Sara Paretsky was our Distinguished Speaker this year for the Baker Street Irregulars at the Sherlock Holmes Birthday Weekend. She gave a powerful and moving talk about women crime writers who have been forgotten today, despite their achievements and popularity in the 19th and early 20th century. I was inspired by her talk to decide to add another volume to my “In the Shadow of…” series of anthologies, and I was delighted that Pegasus Books wants to bring it out later this year.
Tentatively titled In the Shadow of Agatha Christie, it includes 11 stories by Mrs. Henry Wood, Mary Fortune, Harriet Spofford, Elizabeth Gaskell, Catherine Crowe, M. E. Braddon, C. L. Pirkis, Susan Glaspell, Carolyn Wells, Baroness Orczy, and Augusta Gruner, all very talented crime writers who published before 1920. As in the other books in the series (In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes, ITS of Dracula, ITS of Edgar Allan Poe), the stories will be lightly annotated, and the volume will include mini-bios of the writers and an introduction that surveys the often-overlooked women of the genre. I’m already deep into it!
Meanwhile, I’m waiting on edits of Annotated Watchmen, still on target for July publication, and New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond the Mythos, due out in 2018! Just trying to keep busy!