Capital Crime Individual tickets on sale

INDIVIDUAL EVENT TICKETS ARE NOW AVAILABLE
& WE'RE DELIGHTED TO WELCOME SHARI LAPENA, CLARE MACKINSTOCH, BEN AARONOVITCH & PETER JAMES TO OUR LINEUP!

There's only one place to be from 31st August - 2nd September 2023 and that's the Leonardo Royal St Paul's Hotel, where we will be celebrating the best genre in town.

We believe that every reader and crime fiction fan should be able to celebrate and enjoy a weekend's worth of entertaining and engaging conversations from some of the world's finest creative minds! With only four weeks to go until we're opening our doors, we're swinging them wide open with our individual event tickets that will suit every budget.

Get ready to mingle with crime fictions biggest stars and latest chart toppers as we're honoured to welcome Richard Osman, Lisa Jewell, Joanne Harris, Kate Atkinson, "Happy Valley" creator Sally Wainwright, Dorothy Koomson, Chris Carter, Peter James, Ben Aaronovitch Liz Nugent, Imran Mahmood, Will Dean, Nicola Williams, Richard Armitage, Yomi Adegoke, Mark Billingham, M W Craven, Steve Cavanagh, Adele Parks and many more of your favourite authors to Capital Crime this year! 

For our full line-up and schedule head to our website!

Tickets can be brought here.

2020 Strand Critics Award

The Strand Magazine announces nominations for the 2020 Strand Critics Awards:

Authors Attica Locke, Alex Michaelides, Don Winslow, Angie Kim, and Laura Lippman headline this year’s nominees for the Strand Critics Awards.

Walter Mosley and Tess Gerritsen will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Bronwen Hruska of Soho Press will receive the Publisher of the Year Award.

Recognizing excellence in the field of mystery fiction and publishing, the annual Strand Critics Awards are judged by a select group of book critics and journalists. This year’s judges include talent from NPR, USA Today, LA Times, and The Washington Post.

And the nominees are . . .

Best Mystery Novel (2019)

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown and Co.)

The Lost Man by Jane Harper (Flatiron Books)

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman (William Morrow)

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke (Mulholland Books)

The Border by Don Winslow (William Morrow)

Best Debut Novel (2019)

Scrublands by Chris Hammer (Atria Books)

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim (Sarah Crichton Books, FSG)

One Night Gone by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House)

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (Celadon Books)

Three-Fifths by John Vercher (Agora Books)

“This year’s panel chose a great lineup of nominees,” said Andrew F. Gulli, managing editor of The Strand Magazine. “It’s great to see a variety of books within the genre get represented. We have everything from traditional puzzle mystery and PI novel to noir and literary suspense, even a hospital mystery.”

Past recipients of Critics Awards include Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, Richard Price, Megan Abbott, George Pelecanos, Joseph Finder, Lauren Beukes, and William Landay.

The Strand Magazine’s Publisher of the Year Award recognizes excellence in publishing…

This year’s recipient is Bronwen Hruska, publisher of Soho Press. An accomplished journalist and screenwriter, Hruska took the helm at Soho in 2010 and for the past ten years has overseen record growth, with scores of novels receiving critical and commercial acclaim.

“The characteristic of a great publisher is one who takes risks, who is never satisfied with the status quo, and most importantly someone who is dedicated to releasing works from a diverse set of authors,” said Managing Editor Gulli. “For over a decade, Hruska has done just that. She has been a fearless and tireless advocate for her authors, and they all love her.”

“Publishing is a labor of love, full stop. At Soho, we believe in every book we publish, every author. But to be recognized for that work—and by Strand Magazine, a leader in the crime fiction community—is truly an honor,” said Hruska. “Thank you Strand, and thank you to our wonderful authors who make our work not only meaningful, but quite joyful as well.”

The Strand Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Awards go to Tess Gerritsen and Walter Mosley.

In a writing career spanning several decades and multiple genres, Tess Gerritsen has stood

out as one of the most inventive practitioners of the medical thriller. Her series featuring Boston police detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles has been a staple of best-seller lists (also inspiring a hit TV show), and her books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide.

“When I was a child, my very practical father told me I’d never be able to support myself as a writer,” said Gerritsen. “But we storytellers are a stubborn bunch, and three decades into a writing career, here I am. Still writing. I’m thrilled by this honor, which proves that, yes, tenacity has its rewards.”

In 1990, the release of Devil in a Blue Dress marked the debut of Easy Rawlins, a clever, noble, and thoughtful private investigator in post-World War II Los Angeles. Author Walter Mosley earned plaudits for the novel, and for the past thirty years he has been compared to noir luminaries Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain. Mosley is the author of more than 40 books and his work has been translated into 23 languages.

“I want to thank Andrew Gulli and the critics that elected to give me this honor, adding my name to a list of names I greatly admire,” said Mosley. “The Strand itself deserves honors too for staying true to its mission in an age of media attrition, showcasing, engaging and amplifying the voices of writers who write in all the many forms this genre takes on.”

The Strand Critics Awards will be held virtually on September 4.

Thanks to Strand Magazine for the information.

2019 ITW Thriller Awards

Best Hardcover Novel

Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur Books)

Best First Novel 

The Chalkman by C J Tudor (Crown)

Best Paperback Original Novel

The Lost Man by Jane Harper (Pan Macmillan Australia)     

Best Short Story

“Nana” by Helen Smith in Killer Women: Crime Club Anthology #2 (Killer Women Ltd.)

Best Young Adult Novel 

Girl at the Grave by Teri Bailey Black (Tor)

Best E-Book Original Novel

Pray for the Innocent by Alan Orloff (Kindle Press)

The Winners were announced at ThrillerFest XIV at the Grand Hyatt, New York City (during the Blackout). Congratulations to all!

Hat Tip Mystery Fanfare

Strand Magazine Critics Award

The Strand Magazine announced the winners of the 2019 Strand Critics Awards last night at a cocktail party in New York City.

The winners are as follows -

Best Mystery Novel: Tie
Transcription by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown)
Sunburn by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins)

Best Debut Mystery Novel:
The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor  (Crown)

The Strand also announced the recipients of its Lifetime Achievement Awards: 

Heather Graham and Donna Leon. 

Also named was Dominique Raccah, the publisher/CEO of Sourcebooks, as its Publisher of the Year Award.

Confessing by Sarah Stovell

I have a confession to make. I am an imposter in the world of crime and psychological thrillers. I have tried to avoid making this confession and pulling some sort of convincing expertise out of a hat when people at festivals have asked me probing questions about the history and characteristics of the crime novel, but each time, I have floundered. So I am coming clean. Before Exquisite, I had never written a thriller and I'd scarcely read more than a bit of Kate Atkinson. There is an assumption in the crime thriller world that if you write it, you must know about it. This is fair enough. I tell my students *all the time* that they can't write if they don't read, but clearly I fail to listen to my own advice. I am, though, frantically and humbly trying to catch up. Erin Kelly and Julie Crouch are two of my recent, joyful discoveries.

I turned to crime writing after several years of writing for the sort-of literary market. I say 'sort-of literary' because I was that little bit too highbrow for the commercial market, but not highbrow enough for the literary market, and so my other books sold about 56 copies each. Probably just as well.

After writing my last novel - a biographical novel about the life of Dorothy Wordsworh (yes, quite) - I decided to ditch the attempts at literature and go for what people like to read: strong, compelling stories with a dark heart.

This was actually easier than I'd imagined. I found I could still be absolutely true to my desire to write character-driven fiction in moderately poetic language. Some thrillers gain their strength from the ingenious plots that twist and turn and keep the reader guessing, but although Exquisite isn't without its twists, it's not in the same league as Paula Hawkins or Ruth Ware in that respect. It's quieter. The characters of Bo and Alice are the driving forces of the action, and this has always been the way I write. I like writing about the darker sides of love: the obsession, the pain and the patterns of loving that are, for better or worse, set in our earliest relationships. Bo and Alice are both damaged women, and this paves the way for an explosive encounter that leads ultimately to disaster.

The actual, recognised crime of violence is only a small element of Exquisite. The real crime, in my mind, is the psychological violence inflicted on one of the characters. Psychological violence is common, but it is not yet and possibly never will be, recognised as criminal. But it is psychological violence that I am most interested in exploring, and how a skilled manipulator can be capable of taking a healthy person to the very brink of madness. There is no punishment for this sort of crime because sadly, the victim is often so deeply distressed that they can appear bonkers to onlookers who have also been taken in by the manipulator. There is a technique called 'gaslighting' which is one of the cruellest and most insidious forms of hell manipulators can put their victims through. One day, when I am ready, I shall write my magnum opus about gaslighting.

In the meantime, though, I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have made the switch to thriller writing. I plan to stay here for as long as my readers will have me.

Read Gwen Moffat's review here

Exquisite, Published by Orenda Books, June 15 2016 PBO £8.99

Buy it from SHOTS A-Store

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The Specsavers National Book Awards Results

The Specsavers National Book Award winners have been announced this evening Wednesday 11 December 2013 at an award ceremony held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, L0ndon.

The following crime fiction/mystery/thriller books won awards in different categories -


Specsavers Popular Fiction Book of the Year: An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris (Cornerstone)
Crime Book of the Year: The Carrier by Sophie Hannah (Hodder)
International Author of the Year: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Orion)
Waterstones UK Author of the Year: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (Transworld)

A full list of all the winners can be seen below.

Congratulations go to all the winners

Full list of winners -

Autobiography/Biography of the Year: David Jason: My Life by David Jason (Century)

Specsavers Popular Fiction Book of the Year: An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris (Cornerstone)

Crime Book of the Year: The Carrier by Sophie Hannah (Hodder)

Food & Drink Book of the Year: Eat by Nigel Slater (HarperCollins)

International Author of the Year: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Orion)

Magic FM Non-fiction Book of the Year: I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai & Christina Lamb (Orion)

Waterstones UK Author of the Year: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (Transworld)

National Book Tokens Children's Book of the Year: Demon Dentist by David Walliams (HarperCollins)

Audible.co.uk Audiobook of the Year: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (Headline)

Books Are My Bag New Writer of the Year: Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann (Picador)

Top British Festivals: Harrogate International Festival Portfolio

When you come to compiling your Top British Festivals/ Top Literary Festivals/ Best Boutique Festivals etc. kindly consider the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate – celebrating a DECADE OF CRIME this year. It’s the BIGGEST event of its kind in Europe and considered by the crime writing fraternity as their AGM! (albeit over the bar).

Harrogate is a top festival destination (and will be the star backdrop of the Tour De France). See some killer facts (no pun intended with the crime writing festival) about the town and festivals below.

WHEN: 18 - 21 July 2013

WHAT: THEAKSTONS OLD PECULIER CRIME WRITING FESTIVAL

WHERE: The Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate.

 IT WOULD BE A CRIME NOT TO!

Harrogate: restorative spas, tranquil gardens, quaint tea shops. Believe us, you’ll need them. Brace yourselves. Cordon off the flower beds, lock your valuables in the hotel safe, and steady the old nerves with a pint of Theakstons finest ale…

Europe’s largest celebration of crime writing reveals a strong female line-up of Special Guest Authors as over 80 authors gather for a long summer weekend.

Val McDermid, who chaired the first ever festival in 2003, returns as Programming Chair of the 2013 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Harrogate, to mark a ‘Decade of Crime’.

Special Guest authors are Jackson Brodie creator Kate Atkinson, Chief Inspector Wexford author Ruth Rendell interviewed by Jeanette Winterson, Charlaine Harris – whose Southern Vampire Mysteries inspired TV’s True Blood and The Woman in Black’s Susan Hill. Men hold their corner with Inspector Rebus creator, Ian Rankin, award-winning crime novelist and poet, William McIlvanney and Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher novels got the big screen treatment starring Tom Cruise.

The 18^th July also sees the return of ‘Creative Thursday’ delivering creative writing and publishing courses and tips direct from acclaimed authors, editors and agents.

http://harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/crime/

Box Office: 01423 562 303

Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (there’s no apostrophe and it’s peculier with an ‘e’) is part of the Harrogate International Festivals. Harrogate features a range of festivals including the Summer Festival, Raworths Literature and Lecture Series, Children’s Festival and Fringe (details to be announced for all the above mid-April)

HARROGATE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVALS – KILLER FACTS!

• Heard of the book Going South: Why Britain will have a Third World Economy by 2014? It’s time to GO NORTH! with the North of England’s leading arts festival. The only way is up with our northern soul – last year the Festivals DOUBLED the economic impact on the town to £8.2m despite less than 2% of its income is from the public sector.

• The Festivals is an UMBRELLA for the arts with a diverse programme delivering over 300 unique events. Come rain or shine, whatever the weather – there’s a Festival for Everyone’s temperament and taste.

•  The Festivals attract 90,000 visitors annually!

• With Dame Fanny Waterman as its Honorary President and Prince Charles as its patron in a spa town that was home to the Fox acting dynasty’s patriarch – with the once Mayor of Harrogate, Samson Fox – it’s a Festival rolling in heritage.

• The first Festival was in 1966 in answer to a call by Harold Hyde Walker, Chief Reporter on the Harrogate paper who, since the 1940s, had been urging Harrogate to establish a series of regular concerts and a festival.

•  It’s a platform for launching new talent – as well as giving the likes of Lesley Garrett and Julian Lloyd Webber a platform before they were famous, it also featured Amy Winehouse and cult legends Wynton Marsalis, Van Morrison, Youssou N’Dour, and BB King.

•  2013’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival will have a beer brewed in its honour called ‘A Shot in The Dark’.

• In 2012 the Harrogate International Festivals outreach and education programmes worked with over 6000 disadvantaged young people in communities across the region.

HARROGATE – A FESTIVAL TOWN – KILLER FACTS!

One of the things that make Harrogate such a boutique, beautiful festival destination is the town itself….

•  Charles Dickens described Harrogate after a visit in 1858 as, “The queerest place with the strangest people in it leading the oddest lives of dancing, newspaper reading and dining".

• Agatha Christie famously disappeared in 1926 (her abandoned car triggered the biggest manhunt known to the UK at the time).  She was found in Harrogate. Under a lot of stress she was no doubt swayed by its healing spas, luscious parks, and of course, dancing (she was found in the ballroom of the Old Swan Hotel which is now home to the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival). It’s been charmingly dubbed by a national travel journalist as ‘Doing an Agatha’ (escaping to Harrogate to de-stress!)

•   Mark Cavendish will have the chance to take the 2014 Tour de France leader's yellow jersey in the town where his mother lives (yep, Harrogate!) after it was announced the first stage of the race will finish in Harrogate.

• Don’t be fooled by the stereotyped retired ‘Blue Rinse’ little old lady! Harrogate was one of the major towns in the suffragette campaign. Their literature secretary, Agnes Wilson, of 4 Studley Road, Harrogate, travelled to London in March 1912, and took part in the window-smashing campaign, and as a result was sentenced to two months' hard labour, and went on hunger strike.

• Harrogate became known for its waters in 1571. By 1700 the town’s expansion was linked to the 88 springs discovered and the fashion of ‘taking the waters’. It’s said to have the highest concentration of different mineral springs than any other town in the world.

•  Visitors included Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill – a visit covered in the Harrogate Advertiser on 1 December 1900 noting the race down Parliament Street in bath chairs, which Churchill described as 'the charge of the Bath Chair Artillery’.

•  Members of every European royal family have visited Harrogate to take the waters in times gone. Princess Alix Hesse and her sister, Princess Victoria of Battenburg, were regular visitors and amused themselves by racing their bath chairs through the streets of Harrogate.

•  The notorious and great Victorian sex writer, Henry Havelock Ellis researched his taboo book on homosexuality in 1889 in Harrogate; today it a favourite destination of the Beaumont Society Transgender Events - the largest and longest established transgender support group in the UK.

• Harrogate is known as ‘The Jewel of the North’ and is the ‘Gateway to the Dales’ featuring some of Yorkshire’s top tourist destinations in its region including Fountain’s Abbey, Lightwater Valley, RHS Harlow Carr Gardens and Harewood House.

FOR MORE INFO OR IMAGES please contact Ann on 07534892715 or ann_chadwick@hotmail.com

Crime Spree For Harrogate Announced!

Europe’s largest celebration of crime writing has announced its headline Special Guest authors, revealing a strong female line-up.

Val McDermid, who chaired the first ever festival in 2003, returns as Programming Chair of the 2013 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Harrogate, to mark a ‘Decade of Crime’

Special Guest authors are Jackson Brodie creator Kate Atkinson, Chief Inspector Wexford author Ruth Rendell interviewed by Jeanette Winterson, Charlaine Harris – whose Southern Vampire Mysteries inspired TV’s True Blood and The Woman in Black’s Susan Hill.  Men hold their corner with Inspector Rebus creator, Ian Rankin, award-winning crime novelist and poet, William McIlvanney and Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels, which recently hit the big screen starring Tom Cruise.

The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival is hosted at The Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, where Agatha Christie was famously found in 1926 after her disappearance sparked a national manhunt.  Attendees are invited to join over 80 of the world’s most celebrated crime authors ‘in conversation, in action and in the bar’ from 18 to 21 July.

Val McDermid said: “When I was ‘persuaded’ to chair the Programming Committee for the first festival all those years ago, what tempted me to take it on was the prospect of helping to showcase the range and quality of contemporary crime writing.  I know that my passion for this genre is shared by the thousands of readers who have attended our events over the years, and we’ve all had some memorable encounters with those writers who have given us so much delicious, disturbing terror over the years.  2013 will be no different.”

The full programme will be announced over the coming weeks, and individual tickets and rovers will go on sale in the spring.  You can secure your place at the Festival now by booking a Weekend Break Package, which includes 3 nights’ bed and breakfast accommodation and a weekend rover ticket, giving you access to all Festival events.  To book your Weekend Package call the Festival Office on 01423 562303.

Keep up to date with all the latest news and programme announcements at www.harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/crime and on Twitter @TheakstonsCrime

The Festival will be releasing details of participating authors every day on their website and through Twitter in the run up to the full programme being announced.

ENDS

Ann Chadwick

On behalf of Harrogate International Festivals

07534892715