Books and Events, Dear Readers!

We will soon be making an exciting announcement about our Mega Book Launch Month later this fall.

The Mesdames are going ZOOM with book launches this fall. We’ll post the dates as soon as they are determined. Best of all,  we are inviting readers across Canada to join in!

BOOKS AND SHORT FICTION

Coming Fall, 2020!

A stunning and talent-packed new Carrick Crime Anthology, A Grave Diagnosis! The anthology features 35 authors from across the crime and mystery spectrum, including  18 stories by Mesdames authors! There will be a ZOOM launch together with the Mega Book launch month, date TBD.

 

 

 

 

Rosemary McCracken’s new Pat Tierney mystery (the 4th), Uncharted Waters, Carrick Publishing, is now available on Amazon in paperback and all ebook formats, including Kobo.

Maureen Jennings, author of the Detective Murdoch mystery series, the DCI Tom Tyler series, and the Charlotte Frayne P.I. series: “Another delightful outing for Rosemary McCracken’s sleuth, Pat Tierney. Ever astute, Pat believably negotiates murder and mayhem that threatens to wreck her life. As well as a good story, Uncharted Waters has additional benefits such as the depiction of the inner world of financial investment. And a hilarious portrait of contemporary baby showers. More Pat Tierney, please!”

Gail Bowen, author of the Joanne Kilbourn Shreve mystery series: “As a single mother in her late 40s, Pat Tierney knows her decision to embark on uncharted waters by opening her own financial planning practice is a professional and personal risk. But when the uncharted waters prove to be a shark pool, bloody with betrayal and murder, Pat must fight not just for her livelihood but for her life. Uncharted Waters is McCracken’s best Pat Tierney mystery yet!”

 

The new novel by Lisa de Nikolitis, The Rage Room, will be published by Inanna. News of the Inanna book launch will be available later this fall TBD. With an endorsement by Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour “Wow, what a ride! Lisa de Nikolits has written a pulse-pounding thriller set in a troubled future that might just be ours. We see the seeds of The Rage Room in our own digital landscape. Mind-bending yet all too believable in the hands of a masterful storyteller.”

 

Lisa de Nikolits was interviewed by the Authors Book Club where she talked about what inspired her story, “Love Thy Neighbour “in A Grave Diagnosis.

 

 

 

Dancing with the Chairs in the Music House is the latest novel by Caro Soles. It is scheduled to be published on October 30,2020 by Inanna.

Precocious ten-year-old Vanessa Dudley-Morris knows lots of secrets. In 1949 when she and her family are forced to move into two rooms on the second floor of 519 Jarvis Street in Toronto, a genteel but somewhat rundown rooming house owned by a reclusive pianist, she learns a lot more.

Despite the family’s drastically reduced circumstances, her parents struggle to keep up their old standards. Threatened by blindness due to an eye condition, Vanessa is kept at home, tutored by an erratic succession of eccentrics, some with questionable credentials. Consequently, she spends a lot of time alone, wandering the dim corridors of the old house, silently listening at doors and watching the odd characters who live there. She becomes fascinated by a mother and son who move into a room on the third floor. Eventually, she agrees to take secret notes from the son to his mysterious friend at her church, unwittingly unleashing a chain of events that leads to tragedy.

Sylvia Warsh’s story, “The Emerald Skull” which first appeared in the Mesdames’ anthology, Thirteen, is reprinted in The Black Cat Mystery newsletter.

 

 

 

Blair Keetch‘s story “A Crunchy Kind of Death” was featured in the July issue of the Dark & Stormy Bookclub newsletter. His story “Sleep Perchance to Die” will be part of the fall anthology A Grave Diagnosis.

 

 

 

 

Kevin P Thornton’s article “Aging Heroes” is featured in Janet Rudoph’s Mystery Fanfare blog.

EVENTS

Big ZOOM Conference success: Ten MoM (Jayne Barnard, Jane Burfield, M. H. Callway, Melodie Campbell, Donna Carrick, Lisa De Nikolits, Rosemary McCracken. Lynne Murphy, Madona Skaff and Caro Soles) were on panels for When Words Collide, the Calgary multi-genre conference that went virtual in August because of COVID. The recorded panels will soon be available on YouTube.

Bloody Words Light Mystery Award 2021

Our favourite skellington, Bony Blithe, is back and looking for submissions to the 2021 Bloody Words Light Mystery Award (aka the Bony Blithe Award). Watch for the 2021 submission rules coming soon to your email inbox or check our Facebook page (/bonyblithe) or Website (www.bonyblithe.com).

 

DEAD TO WRITES: STORY STOCKING READINGS

Donna Carrick’s expansion of her Dead to Writes podcast, Story Stocking, continued through August with more stories from our latest anthology, In the Key of 13. Listen to these stories:

August 6  “The Beethoven Disaster”, Rosemary Aubert

August 13  “Her Perfume”, Marilyn Kay

August 19 “Bad Vibrations”, Rosalind Place

August 26 “Death of a Cheapskate”, Melodie Campbell