books
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Preparations are well under way for the beginning of the National Year of Reading 2026, which aims to tackle the steep decline in reading for enjoyment among readers of all ages. The campaign is being run by the National Literacy Trust and the Department for Education under the rallying call Go All In, which was
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I have always been a huge fan of libraries – my father was a chief librarian, my first summer job was in my local library and many years later, as a volunteer, I played a role in the successful campaign to save that library, and one other in the same town, which had been under
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This is another of my posts reminding visitors to my website about one of my older crime novels that they may have forgotten, on this occasion Death List. (The Book Folks, a Joffe Books imprint) one of the DCI John Blizzard series – and it comes with an example of the many elements that go
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The excellent Scottish Book Trust (SBT) is seeking donations for its ongoing campaign to provide books for disadvantaged families who do not own them. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, more than a million people in Scotland are living in poverty and a quarter of them are children. The most disadvantaged children are 50% more
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NielsenIQ BookData and GfK Entertainment have released their international data for book sales in the first eight months of 2025, and it reveals a mixed picture. Eleven out of 19 territories reported revenue growth, often accompanied by significant price increases, with crime fiction performing particularly well. The authors of the report say that international book
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Publisher Joffe Books has announced the winner of the Joffe Books Prize 2025, which has gone to T.L. Haseeb, for The Portrait Maker, the first in a new police procedural series featuring Amber Kash, a seasoned British Asian Detective Inspector in her forties. The author receives a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000
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The first Northern Writers’ Awards for 2026 – The Hachette Children’s Novel Awards and Young Writers’ Awards – are open for submissions. Debut writers of middle grade and early teen fiction can win £3,000 and a nine-month programme of mentoring and support from Hachette Children’s Group. The Young Writers’ Awards are also open for ages
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The second crime novel by Castle Douglas writer David L Haigh has been published with the third in the series to be available in November (2025). Hooked By The Past, the second book in the series, is published by Ingle-Haigh and follows David’s debut crime novel Land Kill, which came out in February 2024. Ingle-Haigh
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Best-selling crime writer John Dean has posted another article to help aspiring writers and offer insights for readers, this one focusing on injecting emotions into flat passages. I, as you may know from recent posts, am in the final weeks of editing the next DCI Blizzard novel to send to my publisher The Book Folks,
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The latest book in the DCI Jack Harris series of crime fiction novels (published by the Book Folks, a Joffe Books imprint) continues to attract encouraging reviews, which is gratifying. More gratifying than usual, actually, because I deliberately set out to do things differently in Murder on the Pennines, including giving the main character’s back
John Dean - Crime Writer 