B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 238

Mystery Melange

"Man Walks Into Danger" book sculpture by Mike Stilkey


It's getting harder and harder for any individual author to be heard above the roar of hundreds of thousands (some say millions) of books published each year, between traditional publishing and self-publishing. (Bowker estimated that last year alone, more than 300,000 self-pubbed titles were issued.) Authors have to be more creative than ever before, and one group has banded together to form Killer Thrillers, a web site that promotes and sells their eBooks. As the site's recent press release notes, these aren't just any authors, they include 22 award-winning, bestselling, and internationally published thriller authors committed to bringing high standards and professional quality to their self-published works. Killer Thrillers authors include Brett Battles, Raymond Benson, Sean Black, Robert Gregory Browne, Blake Crouch, Karen Dionne, Timothy Hallinan, Katia Lief, CJ Lyons, Bob Mayer, Grant McKenzie, David Morrell, Boyd Morrison, J.F. Penn, Keith Raffel, J.D. Rhoades, Jeremy Robinson, L.J. Sellers, Zoë Sharp, Alexandra Sokoloff, Mark Terry and F. Paul Wilson.

Coming up March 8-10, 2013, there will be a weekend of crime writing courses titled "Crime and Publishment" at The Mill Forge Hotel in Scotland. The sessions with writers include Matt Hilton (author of the Joe Hunter series), Sheila Quigley (author of seven novels including Run for Home), and Allan Guthrie (award-winning author and co-founder of publisher Blasted Heath). In addition, budding authors will get the chance to pitch their novel directly to an agent.

Harrogate hosts the Theakstons Old Peculier crime writing festival, a celebration of the best crime writing in Europe and beyond, with competitions and panel discussions. The 2013 Harrogate festival program has been released, with Val McDermid once again taking over the Chairman duties. This is full circle for her, as she chaired the very first Harrogate Festival years ago, only this time she'll be joined by Kate Atkinson, Charlaine Harris, Susan Hill and Ruth Rendell as special guests.

Early registration for Thrillerfest is also open for next year, with special guests including 2013 ThrillerMaster Anne Rice, 2011 ThrillerMaster R.L. Stine, T. Jefferson Parker, and Michael Connelly. As usual, the event will also incude CraftFest, with NYT bestselling authors sharing their secrets on the craft of writing, and AgentFest, with over 50 top agents and editors in the business on hand to hear your pitches.

The Q&A roundup this week includes a "killer conversation" with two of the best-known Mikes in crime fiction, Michael Connelly and Michael Koryta. The pair visited Atlanta last week for the Decatur Book Festival and spoke with CNN. Also, author and publisher of Hard Case Crime, Charles Ardai, spoke with the Crime Fiction Lover blog about his fascination with pulp fiction and more; and Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen answered seven quick questions for BookPage.

The 'Zine Scene

The newly-resurrected magazine Thuglit is back and badder than ever after being on hiatus for a few years. The first issue of the new zine features stories by Johnny Shaw, Mike Wilkerson, Jason Duke, Jordan Harper, Matthew Funk, Terrence McCauley, Hilary Davidson, Court Merrigan, and editor Todd Robinson. It's switched over from a free website 'zine to a Kindle 'zine, but at 99 cents, it's a bargain.

Upstart Noir Magazine is raising funds on Kickstarter. The publication plans to be "The first-of-its kind tablet magazine for the mystery, thriller and true crime genres in all mediums." Some of the best-known names in the genre are already on board, including Megan Abbott, who will serve as the magazine's Editor at Large. The Board of Advisers and contributors include Ace Atkins, Cara Black, Ed Brubaker, John Buntin, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Joel Engel, Lyndsay Faye, Sara Gran, Denise Hamilton, John Harvey, Stephen Hunter, Leslie Klinger, Denise Mina, T. Jefferson Parker, Otto Penzler, Ian Rankin, April Smith and Joseph Wambaugh. 


The third issue of Blood and Tacos is out. This online and Kindle-zine is edited by Johnny Shaw, who touts this issue that "includes a schwack of fist-pumping fiction from the legendary Stephen Mertz, along with Garnett Elliott, Todd Robinson, Chris La Tray and Rob Kroese. Like you couldn't have read that on the cover. We're also featuring a great article this month on the Cannon studio and four exemplary films from same and reviewing Doomsday Warrior (specifically book 9). Finally, have a look at our new feature, Cooking Like a Tough Guy."


Crime Factory #11 is live, with Road To Perdition writer Max Allan Collins; comics-superstar Jimmy Palmiotti; a discussion of boxing pulp novels by Paul Bishop, Mel Odom and Eric Beetner; fiction by Jonathan Woods, Michael A. Gonzales, Matthew C. Funk, Michael Bracken, Robin Jarossi, John Kenyon and Nigel Bird; and much more.

The winter issue of Plots with Guns has short fiction by Eric J. Bandel, Taylor Brown, Terry Butler, Andy Henion, Erik Lundy, Dan Ray, Craig Renfroe, Rick Ripatrazone, and Tim L. Williams.

Spinetinger's latest reviews include The Prophet by Michael Koryta and the TV show Breaking Bad, and there's also Spinetingler's view on the recent revelations about fake Amazon reviews (a/k/a "sock puppets") in an essay titled "Internet Integrity and The Ethics of Review."

The editors of Near2TheKnuckle created it to provide an outlet for darker, grittier fiction. Now, they're looking for submissions for their first Kindle anthology of stories between 1,000 and 3,000 words. You can still submit stories for the regular website zine, too, which at present are nonpaying, publicaton only. The editors hope to raise funds from the anthology to pump up the website zine and also offer a print anthology in the near future.

If you've got a hard-boiled or noir short story of 4,000 words or less looking for a home, Beat to a Pulp has opened its submissions again through October 15.

The "Six Questions For" blog featured Eddie Vega, Editor-in-Chief of Noir Nation, an eBook journal of high quality crime fiction, essays, and author interviews, illustrated with living art: tattoos. Vega talks about what he looks for in submissions and what he's learned about writing based on his experience as an editor.

Seattle's Best(s)

 

Photo by Devin Reams


The Seattle Mystery Bookshop is one of the members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. The store reported its mystery bestsellers for August:

Hardcovers

 

1 – Kat Richardson, Seawitch, (Roc)
2 – Tana French, Broken Harbor, (Viking)
3 – tie  Laura Lippman, And When She was Good, (Morrow) and JA Jance, Judgment Call, (Morrow)
5 – tie Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins, (Harper) and James Lee Burke, Creole Belle, (Simon & Schuster)
7 – Megan Abbott, Dare Me, (Little Brown)
8 – Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl, (Crown)
9 – Louise Penny, Beautiful Mystery, (Minotaur)
10 – Dean Koontz, Odd Apocalypse, (Bantam)

Trade Paperback

1 – Jussi, Adler-Olsen, The Keeper of Lost Causes, (Plume)
2 – Peter Spiegelman, Thick as Thieves, (Vintage)
3 – tie  Rebecca Cantrell, Trace of Smoke, (Forge) and Fred Vargas, The Chalk Circle Man, (Penguin)
5 – tie  Ernie Cline, Ready Player One, (Crown and Susan Hill, The Various Haunts of Men, (Overlook)
7 – tie  Ross Allison, Spooked in Seattle, (Clerisy) and Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects, (Three Rivers)
Craig Johnson, The Cold Dish, (Penguin)
GM Malliet, Wicked Autumn, (Minotaur)

Mass Market

1 – Kat Richardson, Greywalker, (Roc
2 – Louise Penny, Still Life (St. Martins)
3 – Cleo Coyle, Murder by Mocha, (Berkley)
4 – tie  Natalie R. Collins, Ties that Bind, (St. Martin’)s and Kate Carlisle, Peril in Paperback, (Obsidian)
6 – tie Jo Nesbø, Redbreast, (Harper and Rhys Bowen, Naughty in Nice, (Berkley)
8 – tie Kat Richardson, Downpour, (Roc); Patricia Briggs, Moon Called, (Ace); and Nancy Atherton, Aunt Dimity’s Death, (Penguin)

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Sony Pictures has optioned Olen Steinhauer's three novels featuring Milo Weaver. Weaver is a former CIA agent known as "a tourist," i.e., an undercover agent with no home and no identity. The first project in the series will be scripted by Matt Corman and Chris Ord (Covert Affairs). (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Myriad Pictures announced an adaptation of Charlie Huston's noir thriller novel, Caught Stealing. The project will star Alec Baldwin as a sadistic cop who chases after the character played by Patrick Wilson, a "hotshot high school baseball prospect turned unlucky alcoholic, going-nowhere bartender who mistakenly gets caught up in a bloody treasure hunt through New York City."

James Patterson's novel Guilty Wives is headed for the big screen. The plot follows four married gal pals whose vacation in Monte Carlo leads to an orgy gone wrong, murder and a race to clear their names.

Director Daniel Alfredson has started filming Echoes From The Dead (Skumtimmen), an adaptation of Swedish author Johan Theorin's book that was voted Best First Mystery Novel 2007 by the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers. The story follows a woman whose five-year-old son disappeared 20 years ago without a trace, although the woman believes her father was involved in the boy's death.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has been working to get an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice off the ground for awhile, potentially starring Robert Downey Jr. as pothead private detective Larry "Doc" Sportello. Anderson took some time off the project to get funding for his newly-released film The Master, but has turned his attention back to Inherent Vice and is working on the script. There's no date set for production.

Bruce Willis is in talks to join American Assassin, a new thriller from director Jeffrey Nachmanoff that's based on a script by Mike Finch. The plot follows a young man named Mitch Rapp who joins the CIA after his girlfriend is killed during a terrorist attack. Willis would take on the role of Rapp's mentor.

Daniel Craig has contracted to star in at least two more Bond films. However, it should be noted that previous actors in the role (Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton) were released from their contracts early.

TV

TNT bought two pilots based on the work of crime novelists David Baldacci and Robert Littell: Baldacci's King and Maxwell, which follows Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, former secret service agents whose unique skills gives them a leg up on conventional law enforcement; and Littell's spy drama Legends, centered on the deep-cover operative Martin Odum, who has an uncanny ability to transform himself into a different person for each job. (As reported by Crimespree.)

Fringe executive producers J.J. Abrams and J.H. Wyman are teaming up again for a new procedural sci-fi project with a pilot production commitment from Fox. The premise is described as "an action-packed buddy cop show, set in the near future, when all LAPD officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids."

Robert De Niro's production company signed a deal with Showtime for a small-screen adaption of his 2006 film The Good Shepherd, a spy drama loosely based on actual events surrounding the birth of counter-intelligence in the CIA.

A new CW detective drama pilot, Boiling Point, will focus on two boyband members who become private detectives to earn money when their fame fades, which also give them a chance to hunt for the missing brother of one of the duo.

Dick Wolf (Law & Order) is adapting the UK legal thriller Injustice for US television. The British version was written by Anthony Horowitz, the prolific screenwriter (Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War) and author of over 35 books, including the new Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk. Injustice follows William Travers, a criminal barrister who is recovering from a traumatic series of events that have shaken his belief in the legal system.

THEATER

The new season of Houston's Theater Under the Stars will include the musical Jekyll & Hyde October 9-21. Starring Tony Award Nominee/American Idol finalist Constantine Maroulis and Grammy Award nominee Deborah Cox, the play is based on the classical novella by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Murder Sails at Midnight

Marian Babson is a pseudonym for Ruth Stenstreem. who was born in 1929 in Salem, Massachusetts but has spent most of her adult life in London. She worked a variety of jobs as a librarian, as a den mother to a firm of commercial artists, as a campaign headquarters manager, and as coeditor of a knitting machine magazine despite the fact she can't knit. Eventually, she turned to writing mysteries, penning over 30 novels (the last in 1999) and served for ten years as secretary of the Crime Writers Association, from 1976 to 1986.

The publisher's tagline for her books is "Murder Most British," which indicates the "cozy" or traditional tone of her writing. Babson re-uses some characters in her novels, including aging actresses Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair and the publicity firm of Douglas Perkins & Gerry Tate, although even the series books can be read in any order. Many of her novels, especially the Perkins & Tate series, involve cats, with such titles as Canapes For The Kitties and Miss Petunia's Last Case.

But Babson also wrote standalone suspense novels like Murder Sails at Midnight (1975), a closed-setting-style plot, in which the action all takes place aboard a cruise ship. Four wealthy women sail from New York to Genoa aboard the luxury liner Beatrice Cenci in first-class. We learn early on that another passenger, "Mr. Butler," has been hired to make sure one of the women doesn't finish the voyage. The book thus becomes not a "who dunnit," but a "who will get it," because we don't know the identity of the intended victim, although each woman has secrets and also individuals in their lives who would benefit from their deaths.

Babson's writing has been described as possessing a coolly amused, ironic voice, much in evidence in Murder Sails at Midnight, which has a more serious tone than her Dolan/Sinclair and Perkins/Tate books. As to how she came up with the idea for the book, Babson wrote in an essay for Mystery Readers Journal that she was an avid traveler and had freqently taken cruises:

"Death, if not murder, is part of shipboard life. Sadly, by the very nature of things quite a few passengers tend to be elderly and not always in the best of health. Two of them died on one of my recent voyages."

She also experienced ship bomb threats, as well as sailing through the tag-end of a hurricane and "man overboard" scenarios. She added,

"A friend of mine once told me, 'I love to listen to your travel stories -- but I never want to travel with you.' I don't blame her. There are times when I don't want to travel with me, either, but what choice do I have? On the other hand, look at all the material I collect."

Mystery Melange

Book Sculpture by Cara Barer

Mystery Fanfare posted a notice about the passing of Sally Fellows, who died this week. Sally was a long-time supporter of the mystery and crime fiction community as a reader, reviewer, frequent conference attendee and panel moderator (as well as helping to organize the Mayhem in the Midlands conference), and a big supporter of authors. Diane Plumley also has a nice remembrance on her blog today, as does Laura Lippman.

The annual Davitt Awards
for excellent in Australian crime fiction were handed out by Sisters in
Crime Australia.  Winners included A Decline in Prophets by Sulari
Gentill for best adult novel and Beyond Fear by Jayne Ford for best
debut.

Wellington-based novelist and screenwriter Neil Cross has
won New Zealand's 2012 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel for his
book Luther: The Calling, which will be released in the U.S. this week. The novel is based on the popular BBC-TV series Luther, which debuted back in 2010 starring Idris Elba as DCI John Luther. (Hat tip to Craig Sisterson.)

From a Malice Domestic press release: The William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program is announcing the 2012 call for submissions from Unpublished Writers. Submissions will be accepted between September 15th through November 15th, 2012 only. The William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers is designed to foster quality Malice Domestic literature and to help the next generation of Malice Domestic authors get their first works published. For submission guidelines as well as a complete list of previous grant winners, visit the website.

Short story writer and blogger extraorindary Patti Abbott has issued a new flash-fiction challenge to "Write a story of 1,000 words or less entitled 'Frank, Jr.'" The deadline for submissions is September 24. Post your story on your own blog and send Patti a link or if you don't have a blog, Patti will post your story on hers. As Patti explains, there are "No winners or losers. Just good fun. Any genre, any style."

The new anthology Protectors was just released to benefit the children's charities PROTECT and the National Association to Protect Children. The anthology includes a foreword by rock critic Dave Marsh, and short fiction by over 40 authors, from Patti Abbott to George Pelecanos to Chet Williamson.

The unofficial (a/k/a "back to school") end of summer may be upon us, but that doesn't mean it's the end of crime fiction events. Coming up September 9-16, the Agatha Christie Festival lands once again in Torquay in UK featuring tours, talks, theater, tea, and even an Agatha Christie Sea Swim to benefit the Devon Air Ambulance. Bloody Scotland comes in the middle of the month, September 14-16, in which Scotland's first crime fiction festival will feature Guest of Honor Ian Rankin. Then, at the end of the month, the Writers Police Academy with special guest Lee Child returns to Jamestown, NC, September 21-23. It's not too late to register for these conferences.

The Q&A roundup this week features Julia Spencer-Fleming chatting with Hank Phillippi Ryan about Ryan's upcoming book, The Other Woman.

The "Dorothy" Awards

Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957)

The discussion list-serv DorothyL was concocted by a group of librarians at a July 1991 meeting of the Association of Research Libraries and named to honor mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers. The group has well over 3,000 members from 25+ countries who meet up in the virtual environment to share their love of crime fiction. In recent years, Theresa de Valence has compiled "best of" lists from members who contributed their favorite reads of the past year.

The most recent list, for 2011, included the members' favorite authors and favorite titles, which include many of the bestsellers such as A Trick Of The Light by Louise Penny, One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, and Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson. But the lists have a variety of other authors and books, too, ones you may not see on the bestseller lists or nominated for awards, but may nonetheless give you some good reading material for your library shelf or eReader. It's always nice to find new friends.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Tom Rob Smith's crime novel Child 44 is still headed for the movies, but a studio switch may mean Ridley Scott, originally hired to direct the film, will now serve as producer while Swedish director Daniel Espinosa will take over directing duties. Espinosa's most recent project was the Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds thriller Safe House.

The producers behind the just-released gangster drama Lawless released a featurette with director John Hillcoat and some of the film's stars, including Shia LaBeouf, Jason Clarke, and Guy Pearce. The clip also includes insights from Matt Bondurant, author of the novel The Wettest County in the World, on which the film is based, who is also a descendant of the movie's real-life heroes.

There's also a new trailer for the Robert Redford-helmed The Company You Keep, starring Shia LaBeouf as a journalist who desperately needs a scoop to keep his job and may get it when a member of the radical group Weather Underground (played by (Susan Sarandon) is arrested.

And for the younger set (and the young at heart), Disney is releasing the 1986 animated movie The Great Mouse Detective on Blu-ray later this month.

TV

Mystery Fanfare reminds us that Starting September 9, the third season of Wallander returns to Masterpiece Mystery! on PBS. The series stars Kenneth Branagh as Inspector Kurt Wallander, the moody Swedish detective created by mystery author Henning Mankell.

ABC ordered a S.H.I.E.L.D pilot from Joss Whedon, set in the same universe as Whedon's Avengers film, with a super-hero law enforcement group headed by Nick Fury.

Vera Farmiga has signed on to play the lead female role in the new A&E series Bates Motel, a prequel to the Hitchcock classic Psycho that looks at the earlier days of Norma's relationship with her son Norman Bates.

The SyFy network has picked up the Canadian sci-fi crime drama Continuum. The series stars Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, a regular cop from 65 years in the future who finds herself trapped in present day Vancouver fighting eight ruthless criminals known as Liber8, who are also from the future. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News .)

Could Beverly Hills Cop be headed to the small screen? Shawn Ryan, Eddie Murphy and Sony Pictures Television have teamed up to adapt the Beverly Hills Cop franchise featuring a fast-talking Detroit cop who heads off to Beverly Hills to investigate a murder. Murphy would serve as executive produce and guest star occasionally.

ABC has bought the drama project Patron Saints, written by Jeffrey Bell (Spartacus) and described as a mystery thriller about a covert group who help people in lost, desperate and impossible circumstances.

CBS picked up an untitled crime drama that centers on an FBI agent from Nebraska who single-handedly prevents a major domestic terrorist attack while on a family vacation, becomes an American hero, and then takes on a new job leading a DC task force.

The CBS UK affiliates have picked up the hit Australian series Underbelly, the San Francisco police drama The Division, and the crime series Sins & Secrets.

PODCASTS

Forensic anthropologist and novelist Kathy Reichs joined NPR's "Science Friday" program, talking about her writing and the TV show Bones, based on Reichs herself and her work.

The latest installment of NPR's summer Crime in the City series features Harry Dolan talking about his novels set in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

THEATER

Sacramento's Big Idea Theatre is performing Red Herring through September 15th, a dramedy that combines Cold War-era commie-hunting with a murder mystery and a trio of love stories, which plays out in more than a dozen settings across the globe.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Murder for Treasure

Welshman David Williams (1926-2003), the son of a journalist, studied modern history at St. John's College, Oxford, though his studies were interrupted by World War II and three years he spent as an officer in the Royal Navy. After the war, he began a career in advertising as a medical copywriter, rising through the ranks at various companies until he started his own agency.

On the side, Williams developed his hobby of writing crime fiction and published his first novel in 1976, Unholy Writ. He said of his efforts,"I write whodunits which are aimed to be above all credible, civilised entertainments, incidentally informative. And to lace them with humour - the last as an enduring legacy from two friends and mentors, Bruce Montgomery (who wrote as Edmund Crispin) and Kingsley Amis." His ultimate hero in crime fiction was witty author Michael Innes.

At the age of 51, Williams suffered a major stroke that almost killed him. Eventually, he overcame partial paralysis and impaired speech to make a recovery, but realizing he wouldn't be able to work at his old career, he decided to take up crime writing full time. His series featuring urbane and humorous banker Mark Treasure and his successful actress wife Molly eventually included 19 installments that received good reviews, primarily for his wit and plotting. This latter bit amused him, because, as he said, "I rarely know the identity of the killer until the penultimate chapter." 

Two of Williams' books were shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award, including 1980's Murder for Treasure, and Williams was later elected to the Detection Club. However, that fame didn't stop his disappointment at not having the Treasure books adapted for television like Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series. Toward that end, he started a new series featuring Chief Inspector Merlin Parry of the South Wales Constabulary, along with his sidekick, Sergeant Gomer Lloyd, but TV executives weren't interested in the four books in that series, either.

Murder for Treasure was the third of the Treasure books, and sends London banker Mark Treasure to a tiny West Wales sailing village. His quest: to convince elderly Judge Henry Nott-Herbert to sell his stock in Rigley's Patent Footbalm to the American Hutstacker Chemical Corporation. On the train to Wales, Treasure becomes involved in the attempted murder of an Australian clergyman, who disappears, along with a mysterious package Treasure was given to deliver to the Judge. When Treasure sees two tough-looking youths with the package at one of the train stops, gunfire ensues and the package rips open to reveal a shrunken, hairy head with a painted face—a ventriloquist's doll.

The strangeness continues once Treasure arrives in the village. He finds the rich Judge—an amateur magician who's about to wed the lovely young widow Anna Spring—obsessed with a sighting by a "psychic" and her parrot of a naked dead body in the harbor; a body that later went missing. Stranger and more serious still, the clergyman's corpse turns up seaside, and Treasure finds himself in the middle of Anna's love life, an insurance scam, corrupt cops and the deceptions of foot-balm executives and their sultry spouses.

Most of Williams' books are out of print, although Black Dagger re-released Murder for Treasure in 2000, Treasure Up in Smoke in 2003 and Treasure by Degrees in 2004. On July 19 of this year, the Bello Best of British Crime omnibus released a volume including, A Game of Murder, by Francis Durbridge; Murder in Moscow, by Andrew Garve; and Williams' Prescription for Murder.

Indie-fatigable

in·de·fat·i·ga·ble [in-di-FAT-i-guh-buhl] — adj. tireless, inexhaustible, persevering

 

Author Louis Bayard at One More Page Books



As sales of digital books and eReaders continue to climb and bookstores continue to close, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that many independent bookstores are not only hanging in there, they're thriving. I fully believe bookstores will be with us for some time to come, because they provide a continuing, stable service you can't get anywhere else—knowledgeable staff who can recommend titles, promote local authors and also a place to meet and greet authors in person. As Rob W. Hart
said, indie stores contribute to the fabric of a neighborhood and help
drive local economies.

There are hurdles to overcome as indies fight for market share, and toward
that end, J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch offered up an impassioned blog post on some ideas that could help, as well as reasons why eBooks and print books aren't mutually exclusive. The American Booksellers Association just announced yesterday that they're teaming up with Kobo to allow their member stores to offer a full line of eReaders, eReading accessories, and ebooks from Kobo's catalog of nearly 3 million titles, giving stores a cut of proceeds. (Kobo replaces GoogleBooks, which pulled out of a similar deal with ABA).

The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association has over 30 brick-and-mortar member bookstores that specialize in crime fiction, and the American Booksellers Association's IndieBound site lists 2,000 stores that cover the gamut of both fiction and nonfiction. Hop on over to a store near you and get a recommendation for an author who may become your new favorite, join a book club, or stop by for an author's talk and signing.