Murder Circle

The Murder Circle is very excited about this year’s nominees for the Agatha, to be presented at Malice Domestic in May. Two of the authors up for Best First Novel are past Murder Circle favorites!

Rosemary Harris’ PUSHING UP DAISIES is pushing for the award. This Dirty Business Mystery stars Paula Holliday, media exec/gardener. While restoring the garden at a historical landmark, she uncovers a mummified body. A more recent corpse is found impaled on a gardening tool. Paula has to get her hands dirty digging for clues to find the killer. Harris already has the sequel out: THE BIG DIRT NAP.

Last month, I mentioned G.M. Malliet and DEATH OF A COZY WRITER because she was up for the Hawaii Five-O award. Her St. Just mystery just keeps drawing attention! When an English millionaire mystery writer announces his elopement to a woman who might be a murderess, an heir gets maced. No, not with the aerosol, but a real medieval mace. Detective Inspector St. Just is on the case! The next St. Just mystery, DEATH AND THE CHICK LIT, continues this “literary” series.

Scrapbookers get their day in Joanna Campbell Slan’s PAPER, SCISSORS, DEATH. Scrappy heroine Kiki Lowenstein is the prime murder suspect after her husband and his college girlfriend both wind up dead. This is the first Scrap-N-Craft mystery and crafty tips are sprinkled like glitter throughout the novel. CUT, CROP & DIE will be on the shelves in June.

Run right out and buy THE DIVA RUNS OUT OF THYME. This is the first of Krista Davis’ Domestic Diva mysteries starring Sophie Winston. Although she lost her husband to another cook, Sophie’s determined not to lose a contest for the best stuffing. Instead of finding a turkey to stuff, she finds a man snuffed out. What’s her name and photo doing in her car? Look for the 2nd in the series, THE DIVA TAKES THE CAKE in June.

Sarah Atwell’s intentions are clear in her first Glassblowing Mystery, THROUGH A GLASS, DEADLY.  Somebody got baked in Emmeline Dowell’s 2,000 degree furnace (ouch!) and now she has to work with her ex-lover, the Tucson police chief. And why is the FBI so interested in the case? The follow-up, PANE OF DEATH, should get readers fired up.    

I SHALL NOT WANT to miss the opportunity to mention this 6th mystery for Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and Police Chief Russ Van Altstyne. Julia Spencer-Fleming serves up a tale involving Mexican immigrant workers in New York, drug smuggling and gang turf wars.

Award time is not THE CRUELEST MONTH for Louise Penny and the Quebec town of Three Pines. When the villagers gather for a seance in a haunted house, one person dies of fright. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache must scare up a suspect, even as he fears there is a mole in the investigation team. The 4th in the series, A RULE AGAINST MURDER, came out in January of this year.

Donna Andrews award-winning mysteries are strictly for the birds. #10 of the series, SIX GEESE A-SLAYING, has Meg Langslow in the middle of organizing a Xmas parade when somebody offs a not-so-jolly Santa. Look for COCKATIELS AT SEVEN in June. P.S. I met Donna at LCC Hawaii, there’s a photo of the two of us with Sue Ann Jaffarian on my News page.

Lady Georgiana Rannoch is 34th in line for the throne in Rhys Bowen’s Her Royal Spyness Myseries. But, it’s 1930′s England and Georgiana is finding life A ROYAL PAIN as she earns a living as a maid. When called on by the royal relatives to chaperone the Prince of Wales and keep him from marrying the Ugly American divorcee, things become untidy with murder. ROYAL FLUSH, the 3rd in the series, is due out in July. And yes, that’s Rhys and me in Hawaii on my News page.

The Prince of Wales from Victorian times is also in trouble when a prostitute is found dead at BUCKINGHAM PALACE GARDENs after a stag party. Inspector Thomas Pitt takes on his 25th case in this series penned by Anne Perry. 

Want to know HOW TO WRITE KILLER HISTORICAL MYSTERIES like Rhys Bowen and Anne Perry? Check out Kathy Lynn Emerson’s Agatha nominee guide for writers of this genre.

Up for the non-fiction catagory is Frankie Y. Bailey’s AFRICAN AMERICAN MYSTERY WRITERS: A HISTORICAL & THEMATIC STUDY. From slave narratives to today’s fiction market, Bailey explores black genre fiction, the sleuths, victims and offenders as well as the cultural vernacular in mystery novels.

He was an American author, editor and critic by the name of William Parker White, AKA Anthony Boucher. In Jeffrey Marks’ ANTHONY BOUCHER: A BIOBIBLIOGRAPHY, we get the best of the man’s writing. No wonder the mystery community holds Bouchercon in his honor.

Final bit of gossip: My latest, WHERE ANGELS FEAR, just came out by Oak Tree Press. It follows FOOLS RUSH IN in the Christy Bristol Astrology Mysteries.