Month: July 2019

Booker Longlist Announced

July 23, 2019 admin 0

The longest for the 2019 Booker Award have been announced. Competition for the £50,000 international award is high. This year the favorites include The Testament, Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale; Oyinkan Braithwaite’s brilliant debut, My Sister, The Serial Killer and Salman Rushdie’s beautiful Quichotte. From the Guardian: Most readers will have to wait until September to find out what happens in Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, but the Booker judges have […]

No Image

Benny Cooperman’s Howard Engel Dies at 88

July 18, 2019 admin 3

The Canadian mystery writer Howard Engel has died at age 88. According to the CBC, Engel was recovering from a stroke, but died of pneumonia. Author of the Benny Cooperman series, Engel’s writing included the first mystery novels many Canadian read. The first Benny Cooperman book, The Suicide Murders, was published in 1980 and was later adapted for television with Saul Rubinek in the title role. From CBC: “The great Canadian detective did not exist […]

No Image

Amazon Plans Series Based on Lee Child’s Reacher

July 16, 2019 admin 0

Maybe spurred on by the success of their Bosch series based on the work of Michael Connelly, Amazon has landed the rights to “develop a script-to-series drama based on the Jack Reacher character from Lee Child’s bestselling book series, from Scorpion creator Nick Santora. The project will be a co-production of Amazon Studios, Skydance Television and Paramount Television,” according to Deadline Hollywood, who remark that the series has over 100 million books and over a […]

No Image

Passages: Andi Shechter

July 15, 2019 admin 0

The crime fiction world bowed its collective head on Monday at the passing Andi Shechter, one of its special matriarchs, a proud fan and book lover whose support for books and reading was legendary in her community. Though she most proudly identified herself as a fan, Shechter was a very solid writer in her own right and was a January Magazine reviewer for several years, prior to a health decline that often saw her hoping […]

No Image

Eighth Annual Buffalo Bookfest

July 12, 2019 admin 0

The eighth annual Buffalo Bookfest will be an exciting one day event. It takes place tomorrow, Saturday July 13th from noon until five pm. The Buffalo Bookfest is taking place at one of the top book-focused venues in the North East, the fabulous WNY Book Arts Center at 468 Washington Street in downtown Buffalo, New York. It is a free, fun and family friendly festival in celebration of all things focusing on the book. Some of […]

SF/F: The Book of Flora by Meg Elison

July 8, 2019 Linda L. Richards 0

“Last night I dreamt I was back in Nowhere again.” The first line of The Book of Flora (47 North), the concluding book in Meg Elison’s Nowhere Trilogy, evokes Daphne DuMaurier’s beloved Rebecca. The reminder to that book comes both in the meter of the first line in both works (“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again”) but also in a ghostly poetry that haunts both books. Despite Elison’s almost show and tell […]

Jumanji and Polar Express Author Sells Another to Hollywood

July 3, 2019 Linda L. Richards 0

Moviegoers who loved Jumanji and Polar Express can expect another film based on the work of author Chris Van Allsburg. Film rights for The Mysteries Of Harris Burdick were recently acquired by Disney/Fox who created both of those previous Van Allsburg works. Disney/Fox also secured rights to two other Van Allsburg works last year: Allsburg’s debut work, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, and last year it acquired The Sweetest Fig for Paul Feig. But it […]