Newsy Stuff

A bit late but nevertheless important!

The 2010 ITW Thriller Awards have been announced. The winners were announced on July 10 during the 5th annual Thrillerfest Festival which took place in New York at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt Hotel

Best Hard Cover Novel: The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner (Random House)
Best Paperback Original: The Coldest Mile by Tom Piccirilli (Random House)
Best First Novel:Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti (Harper Collins)
Best Short Story: A Stab in the Heart by Twist Phelan (Ellery Queen Magazine)

A full list of the nominees can be found here.

Ken Follett was awarded ThrillerMaster in recognition of his legendary career and outstanding contributions to the thriller genre. Ken Follett was presented with the award by last year’s winner, David Morrell.

Mark Bowden (Blackhawk Down) was awarded the True Thriller Award
Linda Fairstein was awarded the Silver Bullet Award
US Airways was given the Silver Bullet Award (Corporate)
Congratulations to all the winners!

According to The Bookseller Julia Wisdom at Harper Collins has seen off 4 other publishers in a heated auction to nab a conspiracy trilogy called Sanctus by Simon Toyne.

With all this spy swapping going on there is an excellent article in the Guardian from John Le Carré where he talks about the recent swaps done between the USA and Russia.

Stephen King has added another award to his collection. He was recently awarded a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for his novelette Morality which was published in Esquire. The winners were announced on Sunday, July 11th 2010, at Readercon 21, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. A full list of the winners and nominees can be found here.

The Steig Larsson saga continues to run and run. According to an article in the Guardian the fourth book was due to be set in the remote part of Canada. The article by Alison Flood can be found here. John-Henri Holmberg revealed to The Associated Press that he had received an email by the late author shortly before his death in November 2004.

For those of you not yet fed up with Dan Brown, it appears that when the paperback version of The Lost Symbol is released on 22 July that it will (hopefully) according to Transworld Publishers (via The Bookseller) dominate Summer reading. Capitalising on its success there will also be an enhanced ebook and illustrated version in time for the Christmas rush.

At the recent Ways with Word Festival in Devon, (which is currently running from 9 to 19 July) crime writer P D James explains to the Daily Telegraph the enduring appeal of detective fiction.

Egmont Press have acquired American author Jessica Warman. Her novel Pretty Deadly, is (according to the press release via book trade) a truly thrilling murder mystery story. It has been described as a cross between The Lovely Bones and Lynda La Plante and has been written for the Young Adult market.

According to The Bookseller Catnip have acquired the world rights to a debut teen thriller novel for teenagers by Colin Mulhern. The novel Clash pits the lives of two different characters one an underground cage-fighting champion and the other a talented artist together.

According to The BigMoney.com blog Janet Evanovich is not leaving St Martin's Press her long time publishers as alleged by Deadline.com. The originally article by Deadline.com can be found here. Evanovich has said that the article in Deadline.com is inaccurate! Further information can be found in an article in Forbes

According to Bookbrunch Simon & Schuster have acquired Taboo the debut novel by Casey Hill. It is said to be "a terrifying transatlantic forensic thriller".

The Strand Awards were given out on 7 July at an invitation only ceremony in New York.
The winners were -
Best Novel - Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly
Best First Novel – Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell and Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley.
Lifetime Achievement Award –Elmore Leonard. Elmore Leonard was presented with his award by Otto Penzler. A full list of the nominees can be found here.

NPR.org are inviting readers to vote for their favourite top 100 thrillers in their Killer Thriller contest, which can be found here. The list was whittled down from a massive 600 nominations to a manageable 182. Everyone gets 10 votes!

US readers will be pleased to hear that the paperback deal for Camilla Lackberg's series (translated by Steven Murray)has been agreed according to Publishers Weekly. The full article can be found here. Here in the UK the paperback edition of The Stonecutter will be released in March 2011 along with the hardback release of The Gallows Bird.