For the August issue, I’m excited to share the details of my recent conversation with Janet Rudolph, founder of Mystery Readers International.

 

I am also pleased to announce that the Fox Lake District Library in Fox Lake, Illinois, is the August winner of the We Love Libraries $500 Grant. 

In a recent conversation with Janet Rudolph, founder of Mystery Readers International and editor of the organization’s quarterly publication, Mystery Readers Journal, I discovered what a fantastic resource the organization has been since Janet founded it in the mid-1970s. Mystery Readers International has approximately 3,000 members worldwide, all avid mystery and crime fiction fans just like her and just like me. (I joined MRI immediately after our Zoom chat ended.)

 

In its forty-first year of publication, the Mystery Readers Journal features nonfiction articles, reviews, and essays, with each issue focusing on a specific mystery-related theme. Past issues have highlighted historical mysteries, hobbies and crafts in mysteries, and my favorite as a former librarian, biblio-mysteries, to name just a few of the topics. Several issues have focused on a particular location, such as Canadian mysteries, New York City mysteries, and a recent issue’s theme, London mysteries. The journal is a great way to discover new authors or take a deep dive into the themes, and an index of past issues, going back to the mid-1980s, is listed on the website.

 

Another way to discover new crime fiction authors is through the Macavity Award. Members of Mystery Readers International nominate and vote for their favorite work published the previous year across five categories: Best Mystery Novel, Best First Mystery, Best Mystery Short Story, the Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery, and Best Mystery-Related Nonfiction.

 

The website also lists mystery book clubs in nearly all fifty states, and Janet had some excellent tips for a well-run mystery book club. She suggested asking members to pitch books for future selections, and she mentioned that having a theme is fun and can help focus the choices. (You can get ideas for themes from the Mystery Readers Journal.) She also said that creating a rating system is helpful for the book club picks, such as 1 to 5, stars, or thumbs up or thumbs down. Janet suggested that book club members rate the book after they’ve read it and then re-evaluate after the book club meeting to see if the discussion changed their opinion.

 

Librarians and library staff, if you have a mystery book club that you’d like to have listed on the Mystery Readers International website, please email Janet Rudolph at janet@mysteryreaders.org

The We Love Libraries Winner – Fox Lake District Library in Fox Lake, Illinois!

 

The Fox Lake District Library was founded in 1939 as a WPA project, along with a donation from the Fox Lake Women’s Club of 1,200 books. A new building was built in 2010 to serve the community of nearly 11,000 people.

 

From the WLL application: “A Sisters in Crime grant would allow us to invest in enough instruments, puppets, and more props [to provide] large-scale storytime programs. Storytimes are the backbone of any children’s library program. They introduce children not only to words and books and the joy of reading but also teach parents development tips they can use at home, and engage children with rhymes, songs, fingerplays, music and movement opportunities, and so much more. This prize would enable our library to begin offering our patrons a consistent schedule of engaging storytimes for all ages.”

 

Website: https://www.fllib.org/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WLL and WLB News Editor: Gail Lukasik’s fifth mystery and first gothic historical mystery is The Darkness Surrounds Us, Her memoir, White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing, was named one of the most inspiring stories of the year by The Washington Post. She is also the author of the Leigh Girard Mystery series and the stand-alone mystery, The Lost Artist. Gail appeared in the documentary, History of Memory, which is available on Amazon Prime. Her follow up book to WLH, What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed, was released in November 2024. Website: www.gaillukasik.com

Below is a link to search for our members' books. Search by author name, location, title, or release date.

Sisters in Crime hosts LIVE webinars each month. Webinars last 60-90 minutes depending on the topic and the audience questions! These webinars are open to all.

Looking for diverse books? For many years, SINC has curated Frankie’s List, an extensive list of crime novels by people of color and other marginalized groups. Frankie Y. Bailey, building on work by the late Eleanor Taylor Bland, began to compile a list of published Black crime writers over a decade ago. Frankie has expanded the list to include other WOC and LGBTQ+ authors. Here’s a link: https://www.sistersincrime.org/page/FrankiesList