For the July Crime Stack, Penguin Random House Australia has kindly offered 20 copies of Broken Bay, the third in her award-winning police procedural series featuring Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti. Cutters End, the first in the series, was the winner of the BAD Danger Prize 2022 and was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction 2022. To be in the running you need to be a member of Sisters in Crime. Why not join now?
Thirty-three books have made it to the longlist for the 23rd Davitt Awards for the best crime and mystery books published by women in 2022. It’s a long longlist but the overall number of books competing is 144, including a formidable 101 adult novels. And what’s even more remarkable is the standard of the writing.
The Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short crime and mystery stories turn 30 this year and are offering a record $12,720 in prizes. The first prize winner takes home $2000, donated by Swinburne University of Technology, plus the coveted trophy. Closes 31 August 2023 – so start writing now, if you haven’t already.
Voting for Sisters in Crime’s 23nd Davitt Awards Readers’ Choice Award is now open to financial members.
An impressive 144 books are competing. Voting for the Readers’ Award Choice closes Friday 28 July, 11.59 pm. If you’re not a member, join now if you want to vote.
For the June Crime Stack, Harper Collins Publishing has kindly offered 20 copies of The Benevolent Society of Ill-mannered Ladies, by Melbourne-based Alison Goodman, the New York Times bestselling author of Eon and Eona and The Dark Days Club trilogy. Alison mostly writes YA fiction but her very adult thriller, A New Kind of Death, was a Davitt Award finalist under its original title, Killing the Rabbit. To be in the running you need to be a member of Sisters in Crime. Why not join now?
Another reason to celebrate. As part of the Scarlet Stiletto Awards launch on Friday 2 June at the Melbourne Athenaeum Library, Susanna Lobez, actor-turned-barrister-turned-broadcaster-turned-true-crime-author, will also introduce a podcast of the winning stories, Scarlet Stiletto Bites: Scintillating stories by Australian women.
The competition is open to books by all women, whether cisgender, transgender or intersex, who are citizens/residents of Australia. Self-published books are eligible. Please note that books co-written or co-edited with men or including chapters by men are not eligible.
Publishers have until Friday 7 April to enter. This year, for the first time in 23 years, the Davitts will cost publishers $25 a title to enter.
Sisters in Crime’s Chair of Communications, Sara Hood, is standing down to travel the world so we have taken the opportunity to re-think our structure and press gang (!) more people into our team. Please welcome: Ani Allbutt, who joins as the new Chair, Communications. and Gill Thomas, who joins in the new role of Administration and Membership Manager.
Need a good book for the festive season? You can’t go past Scarlet Stiletto: The Fourteenth Cut, a collection of winning stories from this year’s competition, edited by Phyllis King.
Jacq Ellem, a member of the newly minted Tasmanian Chapter, will be hosting Murders Mondays in the New Year. Jacq is a bibliophile, copywriter, occasional broadcaster and award-winning podcaster, which sounds really wanky but is her only claim to fame.