Books

Brent Butt is a Canadian comedy icon. For years he worked as a stand-up comic, performing all over the place, from small town venues to large festivals, but is best known for Corner Gas, a sit-com set in a small town in Saskatchewan he created and starred in. Viewers enjoyed the quirky characters and humorous

Kelly Jensen is out this week, so Erica Ezeifedi and I are filling in on censorship news. Unfortunately, none of us can be Kelly, even with our forces combined, so we’re trying something a little different in the censorship news round-up. Instead of one big story and dozens of bullet points, we have each picked

It’s a good week if you’re looking for crime novels offering something a bit different. We’re pretty confident you’ll find the new novels by Boston Teran, Caimh McDonnell and Carey Keith Green in this news report come straight out of left field. Plus, we’ve got an espionage thriller and a domestic thriller for you to

Veteran narrators Michael Kramer and Kate Reading return to this fantastical world, along with a new POV portrayed by Marisa Calin.V. E. Schwab, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, opens another door to a new fantasy series set in the dazzling world of Shades of Magic. Prepare for tangled schemes and perilous

Today, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Norwegian novelist and playwright Jon Fosse. Fosse’s work has been highly acclaimed across Europe, and is gaining more and more of an audience in English-speaking portions of the world. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded for entire bodies of work, and Fosse’s win comes as

Recent years have truly witnessed the rise of the female serial killer. Literarily speaking, anyway. From How to Kill Men and Get Away With It to My Sister the Serial Killer, How to Kill Your Family to Bad Men, women are finally breaking through the blood-soaked glass ceiling and joining the ranks of serially murderous

Irish author Amanda Cassidy is a freelance journalist and former Sky News reporter, and she certainly knows how to pull her readers into a story from the get-go. It’s the week before Christmas when a fire breaks out at the Wills family home in County Kerry in the Republic of Ireland. Returning home to find

Peter Swanson has written a criminous Christmas tale? His twisted, unsettling mysteries such as The Kind Worth Killing and The Kind Worth Saving don’t bend towards sentimentality or good will for that matter. But then this novella is for people who aren’t wedded to the idea that Christmas stories should serve up murder in cosy

Seaside landladies are the stuff of British folklore and the butt of many a 1970s comic’s jokes. They’re depicted as tough, unwielding, no-nonsense types, who delight in cutting corners and have little or no sense of humour. Thankfully, Helen Dexter, the heroine of Glenda Young‘s Seaview Hotel series, set in the English north eastern holiday

Yes, it’s true, we are too close to our subject, but we do love it when mysteries themselves entwine authors, manuscripts, plot lines and other literary elements so that crime fiction begets crime fiction begets crime fiction… and so on. Anthony Horowitz is a master in this respect, and Catriona Ward’s Looking Glass Sound is

In October, November and December, we’ll be carrying an advertising campaign that’s a bit different. The Canadian indie author Ed Green has booked one of our leaderboard positions on the site to promote his novel Murder is a Dying Art. “Nothing exciting about that,” you might think. “It’s straightforward web advertising with an image you

For Phoebe Wong, exchanging the miserable British weather for the balmy Florida Keys with her new boyfriend for a few weeks seems like the ideal vacation, even though she only met Carter 11 months ago on LinkedIn and they haven’t spent much time together. He’s the perfect boyfriend who even gets along with her Malaysian-Chinese

Valley of Refuge, the new thriller by John Teschner, starts off more like a mystery. At least it was a mystery to me, with three intriguing stories evolving at once. First, social media magnate Frank Dalton is doing something big on the Big Island of Hawai`i, then there’s a woman flying to the state who

The Crime Fiction Lover Awards are back for the third year running. We want to celebrate the best in crime fiction, and we are going to involve the people who really matter when we do so. For us, the people who really matter to this fine genre are its readers – that’s YOU! We want

Author Daniel Sweren-Becker must have been well tuned in to the zeitgeist when he conceived Kill Show, his newly published ‘true crime’ novel, as it delves into growing critiques of the genre. Before you think that description is an oxymoron, this is definitely fiction, but written in the style of a television documentary script. It

Ann-Marie Cahill will read anything and everything. From novels to trading cards to the inside of CD covers (they’re still a thing, right?). A good day is when her kids bring notes home from school. A bad day is when she has to pry a book from her kids’ hands. And then realizes where they

The Irish author Catherine Ryan Howard won the Irish Book Award in the crime fiction category in 2021 for her novel 56 Days. One of the first books in the genre to really countenance the COVID pandemic, it was a nerve-tingling thriller exploring the intensity and intimacy of the seclusion of lockdown and its shadowy

“I’m looking for people to participate in a huge book exchange. You can be anywhere in the world. All you have to do is buy your favorite book (just one) and send it to a stranger (I’ll provide their details through a private message). You’ll receive a roughly maximum of 36 books back to you,

It is March 2020, the COVID pandemic has begun, and Colette ‘Coco’ Weber is about to test the validity of the truism that you can never go home again. As the prospect of the first lockdown looms large, she is reluctantly returning to her childhood home in Catalina Island, off the coast of California. Her

Carolina Ciucci is a teacher, writer and reviewer based in the south of Argentina. She hoards books like they’re going out of style. In case of emergency, you can summon her by talking about Ireland, fictional witches, and the Brontë family. Twitter: @carolinabeci View All posts by Carolina Ciucci Carolina Ciucci is a teacher, writer

Bonnie and Clyde: a notorious pair of killers and robbers who terrorised central USA in the time of the Great Depression. Their crimes made them famous, and that fame was rekindled in the late 1960s with a movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and a song that gave Georgie Fame a number one hit

Celia Fremlin’s Uncle Paul is an engrossing, slow-burning psychological thriller that skilfully blends suspense, family dynamics and the infuriating complexities of human relationships. Originally published in 1959, its gripping narrative and insightful exploration of the psyche ensure that it remains surprising and impactful despite certain aspects of the story now appearing a tad dated. The

Public libraries are synonymous with children today, with story times and an inviting children’s section considered essential features. Arguments for increasing or maintaining library funding often reference the library’s role in literacy education for kids as well as the many happy memories even adults who no longer frequent the library still hold for childhoods spent

Even in fiction, when pregnant women come under threat our protective instinct kicks in. Writers can use this to their advantage and it’s cropping up a fair bit in crime fiction at the moment. Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman is a case in point (watch for our review soon) and so is our lead book

An imprint of Disney Publishing Worldwide, Hyperion Avenue, is debuting new fiction under Marvel Crime. The new endeavor will feature three original novels by bestselling authors S.A. Cosby, Lisa Jewell, and Alex Segura. The stories will be gritty crime novels geared towards adults and will use familiar Marvel characters. The first will be out in

North Carolina author David Joy began his career writing about fly fishing, but we can be grateful that he changed his angle to become an acclaimed author of what’s often called rural noir or Southern gothic crime fiction. He captured the soul crushing effects of the opioid epidemic in Appalachia with When These Mountains Burn,

Following a 40-year career as a trial lawyer specialising in personal injury law, David Myles Robinson took up his passion – writing legal thrillers. Since 2015, he’s penned four novels in his Pancho McMartin series, about a top criminal defence lawyer and the troubling cases he takes on. In between, he’s written a variety of

The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, recognizes the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. The 2023 prize considers books published between October 1st 2022 and September 30th 2023. They have just announced their 13-book longlist. The 6-book shortlist will come out September 21st, with the winner announced November

With its in-depth and always emotional cold case investigations, Unforgotten is one of the best crime shows to appear on UK television in recent years, and from 3 September 2023 viewers in North America will be able to enjoy the fifth series of the programme. PBS Masterpiece has just released this superb trailer to entice

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards are the most prestigious awards in the American comics industry. This year was the 35th annual Eisner Awards. Several comics won multiple awards, including Ducks by Kate Beaton for Best Graphic Memoir and Best Writer/Artist, The Night Eaters Book 1 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda for Best Graphic Album­–New and Best