bow. I put it on the dining room table and told her everyone was to hide in the den. Guest 2 came in with guest 3. The first one had a yellow shopping bag with orange tissue paper poking out of the top and placed it on the table and guest 3 added a small box in turquoise wrapping paper. “I hope she likes this shade,” guest 4 said as I took her gift. “I know she likes the color.” The array of packages grew as guest 5…

Claire Donally | Let The Name-Calling Begin!
Author Guest / May 2, 2016

No, this is not about the presidential primary campaigns. I just realized that, with CATCH AS CAT CAN, I’ve devoted more than a third of a million words to the adventures of Sunny and Shadow, and that it might be interesting to discuss some of the most important of those words – the names of the characters. The first to get christened were Sunny and Shadow – for some reason the title of the series was one of the first inspirations to come from brainstorming a cat mystery. A neighbor had a cat named Shadow, although I honestly don’t recall hearing the name before I worked up the series. Shadow didn’t need a last name, but Sunny did. I’d been asked to set the series in Maine, but the names famously associated with the state – Gorgas, Muskie – didn’t match well with Sunny. The best was Pepperell, which always makes me think of towels. Casting my net farther around New England’s past, I got lucky in nearby Vermont, who had a native son make it to the White House – Calvin Coolidge. Sunny Coolidge sounded good to me. Problem almost solved, except I didn’t want Sunny to be a…

Introducing Darcie Wilde And The Rosalind Thorne Mysteries
Author Guest / May 2, 2016

Hello, my name is Darcie Wilde, and I write mysteries. Specifically, mysteries set during the English Regency. I got my introduction to the Regency the way most people do; via the work and world of Jane Austen. From the Incomparable Jane, I discovered the warm, witty, wonderful works of the great Georgette Heyer. Between the two of them, they kindled a fascination in me for all things Regency — the dances! The genteel manners, the snobbery, and the witty banter! And, oh! Those clothes! I mean, what’s not to love? It’s a lush, intricate and magnificent time period. But the more I read about the history, the more I came to realize it was a deeply complicated time as well. Not only was Napoleon running roughshod across the Continent, at home, the royal family which was still very much the heart and center of government, was falling apart in all sorts of interesting ways. The banks and the stock market were careening along full tilt in the modern boom-and-bust cycle. Drinking and gambling were epidemic among the upper classes. The middling and lower classes were agitating for better and fairer living conditions, and a debt of as little as five…

Joe Cosentino | Meet Jana Lane
Author Guest / May 2, 2016

Introducing the third book in the Jana Lane, former child actress mystery series… SATIN DOLL Murder, corruption, and scandals rock Washington, D.C…. America’s most famous ex-child star, Jana Lane, is playing a US Senator in a 1983 film. Just as she and her family arrive in DC, two Washington power players are murdered, and Jana is caught in the web of intrigue and political scandal. Jana falls under the spell of the breathtakingly handsome detective assigned to the case, ex-professional football player and food aficionado, Chris Bove. Will Jana and Bove uncover the murderer’s identity and shocking secrets before Jana and her family become the Capitol’s next victims? Praise for PORCELAIN DOLL, a Jana Lane mystery: “Porcelain Doll is Joe Cosentino at his finest. We are drawn back to the fashions and attitudes of the 1980’s in a character-driven story full of intrigue and passion.” Kirsty Vizard, Divine Magazine “Beautifully written and intensely detailed, Porcelain Doll is one not to be missed. Flirtatiously decadent with a strong moral undertone, set in a decade of extraordinary social change this is a story of its period that is as poignant today as it was then. Joe Cosentino controlled the emotions that the…