Charlaine Harris in the NY Times

The NY Times has an article on Charlaine Harris and the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. The latest novel, Dead and Gone, is going to be No. 1 on this Sunday's hardcover bestseller list. You can read the first chapter here.

She seems like a neat lady and I'm glad to see the NY Times devote space to her particularly since in the past they have been guilty of ignoring genre fiction.

2009 Agatha Awards

March is Mystery Month is one of my favorite months of book club. However, it's always a challenge to pick an appropriate mystery. The format of the meeting requires that it be a whodunit novel that lays out all the clues and offers the reader a fair play chance of identifying the murderer and motive. Occasionally, we pick a book that doesn't really work.

However, the Agatha Awards are here to help us out! The Agatha Awards go to novels that:

• contain no explicit sex
• contain no excessive gore or gratuitous violence
• usually feature an amateur detective
• take place in a confined setting and contain characters who know one another

I'd be willing to bet that Agatha winners are almost all fair play whodunits.

The 2009 Agatha winner is The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny. It looks charming!