PRESS RELEASE: JOFFE BOOKS ACQUIRES OSTARA PUBLISHING

Jasper Joffe, CEO of leading independent publisher Joffe Books, has acquired Ostara Publishing from previous owner Andrew Cocks for an undisclosed sum. 

Joffe Books will be taking over the Ostara list of approximately 120 titles. They will publish new editions in late 2022 and 2023, with Joffe’s laser-like focus on marketing and design relaunching the books to a whole new gamut of readers.

Award-winning crime writer, former Ostara consultant editor and Shots columnist Mike Ripley has been approached to write new introductions to the Ostara Classics. 

Kate Lyall Grant, Joffe Books Publishing Director: “Ostara has a well-deserved reputation for the superlative quality of its crime list, and with Joffe Books’ commercial success and expertise in the digital market, we think this is the perfect fit to reach a widespread new readership for these fantastic books. We will be staying true to the spirit of Ostara, and keeping the Ostara name, branding the books as ‘Joffe Books presents Ostara Classics.”

Andrew Cocks: ‘Regrettably I am no longer in a position to publish new books and give my existing titles the attention they deserve in an fast-developing publishing environment. I am delighted to have found in Joffe Books a kindred spirit to take over the Ostara list of authors and truly believe that Joffe will give the Ostara authors the opportunity to reach new readers and prosper. It has been a privilege to have been involved with all these books and I could not have wished for a better home for them.’

In 2019, Joffe Books acquired the Robert Hale backlist from Crowood Press, reissuing and revitalizing the sales of authors including Roger Silverwood, Frances Lloyd, David Hodges and Bill Kitson. These authors’ books now regularly feature in the Top 100 UK Kindle chart. The overall sales of ex-Hale titles have increased over tenfold since the acquisition.

About Joffe Books

Founded in 2014, Joffe Books is proud of its history of innovative publishing. Thanks to the unflagging passion and dedication brought by everyone in Team Joffe, we have built a reputation for crafting great books for readers, long-term relationships with authors and agents, and fleet-footed marketing. We are now the largest independent publisher of e-books in the UK. In 2021, Joffe sold over 3 million books across crime, mystery, thriller, romance and historical fiction (and another 6 million through Kindle Unlimited). Joffe was shortlisted for Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2020, 2021, and 2022. The Joffe Books Prize aims to increase the diversity of voices in crime writing. 

www.joffebooks.com

For more info contact Ostara@joffebooks.com

 

2019 Agatha Award Winners

Malice Domestic announced the winners the Agatha Awards on Saturday 4 May 2019. The winners are as follows:-

Best Contemporary Novel Mardi Gras Murder by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane Books)

Best Historical Novel 
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)

Best First Novel Tie: A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
Curses Boiled Againby Shari Randall (St. Martin's)

Best Short Story 
Tie: "All God's Sparrows" by Leslie Budewitz (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)
"The Case of the Vanishing Professor" by Tara Laskowski (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)

Best Children's/Young Adult Mystery 
Potion Problems(Just Add Magic) by Cindy Callaghan (Aladdin)

Best Nonfiction Mastering Plot Twists: How to Use Suspense, Targeted Storytelling Strategies, and Structure to Captivate Your Readers by Jane Cleland (Writer's Digest Books)

Congratulations to all the winners and nominated authors.

2017 Arthur Ellis Award Winners

Crime Writers of Canada announced the winners for the 2017 Arthur Ellis Awards for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing on 25^th May 2017

Best Novel:  

The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey (Viking Canada)

Best First Novel sponsored by Kobo: 

Strange Things Done by Elle Wild (Dundurn Press)

Best Novella: The Lou Allin Memorial Award: 

Rundown by Rick Blechta (Orca Book Publishers)

Best Short Story: 

A Death at the Parsonage by Susan Daly in The Whole She-Bang 3, (Toronto Sisters in Crime)

Best Book in French:

Red Light: Adieu by Marie-Eve Bourassa (Mignonne, Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature, vlb editions)

Best Juvenile/YA Book:

Masterminds: Criminal Destiny by Gordon Korman (HarperCollins Publishers)

Best Nonfiction Book: 

A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story by Jeremy Grimaldi (Dundurn Press)

Unhanged Arthur for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel sponsored by Dundurn Press: 

The Golkonda Project
 by S.J. Jennings,

CWC also announced the 2017 Derrick Murdoch Award recipient being Christina Jennings. 

The Derrick Murdoch Award is a special achievement award for contributions to the crime genre. This year's recipient is Christina Jennings, founder, Chairman and CEO of Shaftesbury Films. She has won a number of awards, including Genies, Geminis and Canadian Screen Awards, among several other nominations and accolades throughout her career. Christina founded Shaftesbury Films in 1987 as a feature film company. She has produced movies and television series based upon the work of several Arthur Ellis Award-winning Canadian crime writers including the late novelist and playwright Timothy Findlay (External Affairs), novelists Gail Bowen (the Joanna Kilbourn TV movies) and Maureen Jennings (Murdoch Mysteries), as well as historian Marjorie Freeman Campbell (Torso).

Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

July 2016

Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbroke Lane is by Paul Thomas Murphy. In April 1871, a constable walking a beat near Greenwich found a girl dying in the mud - her face cruelly slashed and her brains protruding from her skull. The girl was Maria Jane Clouson, a maid for the respectable Pook family, and who was pregnant at the time of her death. When the blood-spattered clothes of the 20-year-old Edmund Pook, alleged father of the dead girl's unborn child, were discovered, the matter seemed open and shut. Yet there followed a remarkable legal odyssey full of unexpected twists as the police struggled to build a case. 

Meet Liz Lyon: respected TV producer, stressed-out executive, guilty single mother...woman of the hour. StoryWorld is the nation's favourite morning show, and producer Liz Lyon wants to keep it that way. Her job is to turn real-life stories into thrilling TV - and keep a lid on the scandals and backbiting that happen off-stage. But then simmering tensions erupt at the station, trapping Liz in a game of one-upmanship where she doesn't know the rules. As the power struggle intensifies, can Liz keep her cool and keep her job? Does she even want to? Woman of the Hour is by Jane Lythell.

August 2016

Any Minute Now is by Eric Van Lustbader. Red Rover, the blakest of black ops teams, is finished - betrayed on a mission to capture and interrogate a mysterious Saudi deep in Pakistan. One of the team was killed, the remaining two barely escaped alive. Now, the unit has been shut down and Greg Whitman and Felix Orteno are left adrift, wondering what went wrong. Into their midst comes Charlize Daou, a brilliant, wildly talented arms expert, who becomes the reason - and supplies the means - to resurrect their mission. Disobeying orders, they secretly set out to find the Saudi - the first step in a perilous journey that will lead them to the dark heart of a terrifying conspiracy that threatens to change the balance of power across the globe.

September 2016

The girl who teetered out of the doorway was exactly who they were looking for...It's

Hallowe'en, and the people of Cork are partying. At half past two in the morning, a girl with green hair and sad eyes stumbles out of a club. She never makes it home. DS Katie Maguire and her team are stretched to their limit. A gang of dognappers are terrorising the kennel owners of Cork. The city's drug trade is at an all-time high. Now they have a missing girl to find too - and all in the glare of the media spotlight. As Katie closes in on the truth, she realises that the three cases might be connected. And that with every second she spends investigating, the clock ticks on for the missing girl, trapped in a living death...  Living Death is by Graham Masterton.

The Borrowed is by Chan Ho-Kei.  Six interlocking stories. One spellbinding novel. The year is 2013, and Hong Kong's greatest detective is dying. For fifty years, Inspector Kwan quietly solved cases while the world changed around him. Now his partner Detective Lok has come to his deathbed for help with one final case. Where there is murder, there is humanity. This bold and intricate crime novel spans five decades of love, honour, race, class, jealousy and revenge in one of the most intriguing nations in the world. This is the story of a man who let justice shine in the space between black and white. This is the story of Hong Kong.

A controversial, right-wing, German politician is due to speak at the Oxford Union. Following a series of murders linked to a violent anarchist group, the city is on high alert. DCI Hanlon has been partnered with DI Huss to ensure the speech goes smoothly and put an end to the killing. The murders soon reveal a chilling alliance between the anarchists and European Jihadis. And when Hanlon traces the killer she soon realises that the truth has a terrible price. Is Hanlon willing to meet the cost?  An Incidental Death is by Alex Howard.

November 2016

Celcius Daly is investigating the abduction of a boy by a group of travellers already under investigation for smuggling and organised crime. As he digs into the child's background, he discovers a family secret linked to an unsolved crime during the Troubles - the disappearance of a young woman and her baby. Daly's investigation shakes loose some harrowing truths about the past treatment of travellers and the present day lawlessness of Northern Ireland's border country. Undergoing an internal investigation over his handling of the search for IRA spy Daniel Hegarty, Daly realises that he has much in common with the beleaguered and outcast travellers and soon finds himself entangled in a vigilante mission, discovering just how far a group of outsiders will go to find their own justice.  Trespass is by Anthony J Quinn

Jack the Ripper is edited by Otto Penzler.  The predatory ritual, the escalating savagery of the crimes, the grisly trophies taken from his victim's bodies, the games played with his pursuers, the cannibalism: Jack the Ripper's reign of terror in London's East End during the autumn of 1888 casts a long shadow. Many have murdered more, but few have killed so brutally and none have forged such an enduring legend. For a century and a quarter the Ripper's crimes have appalled and fascinated in equal measure, inspiring over one hundred theories about this prototypical serial killer's identity and spawning thousands of works of fiction. This collection is the ultimate exploration of the Ripper legend. It sifts through Jack's legacy, blending the true story (told via contemporary reports and a century's worth of the best analysis) with the best crime and horror fiction his depraved deeds have inspired.

UN covert negotiator, Yael Azoulay, has been sent to Reykjavik to broker a secret meeting between US President Freshwater and the Iranian president. Both parties want the violence to stop, but Yael soon realises that powerful enemies are pulling the strings. Enemies for whom peace means an end to their lucrative profit streams. The Reykjavik Assignment is by AdamLebor.

December 2016

Germany, October 1944: Dozens of cities lie in ruins. Enemy armies are at the gates. For the Thousand Year Reich, time is running out. Desperate to avoid the humiliation of unconditional surrender, German intelligence launch Operation Finisterre - a last-ditch plan to enable Hitler to deny the savage logic of a war on two fronts and bluff his way to the negotiating table. Success depends on two individuals: Stefan Portisch, a German naval officer washed ashore on the coast of Spain after the loss of his U-boat, and Hector Gomez, an ex-FBI detective, planted by Director J. Edgar Hoover in the middle of the most secret place on earth: the American atomic bomb complex. Both men will find themselves fighting for survival as Operation Finisterre plays itself out.  Finisterre is by Graham Hurley.

Road Rage is by Hanna Jameson. A new thriller set in the nowhereland between New York and LA. Eli and Ronnie are two British ex-cons on the road in America. Their mission is to find Trent, a guy who screwed them over and disappeared. But now, after forty hours driving through yellow desert, eating at lonely motels, what seemed real is no longer certain. Where did Trent stay? What did he do? Did he even exist at all? Leaving violent killings in their wake, Ronnie and Eli can do nothing except keep travelling. Now, trapped in a nightmarish road trip together, these two men must confront their own personal demons before they can come home.

V M Giambanco on Riding shotgun with the Seattle Police Department

V M Giambanco is the author of the Alice Madison series of police procedurals.

It was a grey, chilly March morning and I was sitting in the reception area of the downtown precinct of the Seattle Police Department, waiting to meet the officers I would join on the day shift. I was wondering how many silly and inappropriate things I would manage to say in the eight-hour stint, and still I couldn’t have been more excited.

I had just spent a couple of hours chatting with the detective in charge of criminal investigations in Lynnwood near Seattle – thanks to a very kind family connection – and I was about to spend a day on a ride-along. If you are a crime fiction writer, life doesn’t get any better than that.

My novels are set in Seattle, Washington State, and the main character, Alice Madison, is a homicide detective; to have the chance to spend some time with real police officers and watch them do real work is pretty much gold.

Seattle is a mid-size town in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by water on one side and mountains on the other. It’s a great place to set a story because I can use the urban, cosmopolitan feel of the city and yet in half an hour I am in the middle of complete wilderness.

 That day in March I was lucky in many ways but maybe the biggest stroke of luck was that the officer who had drawn the short straw and would effectively be babysitting me for eight hours was a thirty-year veteran, a brilliant woman who had worked in the Vice and in the Domestic Violence units and who knew by name most of the homeless people in her precinct.

Downtown Seattle is not a residential neighbourhood: it has a busy harbour with ferries to Canada and British Colombia, a vibrant shopping area crammed with restaurants and cafés, and it borders with an International District with Chinese businesses and warehouses; most importantly, it also houses at least five shelters for the homeless and most of those who use their services have mental health and addiction issues.

It was a busy day: in eight hours we were called on to deal with an assault, some shoplifting, a police officer in need of assistance, a homeless person relocation into a medical unit and a number of other matters in the local shelters, and, to top it all, some death threats. It was an endless stream and everything required written updates on the patrol car computer and through the radio. 

Mostly I tried to make myself entirely invisible as I stood by and watched. I was in fact completely invisible and no one looked at me twice because the minute the police officers arrived on the scene they were the ones in charge and people turned to them for support and direction. The officer I was with asked me to stay in the car only once and that was because the person they were pursuing was a man known to be aggressive and even though I had signed all kinds of waivers she wanted to bring me back to the precinct in the same condition as I had left it at the beginning of the day. I remained in the car and watched them as they went after their man in the alleys behind Pioneer Square. They did not find him.

The Seattle Police Department had received some bad press in the previous months and I had been quite surprised when they had agreed to let me ride with them and even more so when they openly talked about the department’s problems. I asked each officer the same question: if there was one thing you could tell the public about what it’s like to be a police officer what would you say? Mostly they had the same answer: there are always two sides to a story and not everything is what it seems. I agree, the group of people I saw working on the street – in patrol cars, on bicycles and on horses – were dedicated, capable and compassionate; they were generous with their time and talked to me about how they became officers; they showed me the best place to grab lunch on the run (the Grand Central Bakery on 1^st Avenue South) and even taught me the ultimate trick to remember the sequence of key streets in the Downtown precinct grid (Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike, and Pine)…the mnemonic is ‘Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest’. Brilliant.

What I remember from the day is feeling in my bones that the reality of police work is both incredibly mundane and easily misunderstood unless you’re right next to them, on the street. I will go back for more the next time I’m in Seattle. The reality is as compelling and as mysterious as the fiction.

Blood and Bone by V M Giambanco is out now (Quercus Books Hbk £18.99 Kindle £9.49)

After two years in the Seattle Police Department Homicide Unit Detective Alice Madison seems to have found the kind of peace in her private and working life that she has not known before.  When a burglary escalates into a horrific murder she is put in charge of the investigation and finds herself tracking a killer who might have stalked the city for years and whose existence is the stuff of myth in high security prisons.  Alice Madison and her partner Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown will have to re-open old cases and old wounds because mistakes were made and Brown might be responsible for letting a killer go free.  The bond between the detectives is tested to its limits as they navigate the case and learn more about the consequences of Brown’s error.  Madison’s own past comes under scrutiny when Internal Affairs officers begin to investigate her and she realises that enemies close to home want her to fail. In the middle of the storm Madison and her partner must hunt down a skillful, determined murderer with a talent for death. And Madison’s private life and fragile peace fall apart.

Read an extract here.
Purchase from Amazon

You can follow her on Twitter @vm_giambanco

Macavity Award Nominations

The Macavity Award is named for the "mystery cat" of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats). Each year the members of Mystery Readers International nominate and vote for their favourite mysteries in four categories.

The year listed is the year of the award, for books published in the previous year.

2015

Best Mystery Novel:

The Missing Place by Sophie Littlefield  (Gallery)

The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood (Penguin)

The Lewis Man by Peter May (Quercus)

The Day She Died by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

The Last Death of Jack Harbin by Terry Shames (Seventh Street)

Best First Mystery Novel:

Blessed Are the Dead by Kristi Belcamino (Witness Impulse)

Dry Bones in the Valley by Tom Bouman (W. W. Norton)

Invisible City by Julia Dahl (Minotaur)

Someone Else's Skin by Sarah Hilary (Penguin)

Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little (Viking)

The Black Hour by Lori Rader-Day (Seventh Street)

Best Mystery-Related Nonfiction:

The Figure of the Detective: A Literary History and Analysis by Charles Brownson  (McFarland)

Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe by J.W. Ocker (Countryman)

400 Things Cops Know: Street Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman by Adam Plantinga (Quill Driver)

Writes of Passage: Adventures on the Writer's Journey by Hank Phillippi Ryan, editor (Henery Press)

Best Mystery Short Story:

"Honeymoon Sweet" by Craig Faustus Buck:  (Murder at the Beach: The Bouchercon Anthology 2014, edited by Dana Cameron; Down & Out)

"The Shadow Knows" by Barb Goffman (Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley; Wildside Press)

"Howling at the Moon" by Paul D. Marks (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Nov. 2014)

"The Proxy" by Travis Richardson (Thuglit #13, Sept./Oct. 2014)

"The Odds Are Against Us" by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Nov. 2014)

Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award:

Queen of Hearts by Rhys Bowen (Berkley Prime Crime)

Things Half in Shadow by Alan Finn (Gallery)

An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris (Knopf)

A Deadly Measure of Brimstone by Catriona McPherson (Minotaur)

Present Darkness by Malla Nunn (Atria)

Hunting Shadows by Charles Todd (Wm. Morrow)

Congratulations to all the nominees.

Hat tip to Mystery Readers International.

CWA 2014 Dagger in the Library Award shortlist announced

Five authors have today been shortlisted for the CWA 2014 Dagger in the Library award, sponsored by Dead Good Books.

This year, for the first time, readers compiled the long list as crime lovers everywhere were invited to vote online for their three favourite authors. The most popular ten authors were whittled down to five by a panel of judges including previous winner Steve Mosby, CWA Director Lucy Santos and a group of UK librarians.

Unlike most other literary prizes, the Dagger in the Library honours an author’s body of work to date, rather than a single title and an author must have published three books to be eligible for the award. Previous winners include Belinda Bauer, Steve Mosby, Mo Hayder, Colin Cotterill, Stuart MacBride and Alexander McCall Smith.

The short list, in alphabetical order:

Sharon Bolton                  (Transworld)

Elly Griffiths                     (Quercus)

Mari Hannah                    (Pan)

James Oswald                  (Michael Joseph)

Mel Sherratt                      (Thomas & Mercer)

Chair of the Judging panel Mobeena Khan commented; "We were thrilled by the number of nominations received this year, resulting in an excellent long list. The judges have enjoyed reading through the long list and are particularly pleased with the strong and varied shortlist for this year. Many congratulations to all the nominees."

The winner will be announced at the beginning of December.

Sharon Bolton has been dubbed by The Times as ‘the High Priestess of English Rural Gothic’. Bolton has written eight crime novels and is the author of the Lacey Flint series.

Elly Griffiths’ novels feature protagonist Ruth Galloway, the Head of Forensic Archaeology at the University of North Norfolk. Her inspiration for the series came when her husband gave up his city job to become an archaeologist.

Mari Hannah has published four books to date and is the author of the DCI Kate Daniels series. A former Probation Officer, Mari lives in Northumberland where her novels are set.

James Oswald has written four books in the Inspector McLean series and first found success as a self-publishing phenomenon. Set in Edinburgh, his crime novels contain supernatural elements.

Mel Sherratt is the author of what she calls ‘grit-lit’ – crime, psychological thrillers and suspense. She has achieved huge success by self-publishing her five books.

Online article: http://www.deadgoodbooks.co.uk/index.php/librarydagger-shortlist-2014/

For more details please contact: Lynsey Dalladay, Digital Marketing Manager, Penguin Random House UK at LDalladay@RandomHouse.co.uk