Off to See the Lizard?

By Kathie Felix

This summer, Vintage Books launched “Weekly Lizard,” a new mobile-enabled website for fans of mystery, crime, suspense and thriller fiction.

The site, online at weeklylizard.com, offers news and feature articles written by authors, booksellers, journalists, bloggers and other experts in the mystery and thriller genre.

The content includes author profiles in a section titled “In the Lineup,” essays and profiles of great mystery characters (filed under “Tough Guys and Dangerous Dames”), quotations from classic and contemporary mystery and thriller novels (“Wiseguy Quotes”) and early excerpts from upcoming novels.

The site draws on Vintage Crime/Black Lizard’s backlist and lineup of contemporary authors for access to original essays and historical documents. Feature articles are developed from books and news across the publishing industry.

Expect to see information on the imprint’s classic crime writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, as well as current bestsellers Steig Larsson, Henning Mankell, James Ellroy and Ruth Rendell.

The site also covers book-to-film news and features, classic film noir and current popular crime television series.

Currently, Weekly Lizard offers an in-depth look at the life of hard-boiled hero James M. Cain, author of the crime fiction classics The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce; author Lisa Unger’s take on Scott Smith’s novel, A Simple Plan, and an inside look at the debut of the Aurelio Zen series now airing on Masterpiece Mystery. In addition, author Karen Essex writes about sex and storylines with a discussion of her thriller, Dracula in Love.

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, founded in June 1990, combines the publishing muscle of Vintage Books, the publisher of Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, with Black Lizard, a classic crime fiction publishing house focused on the post-World War II era.

1/1/11

Happy New Year!

It’s a day of questions here at the SinC blog.

How tired are you?

Did you have a good time last night?

How did you ring in the new year?

We’re also interested in your thoughts about the Sisters in Crime blog.

What would you like to see covered here?

How can we improve the blog?

Do you have an urge to write a blog entry?

Thanks for spending time online with Sisters in Crime.

And may all your dreams come true in 2011!

Things to be Thankful for: Reading Lists

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here at the SinC Blog, we’re thankful for the many contributors who keep this blog rolling along. We wouldn’t have anything to read at this site without your contributions, your ideas and your kind assistance. (And please keep in mind that new contributions are always welcome.)

We’re especially grateful to our blog readers. You’re the reason that everyone works so hard to create what we hope is content compelling enough to interrupt your crime fiction reading and writing. We enjoy your comments – and we love our lurkers!

Thank you, to every one of our BlogSisters in Crime!

In honor of the holiday, we’re publishing a list of lists (!) of reading material related to Thanksgiving.

A big thank you to author B.V. Lawson for sharing her wonderful list of lists, which is included in this blog entry, and to author and SinC past president Marcia Talley, who introduced me by email to crime fiction reviewer and promoter Lizzie Hayes of the United Kingdom, who also shared her wonderful list collection. The lists contain some overlap, but all are wonderful creations.

And now… The List of Thanksgiving Reading Lists

B.V. Lawson created a Thanksgiving mystery list, which appeared in 2007 on her blog, In Reference to Murder. This week, her “Mystery Melange for Turkey Week” blog entry points to some culinary-related mysteries, both on the page and in the kitchen.

Janet Rudolph, founder of Mystery Readers Journal, published a list of Thanksgiving mysteries at her Mystery Fanfare blog earlier in the week.

The Lucius Beebe Memorial Library in Wakefield, Mass. provides an online list of Thanksgiving fiction, including mysteries.

The Morton Grove (Illinois) Public Library offers a list of fiction (including mysteries) with a Thankgsiving setting compiled by the subscribers of the Fiction_L mailing list.

Cozymystery.com includes a Thanksgiving Mystery Book List focused on, as you might expect, cozy mysteries.

Myshelf.com features age-appropriate and genre-specific Thanksgiving reading suggestions in categories including infant to preschool, ages 4-8, ages 9-12, youngster/young adult, general fiction, romance, mystery and nonfiction.

After checking out these lists, I pulled two Thanksgiving-related books from my shelves for a second look: Southern Fried by Cathy Pickens and Still Life by Louise Penny. I’m also spending time this weekend with Secrets of the Cat: Its Lore, Legend and Lives, which was revised and updated by its author, Barbara Holland, a woman of uncommon wit and literary accomplishment, shortly before her death in early September.

Tell us: What’s on your reading list this weekend, once the holiday mayhem has died down?


Written by Kathie Felix, with information provided by B.V. Lawson and Lizzie Hayes.

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love talks about creativity.



And after that, just for fun ...