My Bookstore

I did an event at Bookshop Santa Cruz recently, to celebrate a collection of essays by authors on their favorite Indie bookstore.  The folks who put together My Bookstore asked me to write on Bookshop, and I was happy to revisit the place in my heart that the store occupies.  Important things take place in…

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A book of books

Now, I know your To Be Read pile is already teetering and/or your e-reader is choking on its contents, but this one is special.  It’s a book of books.  John Connolly and Declan Burke came up with the idea of “The world’s greatest mystery writers on the world’s greatest mystery novels,” and although I am…

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Now we are six

I’m not a big one for anniversaries and birthdays (sorry, kids) but it occurred to me this morning that I started this blog in February, and indeed, when I went looking, I found that last Thursday, Mutterings turned six.  Interestingly, my first post (here) was about the lack of women in book awards (based on…

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Studies in Sherlock!

In my new-found identity as an official Sherlockian (BSI investiture: “The Red Circle”) I’ve been talking to über-Sherlockian Les Klinger about a couple of projects.  One of them is a touch specialized, although I’ll be posting about it closer to its pub date.  But the other is going to be such a blast, I have…

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Books that nag

A salon.com article by Emma Silvers (26, whose age enters into the point of the article) talks about her dislike of ebooks,a despite being of the gadget generation.  And she brings up an interesting point: Out of every argument I’ve heard in favor of e-readers — no dead trees, portable research, “it’s the future,” etc.…

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No Great Women Artists?

A part of the Twenty Weeks of Buzz will be a retrospective of the LRK oeuvre—a fancy way of saying that I’ll be looking at each of my twenty books, a week at a time.  We begin with A Grave Talent, the first Kate Martinelli novel, published January 1993 (Edgar and Creasey awards for Best…

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Children’s horror

It isn’t often I laugh aloud in a silent house, but I challenge you to read this review without snorking your tea out across the keyboard.

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The world-wide convention

Yesterday all over the world, people went to a conference. I took place on two panels, one with Lee Child and our editor Kate Miciak (who were in New Jersey and Long Island, respectively,) the other with Nevada Barr (in New Orleans.)  Since then I’ve listened to various other panels, including a conversation between the…

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Mr Bradley and the murderous book club

If you happen to be in the LA sprawl this weekend, come on out to West Hollywood for the WeHo book festival.  I’m doing two events on Sunday, an interview at 1:15 and a panel on spirituality and fiction at 3:45. ** We’ve started a new feature over at the LRK online book club this…

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The City and The Writer

So there I was, smack in the middle of the kind of plot problems that come when you’ve written a complicated first draft through some really difficult times, when the ever-clever Rick Kleffel asks me to talk into a microphone for him. He was doing an NPR piece for All Things Considered about a pair…

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