Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be a report on the New England Crime Bake (Monday), and posts by Joe Souza (Tuesday), Vaughn Hardacker (Thursday), and Rob Kelley (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

From Kathy Lynn Emerson: Face Down Below the Banqueting House, the eighth entry in my Face Down series featuring Elizabethan gentlewoman, herbalist, and sleuth, Susanna, Lady Appleton, was released on November 7 as a newly edited trade paperback.

This was the first of three Face Down Mysteries published by Perseverance Press after the series was dropped by St. Martin’s Minotaur. It is included in e-book format in THE FACE DOWN COLLECTION THREE. In this one, Queen Elizabeth is threatening to pay a visit to Susanna’s home at Leigh Abbey in Kent—an expensive and nerve wracking prospect for any householder. Will murder change her mind?

Banqueting Houses were structures built, sometimes in trees, as is the case here, for the sole purpose of holding a banquet—the rough equivalent of what we’d call dessert. Kirkus said this novel is “spirited and studded with wry humor” and Booklist said “Emerson’s plot is deft and complex; she is at the top of her form here and leaves us with a breathless ending and lovely possibilities for future installments.”

Mainely Mayhem by Matt Cost pubs on Wednesday, November 13th.

Things are not right in Brunswick. Chabal is wracked by the nightmare that was the Wendigo. Langdon is hired to investigate the questionable moral integrity of one of Brunswick’s favorite sons and gets thunked in the head and left to die on a boat mooring in the Atlantic Ocean. And that is just the beginning of the bad.

Judge Cornelius Remington is being fast-tracked to be a Supreme Court Justice-why? After only a five-day investigation of Remington, Langdon is pulled from the case, suggesting that the judge had already been rubberstamped and that the White House staff and FBI were just going through the motions. But there are questions about the man’s past that Langdon can’t shake, a past that might still live in the present.

“Welcome to Maine: The Way Life Should Be.” Or so the billboard reads upon entering the state. But that was before MAYHEM, a corruption born in Brunswick that has seeped throughout the state and is threatening the entire nation.

It is up to Langdon to find and stop MAYHEM before it is too late. And the clock is ticking.

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora