Coasters for Mystery Readers

I never use a book for a coaster, but I do want to protect surfaces most of the time. Here are a few cool coasters for readers, especially crime fiction readers. So put that glass of wine or scotch down safely on one of these.

Dexter Blood Splattered Coasters

Lets your visitors know splatters are unacceptable. Set of 6 clear glass coasters with rubberized feet.
Store them in a Dexter treasure box

Splat Stan-Silicone Drink Coaster

Stan was happy and completely oblivious to the dangerous conditions. There were heavy drinks being hoisted and lowered all around him, yet he always felt perfectly safe. Then Stan got splatted by a giant pint.

And, my personal favorite: Scrabble Drink Coasters

These cool coasters, created with scrabble letters, can be customized to create words of your own choice--or choose from 4 beverage related tile coasters.

Hat Tip: Oddee.com

Kerry Greenwood Cookbook

Fans of Australian author Kerry Greenwood have longed for a Corinna Chapman cookbook to accompany the Corinna Chapman baker mysteries. Now a cookbook is available for free as a PDF download. Great recipes, historical annotations, food history, and encouraging cooking tips. 26 pages.  Kerry Greenwood: mouth-watering morsels to make your man melt: Recipes from Corinna Chapman, baker and reluctant investigator. Go HERE and click on the cover of the Cookbook to download.

From the Cookbook:
CHEAT’S BISCUITS, which really ought to be called SENSIBLE PRECAUTION COOKIES

As soon as the women of the world accepted, indeed, embraced, the refrigerator, they realized that they could cut their baking time in half and restore some valuable reading time by storing dough in the fridge. Now we have freezers it is even more sensible to double the amount and stash the rest, even if your children accuse you of serving pterodactyl soup or roast mammoth (certainly, when cooking with megafauna you would have had leftovers).

2/3 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon, or 3 drops, vanilla essence (Or any other essence—for lemon biscuits use 3 drops lemon essence, or 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and top with candied peel. The same for orange.)
1/2 cup chopped nuts (or chocolate bits, or sultanas, or any other favourite flavouring—hazelnuts are divine)
2 cups self-raising flour

Cream butter and sugar together, add the egg and the vanilla, mix well, add the nuts, mix again, then add the flour and turn the mixture onto a tray. Knead it and shape it into a roll about the thickness of an actual sausage.
Wrap the sausage of dough in greaseproof paper or cling wrap (I like cling wrap) and put it into the fridge. You can freeze it until you next defrost, when it will be a nice surprise. Or it will keep in the fridge for weeks.
When you want biscuits, cut slices from the roll and cook them in a moderate oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Press sweeties or coconut or chocolate bits or sprinkles or hundreds and thousands onto
the top. Or dent the middle and put in a teaspoonful of jam or marmalade.

***

Kerry Greenwood was born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray and after wandering far and wide, she returned to live there. She has a degree in English and Law from Melbourne University and was admitted to the legal profession on the 1st April 1982, a day which she finds both soothing and significant.

Kerry has written twenty novels, a number of plays, including The Troubadours with Stephen D'Arcy, is an award-winning children's writer and has edited and contributed to several anthologies. In 1996 she published a book of essays on female murderers called Things She Loves: Why women Kill.

The Phryne Fisher series (pronounced Fry-knee, to rhyme with briny) began in 1989 with Cocaine Blues which was a great success. Kerry has written eighteen books in this series with no sign yet of Miss Fisher hanging up her pearl-handled pistol. Kerry says that as long as people want to read them, she can keep writing them. In 2012, Phryne will be sashaying across our television screens in a series to be screened on ABC TV.

Kerry Greenwood has worked as a folk singer, factory hand, director, producer, translator, costume-maker, cook and is currently a solicitor. When she is not writing, she works as a locum solicitor for the Victorian Legal Aid. She is also the unpaid curator of seven thousand books, three cats (Attila, Belladonna and Ashe) and a computer called Apple (which squeaks). She embroiders very well but cannot knit. She has flown planes and leapt out of them (with a parachute) in an attempt to cure her fear of heights (she is now terrified of jumping out of planes but can climb ladders without fear). She can detect second-hand bookshops from blocks away and is often found within them.

For fun Kerry reads science fiction/fantasy and detective stories. She is not married, has no children and lives with a registered wizard. When she is not doing any of the above she stares blankly out of the window.

Hap Tip to Fan, Entrepreneur and Pastry Chef Luna Raven for alerting me to this cookbook.

Pre-Code Movie Posters Uncovered in PA attic

Flavorpill has a wonderful post with comments and illustrations on 30 + Pre-Code Vintage Movie Posters that were uncovered in an attic in Berwick, PA. The posters had been displayed in a local theater where they had been glued on top of each other as new posters (and films) as they arrived at the venue, and then the whole stack was stuffed into the walls of the attic as insulation. And there they remained, until the contents of the house were sold in an estate sale.

According to MUBI, “They had survived in such good condition for a number of reasons. First of all, a movie theater in the early 1930s would have used a water-soluble wallpaper paste to put up the posters, so it was possible, even eight decades later, to steam them apart with no damage to the paper. And Smith [Grey Smith, Director of Heritage Vintage Movie Poster Auctions] thinks that the cool climate of Pennsylvania may have helped, as well as the temperature in the attic itself. According to Smith, the colors on the posters are ‘astoundingly bright.’”

The posters are being auctioned off individually by Heritage Vintage Movie Poster Auctions, and the online bidding starts today.

See the article and more  Posters HERE.

Hat Tip: Bill Crider

Short Mystery Fiction Society Finalists

Established in 1996, the Short Mystery Fiction Society is a worldwide group of writers, editors, publishers, and readers. Through informative discussion, publicity efforts, and the annual Derringer Awards, they promote the creation, publication, and appreciation of short mystery and crime fiction. Here are the 2012 Short Mystery Fiction Society Finalists. Congratulations to all!

Finalists for Best Novelette:

Jeffrey Cohen, "The Gun Also Rises: an Aaron Tucker Mystery," Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2011
Toni L. P. Kelner, "In Brightest Day," Home Improvement: Undead Edition, August 2011
Doug Allyn, "A Penny for the Boatman," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2011
David Dean, "Tomorrow’s Dead," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July 2011
Earl Staggs, "Where Billy Died," Untreed Reads, August 2011

Finalists for Best Long Story

Art Taylor, "A Drowning at Snow’s Cut," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May 2011
Trina Corey, "Facts Exhibiting Wantonness," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November 2011
Trey Dowell, "Ballistic," Untreed Reads, July 2011
Karen Pullen, "Brea’s Tale," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November 2011
William Burton McCormick, "Blue Amber," Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, June 2011

Finalists for Best Short Story:

Elizabeth Zelvin, "Death will Tank Your Fish," Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices, 2011
B.V. Lawson, pen name of Bonnie Vanaman, "Touch of Death," Absent Willow Review Online Magazine, April 2011
Mary E. Stibal, "Sisters in Black," Best New England Crime Stories 2012: Dead Calm, November 2011
Cathi Stoler, "Fatal Flaw." Beat to a Pulp Online, April 2011
Adam Renn Olenn, "Coronation," Best New England Crime Stories 2012: Dead Calm, November 2011

Finalists for Best Flash Fiction Story:

Warren Bull, "Company Policy," Yellow Mama, August 2011
John Kenyon, "Countdown," Thrillers, Killers, and Chillers, April 2011
Al Leverone, "Lessons Learned," Shotgun Honey, July 2011
Melodie Campbell, "The Perfect Mark," Flash Fiction Online Magazine, July 2011
Kathleen Ryan, "Heat of Passion," A Twist of Noir, February 2011

Mystery Bytes: Lucy Liu as Dr Joan Watson

According to The Telegraph and lots of other sources, Lucy Liu will play Sherlock Holmes's sidekick in a new CBS series called Elementary. Set in New York, it stars Jonny Lee Miller as the great detective – a former consultant to Scotland Yard whose addiction problems have resulted in a spell in rehab in the States – while Liu will play “Joan” Watson, a former doctor who has lost her license. I love Liu in Southland, but this is such a stretch.. not for her as an actor, but any woman as a female Watson. This just seems so wrong.

This is not the first time Holmes has had a female Watson. Joanne Woodward starred as Mildred Watson, in the 1971 film “They Might Be Giants,” a psychiatrist treating a man (George C. Scott) who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. Margaret Colin played Jane Watson in CBS’s 1987 TV movie, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes.”... but....

I  agree with the following Telegraph article. What do you think?

Of course, I'll watch it, but then I'll watch just about anything with Lucy Liu.... and any Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes has a well known "aversion to women". It suits his priest-like devotion to his job, as well as his autistic levels of detachment, which find "the motives of women … so inscrutable". Holmes embodies that very Victorian combination of exquisite manners and deep distrust around all women, with the exception of Mrs Hudson, his housekeeper.

But more importantly, detective stories were the original buddy movies. Whether it is the fraternal Poirot and Hastings, or the master-and-valet relationship Lord Peter Wimsey and Sergeant Bunter, or even the father-and-son banter between Morse and Lewis, sleuths are at their best when not trying to seduce their partner.

When two men live or work closely together, their average age is halved. All their juvenile hobbies and eccentric habits come out to play. But throw a woman into the mix, and they start tidying up, buying new socks and leaving the loo seat down. You lose the comic interludes that are essential in a murder mystery to offset all the blood and misery.

What is so odd about this choice is that there’s already a TV series that updates Sherlock Holmes for American audiences. Granted the limping misanthrope Gregory House is a long way away from the detective who inspired him. But the most enjoyable thing about the series remains the relationship between House and Dr James Wilson: whether elaborate pranks, passive-aggressive psychological games or the rare times when their friendship is tested to breaking point.

None of that is possible if Sherlock Holmes spends his entire time telling survivor stories from his addiction in an attempt to get Watson into bed.

The Raven read by James Earl Jones

Pretty spectacular:  James Earl Jones reads Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven