Carmel Shute
Sarah Barrie has nine novels under her belt. She cut her teeth on romance but, luckily for us, threw her lot in with crime. Sarah spoke about her literary trajectory to Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem for the December Murder Monday. ln a past life, while gaining degrees in arts, science, and education, Sarah worked as a teacher, a vet nurse, a horse trainer, and a magazine editor, before deciding she wanted to write novels.
Sisters in Crime invited convenors, author members, Davitt Award judges and winners, and others to nominate their best holiday reads for 2024-2025. As you’ll note, they traverse an extraordinarily wide range of themes, locations, and interests. Some nominations are up-to-the-minute. Others are golden oldies. What they all offer, of course, are hours of reading pleasure and diversion. I loved the passion revealed in the responses. Discover what passed Hazel Edwards’ ‘hot water test’.
What a night. What winners. Here is the lowdown on the 31st Scarlet Stiletto Awards night. Including all the winners.
Multi-award-winning Sydney author, Hayley Scrivenor, spoke to Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem For the November Murder Monday. Hayley’s debut, Dirt Town, was a number-one bestseller in Australia and won several awards, including the UK Crime Writers’ Association New Blood Dagger Award, the ABIA for General Fiction Book of the Year, a Lambda Literary Award and Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Award for best debut book in 2023. Her latest novel is Girl Falling.
New Zealander Charity Norman, author of Home Truths (Allen & Unwin, 2024) spoke to Sisters in Crime’s Robyn Walton about her latest novel, Home Truths. She chose to set it in North Yorkshire because she knows and loves it – and in the years 2019-2020 because the Covid pandemic triggered a perfect storm of isolation, anxiety and the explosion of online disinformation.
Think every re-working or re-imagining of the great Sherlock Holmes has already been done? Think again! Melbourne’s Narelle M Harris brings us The She-Wolf of Baker Street. The simple question is: what if Mrs Hudson was a werewolf? And it’s a wild ride.
Love the twisty, turny plots of Pip Drysdale? Twenty copies of her latest The Close-Up are up for grabs in the November Crime Stack draw for members only. The Close-Up is an electrifying, dark and (of course) twisty thriller that follows a young novelist, once full of promise but now failing to live up to it, who becomes embroiled in the life of a hot movie star… and his stalker.
The Crime Stack is a benefit for Sisters in Crime members. Every month there are 20 books to win in a random draw of members.
Join now and be in the running for a complimentary paperback copy of The Close-Up
Carmel Shute, who helped co-found Sisters in Crime Australia in 1991, stood down as Secretary at the 2024 Annual General Meeting on Friday 25 October, following its TV Noir event at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel. She is being replaced by former President, Moraig Kisler, who is fresh from a year’s break. Carmel will continue to work on programming. A committee of eight was elected unopposed.
Award-winning Sydney author, Natalie Conyer, is the subject of this Murder Monday. As ever, interviewed by Jacq Ellem.
Veteran cop Schalk Lourens is back in Shadow City. Now suspended and thinking of emigrating to Australia, whilst visiting his daughter in Sydney Lourens is swept up into a minefield of deceit and manipulation by an enemy more powerful and depraved than is imaginable. She talks about how she writes.
Christine Gregory became attracted to New-Age ideas in her late teens. This largely involved visits to Bryon Bay to stay at the Arts Factory, late nights of drinking, and a full-throttle immersion into the alternative music scene of the noughties. Twenty-five years later, in an evening writing class the tutor asked students to create a scene incorporating all the five senses. She put pen to paper and like magic, the words flowed.