On offer for the July Crime Stack are 20 copies of Girl Falling kindly donated by Pan Macmillan Publishing Australia. Award-winning Wollongong writer, Hayley Scrivenor displays again her razor-sharp skills for character, landscape and narrative. Join now and be in the running for a complimentary paperback copy of Girl Falling.
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.
Global best-selling author, Alison Goodman, asks if we have noticed a quiet revolution happening on our bookshelves and television screen. She’s talking about the rise and rise of the older woman amateur sleuth.
Twenty years ago, she would have been pressed to name more than Miss Marple as an example, but now we have Elizabeth and Joyce from the Thursday Murder Club, the new Marlow Murders team in the books by Robert Thorogood, Agatha Raisin in the books by MC Beaton, and Susan Ryeland in the Magpie Murders series, to name just a few.
Thirty books have made it to Sisters in Crime Australia’s longlist for its 24th Davitt Awards for the best crime and mystery books published by women in 2023. Judges’ coordinator, Ruth Wykes, says it’s not only Olympians who are dealing with a marathon. “The six Davitt judges have had to read 153 crime books, including …
For the June Murder Monday, Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem spoke to Yrsa Sigurdardottir, the best-selling author who has helped put Icelandic crime writing on the world map. Yrsa Sigurðardóttir has authored a successful award-winning crime series of books based around the central character of Thora Gudmundsdottir, who is a lawyer and single mother of two children. She has also written, to critical acclaim, several stand-alone thrillers and horror novels.
Voting for Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Readers’ Choice Award opens to financial members from 14 June.
An impressive 152 books are competing in Sisters in Crime’s 24th Davitt Awards for the best crime and mystery books. Six Davitt Awards will be presented at a gala dinner at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel on Saturday 31 August by award-winning author and global publishing phenomenon, Sulari Gentill. Voting closes Wednesday 31 July, 11.59 pm. The Davitts are again supported by Swinburne University of Technology.
There are men who exploit women, men who beat women, men who abduct women, men who murder women . . . but there are also women – a lot of women – fighting back. Hosted by Janice Simpson, with Sherryl Clark (Woman, Missing), Jane Sullivan (Murder in Punch Lane), and Jess Kitching (Lucky Number 11).
To mark the Scarlet Stiletto Awards big anniversary, Sisters in Crime published The Scarlet Stiletto: 30 Years of Mystery, Murder and Malice, edited by Vice-President Lindy Cameron, courtesy of Clan Destine Press. Sue Turnbull says that this precious volume contains all 30 of the winning stories that are so different in their approach that it is evident that there is no ‘right’ way to write a winning Scarlet Stiletto story. Indeed, what the unpredictability of these stories suggest is that the more unconventional and original your take on the genre might be, the more likely you are to succeed.
Every month Sisters in Crime brings you new reviews from women who write criminally good books.