This won’t take us long.

As many of you know, I’ve accepted a position as writer-in residence at Newberry College in (duh) Newberry, South Carolina. And I’m glad I did—the campus is lovely, my colleagues are engaging company, and my students are bright-eyed and wolf-tailed.

I have two courses to conduct—a general fiction writing workshop, and a literature course, “The Pleasures of Crime Fiction.” For the latter, I’ve selected a string of books which we’ll be reading. I’m not certain we’ll cover them all, it may weigh them down them with more reading than they can conveniently manage, and this course is about reading for pleasure, so I certainly don’t want it to prove burdensome.

We’ll see.

But earlier I promised you all a look at the reading list, and here it is. The titles IN CAPITAL LETTERS are the assigned books; after each in italics is a second book by the same author, suggested for those who like what they’ve read and want to keep at it.

The links, for convenience, are to Amazon listings, but none of these books should be difficult to find in either ebook or printed form.

Agatha Christie: THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, The Body in the Library
Dashiell Hammett: THE MALTESE FALCON, The Glass Key
Ellery Queen: THE ROMAN HAT MYSTERY, Queens Full
Raymond Chandler: THE LONG GOODBYE, The High Window
Erle Stanley Gardner: THE CASE OF THE SULKY GIRL, Crows Can’t Count
Fredric Brown: THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT, The Wench is Dead
Craig Rice: THE RIGHT MURDER, Home Sweet Homicide
Evan Hunter: LAST SUMMER, Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man
Walter Mosley: DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, John Woman
Ross Thomas: THE FOOLS IN TOWN ARE ON OUR SIDE, The Eighth Dwarf
Donald E. Westlake: DROWNED HOPES, The Rare Coin Score
Sue Grafton: A IS FOR ALIBI, K Is For Killer
James Sallis: DRIVE, The Long-Legged Fly
Ian Rankin: KNOTS AND CROSSES, The Black Book

I’ve also suggested, for general observations on the genre and specific material on some of the listed writers, my own THE CRIME OF OUR LIVES.

I might have picked different titles by any of these writers, and in fact I could easily have substituted 14 other writers altogether. So please don’t email me with suggestions, or take me to task for leaving out one of your favorites, or for including an author the mere thought of whom causes your gorge to rise. I don’t want to seem uncaring, but, well, I flat don’t care.

Isn’t that a hell of a thing for me to come right out and say? But there, I went and said it. And I don’t even have tenure.

And now for a quick change of subject…

In the last newsletter I offered FREE reviewer downloads of 20+ of my ACX-published audiobooks. FREE is a magic word, esp. when it’s in all caps, and your response was heartening.

So why don’t I repeat the offer? Downloads of the five starred titles (*) are in short supply in the US, at least for the time being, but we can furnish them to readers in the UK. (And if you ARE in the UK, please say so—no matter which titles you want. There are different sites for US and UK downloads, and we want to be able to steer you to the right place.)

*WRITING THE NOVEL FROM PLOT TO PRINT TO PIXEL

You’re very likely more familiar with some of these titles than others. The links above are to the Amazon product pages, where you can read descriptions and get an idea what you might or might not be, um, music to your ears. So to speak.

And that’s that. Didn’t I tell you? It didn’t take us long at all. And all I can really say is…Go Wolves!

Cheers,