Robin Stevens's Blog, page 4

I’m coming to Hay Festival 2024!

2024 is the tenth anniversary of Murder Most Unladylike – and I have a lot of celebrations planned! We’re putting together the final touches to the tour at the moment, and I’ll be able to reveal the full programme soon – but for now, I can announce the very first event on it, an appearance at Hay Festival 2024!

I’ll be there on the 30th of May at 2:30pm, talking about The Body in the Blitz and Murder Most Unladylike, and you can book tickets now. I’ll also be signing books old and new afterwards – you’re welcome to bring along as many as you want and I’ll sign what I can!

I hope I’ll see lots of you there – and if you can’t make it, don’t worry. We have lots more events to announce over the next few weeks!

The Body in the Blitz has been shortlisted for a CrimeFest award!

I just got the very nice news that The Body in the Blitz, the second Ministry of Unladylike Activity book, has been shortlisted for the CrimeFest Best Crime Novel for Children Award 2024! It’s really exciting to be noticed by one of the biggest crime fiction conferences in the UK – I’m really proud, and so pleased to be on the list with so many books and authors I admire.

The ceremony is in May, in Bristol, and I’m very excited about it – it’s great to have a whole weekend to celebrate crime fiction!

World Book Day 2024: Puffin Storymakers Show

I have something else to help you with your WBD celebrations this year: I’m part of Puffin’s free 2024 Storymakers Show with Ed Vere and Dr Sheila Kanani! This is perfect for teachers, librarians, home educators and of course aspiring writers and illustrators!

You can watch the show below, or follow the link to the Puffin website here – my section is all about The Ministry of Unladylike Activity!

World Book Day 2024 Show: Ed Vere, Robin Stevens and Dr Sheila Kanani

World Book Day 2024 – dress like my detectives!

It’s World Book Week 2024, and I know a lot of you are dressing up as my detectives! It’s very easy to do – really, all you need to do is spruce up your usual school uniform with a tie, a hat, a crest or badge, a notebook and a magnifying glass.

Deepdean crest by Dustin Hansen

If you want a detailed run-down of what my detectives are wearing in the MMU books, here’s a post I made in 2020 that should help you out.

And if you want to know what my detectives wear in the Ministry books, the good news is that we’ve got some lovely illustrations of them by Jan Bielecki on the covers of the books.

May and Nuala might be in their Deepdean uniforms, of course, and Eric in his Weston uniform. If they’re on a case, Nuala would wear something quite quirky – a brightly coloured dress that doesn’t quite fit her and a waistcoat, or a frilly blouse and a long skirt – and she’d of course have her glasses. May would wear a simple aertex shirt (like the ones you wear for PE) and a pullover, and she’d prefer to wear shorts rather than a skirt. Eric would also wear the shirt/woolly pullover/shorts or trousers combo, and he’d be carrying some kind of animal companion!

And that’s all there is to it! Good luck, Detectives – remember, anyone can be part of the Detective Society, and anyone can dress as any member of the Detective Society they want (as long as they do it respectfully). Have fun and enjoy World Book Day!

Cream Buns and Crime has a Kirkus review!

If you’re in America and Canada, you’ll (hopefully) have noticed the gorgeous US editions of my books hitting shelves. We’ve now published the nine murder mystery novels in the Murder Most Unladylike series, and this year it’s the turn of my two companion books, Cream Buns and Crime and Once Upon a Crime.

Cream Buns and Crime will publish on April 23 from Simon Kids, and ahead of that we’ve had the most wonderful review from Kirkus, the most trusted book review body in the US.

Stevens’ nine-book series is a satisfying and highly successful combination of English boarding-school tales and traditional detective stories, all set in the 1930s. This entertaining companion title includes an invitation to would-be detectives; suggested reading, mostly from the adult world, for mystery aficionados; and four new, interconnected short stories … Fans will be thrilled and encouraged to go on exploring the worlds of mystery reading—and solving.

Kirkus, March 1 2024

I’m delighted – and delighted by the way the US edition looks. Elizabeth Baddeley, my US illustrator, always creates such lovely covers. Pre-order now and get your beautiful hardback edition on the 23rd of April!

Murder Most Unladylike has arrived in Spain!

Ten years after Murder Most Unladylike first published in the UK, it’s amazing to see that it’s still arriving in new territories – and the latest addition is one I’m particularly pleased about, Spanish!

El Crimen es Cosa de Damas has just published from Editorial Alma, translated by Andrea Montero Cusset. It’s out now, available in all good bookstores and online, and the sequel is on the way soon!

I’m so thrilled to have Spanish readers introduced to my world and my detectives. It’s always so amazing to see my words travelling further and reaching more people than I ever could. It’s a special kind of writing magic!

By the way, I do get fairly regular questions about translations. I try to keep this website as up to date as possible, so if you want to know which languages a book has been published into, check its page – I put up the translated editions as soon as I get my author copies. If you can’t see your language, it may be on the way, or we may just not have found a publisher for my series in that language yet.

And if you want my books to be published in your language, my very best suggestion is to get in contact with a publisher in your country, that publishes books similar to mine, and suggest they take a look at the series. This is genuinely why my books are published in Norwegian – the woman who became my translator got in touch with a publisher she liked and persuaded them to buy the series and let her translate it!

Celebrating WBD 2024 with Oxford Westgate Library

My first event of 2024 has been announced: I’m coming to Oxford Central Library on the 9th of March for a free event in partnership with Daunt’s Summertown to celebrate World Book Day 2024.

Tickets are limited as it’s a small space, so sign up now! And if you miss out, don’t worry. I’ll be back in May and June for a full programme of events to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Murder Most Unladylike, as well as the launch of our new crime fiction anthology, The Super Sunny Murder Club.

The Super Sunny Murder Club

I’m delighted to be bringing you my first announcement (and first post!) of 2024: the team that created 2021’s The Very Merry Murder Club is back with a brand new mystery anthology!

My partner in crime Serena Patel and I are proud to present thirteen new and extremely puzzling short stories by thirteen of our favourite middle-grade authors: Abiola Bello, Annabelle Sami, Benjamin Dean, E.L. Norry, Elle McNicoll, Dominique Valente, Maisie Chan, Nizrana Farook, Patrice Lawrence, Roopa Farooki, Serena Patel, Sharna Jackson – and me!

I’m really excited to be able to contribute a short story this time around, and I had so much fun writing it. It’s a murder mystery in a second-hand bookstore, and it introduces you to my detectives Gracie and Why. Why (wearing their trademark dark glasses and trench coat) even features on Harry Woodgate’s brilliant cover, which I love.

I can’t wait for you all to read this wonderful book – it’s out on the 6th of June from Farshore, and you can pre-order it now from Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwell’s and of course your local indie!

And yes, I’ll be doing events for it too – keep an eye on my website calendar for details!

Happy holidays from the Detective Society!

It’s the 23rd of December – which means that it’s officially Mistletoe and Murder season! I always make a post on this day each year to remind you all that if you want to start your festive read, or reread, today is the perfect time to do it.

I’m now away for the holidays for the rest of the year, so this is the last post you’ll get from me in 2023. But I will be back in January, with a lot of exciting things – several really fun announcements to share with you, plans for the 10th anniversary of Murder Most Unladylike, and news about my 2024 tour dates.

I hope you have a restful and peaceful holiday season, however and whatever you celebrate (or if you don’t celebrate at all!). It’s been a hard year, and the world feels very sad and frightening right now in a lot of ways. It’s hard to write an end of year message that seems relevant or sufficient.

But there are always stories and poems that help express and make sense of what we are all going through – I think that’s the miraculous thing about stories and words, that they can reach across time and space and speak to people far beyond their writer. We all contain so many stories within us, and that makes us all so incredibly precious and worth protecting. War is always wrong, no matter who wages it, no matter the cause, and I believe that more firmly the more I read and write about it.

So take care of yourself, and the people who you love, and find stories that can give you courage and hope.

Detective Society forever and I’ll see you all in 2024!

The Body in the Blitz tour is over!

It’s true – my tour for The Body in the Blitz is done! Thank you to everyone who came along and made it so special. I had a wonderful time and I hope you did too!

I’m now resting from events until 2024 – I have to start planning Ministry 3, and then I’ll be mostly working on writing it in the spring of 2024. But in late spring/summer of 2024 I’ll be back out on the road for the 10th anniversary of Murder Most Unladylike! Please be patient until my tour dates are announced – I always try to get to as many parts of the UK and Ireland as possible, but of course I can’t always visit your town or city.

If you want more from me in the meantime, here are a couple of articles that have been recently published – one on my autism diagnosis and what it’s made me realise about the books I write, and one on the challenges of writing The Body in the Blitz. And I’m over on Instagram, TikTok and Tumblr if you want to ask me anything or see what I’m up to.

And if you haven’t read The Body in the Blitz yet – might I suggest that it makes a great Christmas present? There are still some signed copies over at WH Smith online, and I also left plenty of signed copies behind at all the stores and towns I visited.

Keep reading, keep detecting, and Detective Society Forever!