Crime titles on Richard & Judy List

Richard and Judy's Summer Reading List has been announced. There are ten titles and the ones with  crime/adventure content are:

Richard Harris - The Fear Index
Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist tr. Ann Long (Review by Maxine, Review by Lizzie)
Penny Hancock - Tideline

They are now available to buy in a special promotion in W H Smiths.

More information about the bookclub is on Richard & Judy's website.

New Richard & Judy and TV Book Club lists

Amazingly the same book has been selected for both new seasons of the well-known UK book groups: Richard & Judy and the TV Book Club.

Richard and Judy's Spring 2012 Collection is listed in full here but the crime titles are:

Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson

Midwinter Sacrifice by Mons Kallentoft, tr. Neil Smith

TV Book Club - the whole list is here but the crime titles are:

29 January - Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson

19 February - Into The Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

You can currently pick up a free copy of Before I Go to Sleep at your local Birmingham library as it is Birmingham's Big City Read.

New Richard & Judy List

The Richard & Judy Autumn 2011 Book Club selection has just been announced and fans of British crime fiction will be pleased to see Peter May's The Blackhouse on the list.

Earlier this year, Euro Crime reviewer Amanda wrote of The Blackhouse:

"Peter May is another excellent Scottish crime writer. I suggest you get your hands on a copy of this book as soon as possible. You won't be disappointed."

and perhaps someone was listening.

Read her whole review, here.

Details of the other titles on the autumn list can be found here.

Richard & Judy Death Knell

It's been confirmed today that Richard & Judy show will cease in July. From The Bookseller:

Richard and Judy's chatshow on UKTV channel Watch is to end on 3rd July, six months before the end of the original contract, because of poor ratings. But Cactus TV said it was in "advanced talks" with "media partners" about the future of the Book Club, saying it "hopes the Book Club will continue beyond UKTV". This year's Summer Read will continue as normal from 13th May.

Hopefully the Book Club will continue... The Book Club has made several Euro Crime authors much better known eg R J Ellory, Simon Kernick and Andrew Taylor.

Richard & Judy's new book club

The new Richard & Judy book club which starts up on Watch at 8pm tonight, will launch one new author a month. From the Guardian:

Madeley and Finnigan's chat show – renamed Richard & Judy's New Position - is moving in October from Channel 4 to UKTV cable channel Watch, with sponsorship from the Daily Mail. As part of the move it is introducing a new strand to its hugely popular book club, which will highlight 12 debut writers over the course of the year.

The Richard & Judy New Writers Book Club will kick off in October with Hillary Jordan's Mudbound, which details the lives of a family on a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946. November's choice is The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama, which sees the retired Mr Ali open a marriage bureau in India. Nancy Horan's Loving Frank - based on the love affair of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his client Mamah Borthwick Cheney – is December's pick. As with the book club, which starts in January, the titles will be discussed on air by a pair of celebrities.

There's a recent interview with Amanda Ross, the person behind the choices for the bookclub, in the Daily Mail, including:

However, the snobbery that has always been rife in the books industry has stalked Amanda. 'People did say, "daytime TV, lowbrow", but that was never the case. We haven't ever gone for the lowbrow stuff, and our readers' tastes reflect that, too.'

In fact, the majority of the books have veered towards the literary end of the publishing spectrum - another reason why Amanda and her efforts have been so welcomed by publishers, and authors in particular. Not that she will ever be able to truly shake off the snobbery, though. 'I have no time for snobbery or elitism. If a book is a good read, it is a good read.'

It is pretty incredible, though, that one woman can wield such influence, and Amanda still finds it baffling. 'I sometimes have to remind myself that it's precisely because I am not an expert that this works,' she says.

'I never claimed to know anything about books, only that I loved reading and wanted to get other people doing it, too. And I did make mistakes along the way. I included Brick Lane by Monica Ali, even though I hated it. I chose it because I thought we should recommend it, but I won't do that now. I only say yes to the books that I truly, truly love.'

As well as the interview there're details of the first book, Mudbound by Hillary Jordan and how you can win copies for your reading group and also how to buy a cheap copy.

Richard & Judy Summer Reads 2008

The Richard & Judy Summer Reads have been announced. A few crime/thriller entries. (Barclay, Hart and Bradley - none of these are European authors though).

25 June. The Outcast - Sadie Jones
2 July. No Time For Goodbye - Linwood Barclay
9 July. East of the Sun - Julia Gregory
16. July. Down River - John Hart
23 July. The Pirate's Daughter - M Cezair-Thompson
30 July. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee - Rebecca Miller
6 Aug. Addition - Toni Jordan
13 Aug. The Resurrectionist - James Bradley

R J Ellory hits the big time

The new Richard and Judy book club list for 2008 has been announced and it's good news for R J Ellory whose 'A Quiet Belief in Angels' has been selected. His appears to be the only crime title chosen. The full list, from Publishing News is here:

9 January A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini (Bloomsbury)

16 January Random Acts of Heroic Love, Danny Scheinmann (Black Swan)

23 January The Rose of Sebastopol, Katharine McMahon (W&N)

30 January A Quiet Belief in Angels, RJ Ellory (Orion)

6 February Notes From an Exhibition, Patrick Gale (Fourth Estate)

13 February Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris (Viking)

20 February The Visible World, Mark Slouka (Portobello)

27 February Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones (John Murray)

5 March Blood River, Tim Butcher (Chatto)

12 March The Welsh Girl, Peter Ho Davies (Sceptre)

Regular readers of this blog might remember that R J Ellory gave a talk at Mere Green Library earlier this year and read an exclusive extract from said book.

Richard and Judy Summer Reading List

According to Publisher's Lunch, Richard and Judy's 2007 Summer Reading List is:

The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards
Getting Rid of Matthew, by Jane Fallon
Relentless, by Simon Kernick
The Other Side of the Bridge, by Mary Lawson
The Savage Garden, by Mark Mills
The House at Riverton, by Kate Morton
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, by Paul Torday
How to Talk to a Widower, by Jonathan Tropper

Congrats to Simon Kernick and Mark Mills as they watch their sales sky-rocket.