Women crime writers are in the spotlight, being interviewed about their books, their lives and more.
Antarctic Noir! This is certainly a twist on the ‘isolated community” + murder plot! They’re in Antarctica…how isolated is that? Riley James talks to Ruth Wykes about the writing of The Chilling. It’s s certainly a twist on the ‘isolated community” + murder plot! Riley James talks to Ruth Wykes about the writing of this page turner…
How do you follow up on a number one best seller that has won multiple awards? Hayley Scrivenor’s latest – Girl Falling – is an exploration of friendship .. and what happens when it turns bad. How did she come to write it? How did she get it down ‘on paper’?
Best selling psychological thrillers are Petronella McGovern’s beat. She talks with Natalie Conyer about why and how she writes and her latest page turner, The Last Trace – a gripping thriller about siblings and secrets, and the traces we can never erase.
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.
For the October Author Spotlight, New Zealand author Barbara Sumner spoke to Georgina Baron-Ross, about her debut novel, The Gallows Bird (Pantera Press). This novel whisks readers away to 19th-century London. Meet ‘Birdie,’ a young woman of lowly station with grand ambitions. Despite her humble beginnings, Birdie believes she is destined for finer things, driven by the legacy of her aristocratic mother. But then she becomes a convict bound for Botany Bay.
For the September Author Spotlight, Narrelle M. Harris spoke to Netherlands-based author, Brooke Hardwick, about her debut novel, The Fog (Simon & Schuster). Brooke hails from North Queensland but it was her time in her twenties on Rathlin , a tiny island between Northern Ireland and Scotland, that inspired her novel. It’s often engulfed in fog!
For the August Author Spotlight, Narrelle M Harris spoke with author and literary journalist, Jane Sullivan about her debut crime novel, Murder in Punch Lane (Echo Publishing). It was inspired by the historical life and death of young actress, Marie St Denis, in Melbourne in 1868. She was drawn to write about Marie after reading her
obituary.
For this month’s Author Spotlight Deborah Challinor, a prolific author from across the ditch, spoke to Robyn Walton about her new historical novel, Black Silk & Sympathy (HarperCollins, 2024), set in Sydney in the 1860s – with a very unusual sleuth. She has had an interest in cemeteries and mourning and funeral traditions forever, she says. In 2018 she received a New Zealand Order of Merit award for services to literature and historical research.
For the June Author Spotlight, Poppy Gee spoke to Toowoomba author, Nikki Mottram, about her twisty plots, the rollercoaster ride of the publishing industry, and the thrill of visiting her publisher’s office for the first time. Like her debut novel Crows Nest, her just-published novel, Killarney, is a gripping, small-town mystery with the kind of tightly crafted surprises that make you flick back the pages to see the plot mechanics with fresh eyes.
For the May Author Spotlight, Natalie Conyer spoke to Perth author and global publishing sensation, Dervla McTiernan, about her latest novel, What Happened to Nina?
She says that Dervla McTiernan bends the conventions of crime fiction as far as they will go, and still produces a powerful, page-turning, thrilling look at murder and its consequences. We know the victim, and the killer, from the start. Our attention is, instead, focused on how the families of both these people react, and on how far parents will go to protect their children.