Davitt Awards 2026
Entries are now open for the 26th Annual Davitt Awards for the best Australian women’s crime and mystery books of 2025.
32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards: Go wild in scarlet!
Sydney-based award-winning author Dinuka McKenzie will present Sisters in Crime’s 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short stories, after first discussing her life in crime with award-winning author, Amanda Hampson.
Murder Monday: Lainie Anderson
For Murder Monday, Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem spoke to acclaimed Adelaide author, Lainie Anderson. Her two crime books are The Death of Dora Black and Murder on North Terrace, both published by Hachette Australia, and both featuring the real-life character, Kate Cocks, who, in 1915, became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed on the same salary and with the same powers of arrest as men.
Cut a long story short
Grabbing a copy of Scarlet Stiletto: The Seventeenth Cut (ed. Phyllis King), the e-book collection of winning stories in the recent 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards, is the perfect answer to holiday reading. Fourteen ripper reads for only $5.
A victory for the neurodivergent community: Sandra Thom-Jones takes out the top award in Sisters in Crime’s 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards
Winning first prize and the coveted trophy in Sisters in Crime’s 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards is a victory, according to Sandra Thom-Jones, was always told that “autistic people can’t write fiction because we’re not imaginative or creative.”
Win a copy of The Ghost Walk
Fremantle Press is generously donating twenty copies of The Ghost Walk, a medical thriller by Perth author Karen Herbert for this month’s Crime Stack. A lung-transplant surgeon is found dead. Seeking the truth is his secret lover who also saved her life.
Lingering in the literary mystery space: Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte McConaghy reveals her motivations in writing her latest eco-thriller, Wild Dark Shore (Penguin, 2025), set on Shearwater, a tiny island close to the Antarctic, that is home to the world’s largest seed bank and under threat by rising tides.
Writing from the edge of civilisation: Nicole Crowe
Nicole grew up ‘in the arse end of nowhere’ – Magnetic Island – and crime fiction has been her salavation. Also, she might not know what a world-class flat white tastes like, but she does know how to spot a cone shell at ten paces
2025 Annual General Meeting results
Sisters in Crime’s Annual General Meeting was held on 24 October at Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel, following the engaging and entertaining On the Beat event. The major decision was to lift membership fees by $5 but leaving concession rates the same. The fees have not been increased since 2018.
New WA Chapter launched!
The new Sisters in Crime WA Chapter launched at the Geraldton Big Sky Readers and Writers Festival on 25 October with two events to an enthusiatic audience at Batavia Brewing.
Davitt Award sponsors & supporters
We are grateful to our sponsors and supporters for their help in rewarding and celebrating Australian women’s crime writing.