To demonstrate their tremendous enthusiasm for crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, the British are planning their first National Crime Fiction Week, to run from June 14 to 20, 2010. This event is sponsored by the Crime Writers Association. CWA members will take part in readings, discussions, readers' group events and workshops all over the country. Your favorite authors are already planning Murders in Libraries, Bodies in Bookshops and Strawberries and Crime at Village Fetes. For more information check out the National Crime Fiction Week website.

MASTERPIECE on PBS and BBC Worldwide Sales and Distribution, Americas have announced a major co-production deal that includes Sherlock, a Sherlock Holmes with a 21st. century spin on it and three Aurelio Zen mysteries based on the series written by Michael Didbin (1947-2007).

Please join the Busy Moms Book Club on Thursday, March 18, at 11:00 a.m. in the Children's Library for an interesting discussion of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society! A series of letters comprises this charming novel set in 1946 post-war London. Author Juliet Ashton writes her publisher to lament covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams encourages his neighbors to write their own stories to Juliet who finds the letters not just inspiration for her work, but her life.

Looking (literally) for a good DVD mystery series? These are a few of my favorites:

Alfred Hitchcock presents. Season one [videodisc] by Universal

Da Vinci's inquest. Season 1, Vol. 1 [videodisc] by Program Partners ; a Haddock Entertainment Barna-Alper production

Keen Eddie.

Looking for something new to read? Check out these recently released Mysteries:

The Crossing Places: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths

Smasher by Keith Raffel

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias

In the Blood by Fay Sampson

Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan

• The Covenant by Naomi Ragen
• White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure and the Man Who Dared To See by Robert Kurson
• Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Mind of an Extraordinary Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet

Hilary Mantel’s historical novel set in 16th-century Britain has won the £50,000 ($79,400) Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate) is the story of Thomas Cromwell’s tumultuous rise in the Tudor court.

If you like mysteries where all of the main characters are stuck in some kind of confined environment (a large, scary, old house) trying to solve some kind of crime or love the Agatha Christie novels when Poirot dramatically explains the crime's solution at the end of his books to the group of suspects, you should enjoy these authors/characters:     
          Margery Allingham's Albert Campion 

Looking for something new to read? These debut mysteries are get high marks from readers:

• Hangman Blind by Cassandra Clark
• Posed for Murder by Meredith Cole
• Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye
• Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
• Dog on It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn.

The general reading public seldom gets a chance to vote for their favorite book and/or author but here's your opportunity to do so. The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel awards in July at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.  Laura Lippman, Mark Billingsham, Val McDermid, and Simon Kernick are among the 14 contenders.