When Harriet Vane receives an invitation to attend her Oxford Gaudy — a class reunion — she's also given a most unusual request from her old professors. A poison pen is running amok at the ladies' college of Shrewsbury and the dons are terrified that the nasty notes, malicious vandalism, and obscene threats against them…
Summer's flying by and The M.O. is sweating with panic over the theme “Lesson Learned.” Write us a crime story in your blue book of one-thousand to fifteen-hundred words. The theme can be interpreted widely, in whatever style, tone, subgenre, targeted age range, and/or era the writer chooses. If you've ever read stuff like it…
This Lockpick School In A Box “gives you everything you need to learn this valuable art… [including] five lock cylinders, which are numbered and get progressively more difficult as you move from 1-5, as well as four picks, a tension tool, and an instructional book.” Hat tip: Uncrate.…
Start with The Breakfast Club formula—a preppy popular girl, a jock, the burn-out/bad boy, the new girl, the geek, the goth—and throw in the body horror of parasitic aliens. Stir in plenty of knowing sci-fi riffs and you’ve got The Faculty, a little film with cult classic cred. Herrington High is your typical small town…
In Norway, a high school teacher is using video games to teach ethical frameworks, reports Laura Hudson for FiveThirtyEight: The first time I played the “Walking Dead” video game, I killed an elderly man. It seemed like the right thing to do…. Later, some unnerving statistics appeared on the screen: how my choices compared to…
Poison Ivy by Cynthia Riggs is the 11th cozy in the Martha's Vineyard Mystery Series starring Victoria Trumbull who discovers a pair of dead bodies during her first day as an adjunct professor (available March 31, 2015). On her first day as adjunct professor at Ivy Green College, Victoria Trumbull recognizes the stench emanating from…
How To Get Away With Murder finally proved that it knew where it was going all along: the twists are shocking, sure, but it pulled through with a logical conclusion to the question of who killed Lila Standgard (Megan West). Rebecca (Katie Findlay) was lying, and Sam (Tom Verica) has plenty of opportunity, as we…
As How to Get Away with Murder can attest, the “previously on” section that starts a TV show can tell you a lot about how difficult a show is to follow. Many shows have a thirty second clip that just gives the same general background. “The Night Lila Died,” the penultimate episode of How to…
Broken Window by Dorothy H. Hayes is set in NYC in the summer of 1984 — a time when the subway was not a safe place for travel, as evidenced by a missing NYU student (available March 3, 2015). Comment below for a chance to win a copy! It's the summer of 1984, and New York…
The characters on How To Get Away With Murder might not be solving all their cases—in fact, Lila’s murder gets unofficially reopened this week—but the show itself has solved its biggest problem. The show is developing its characters. Murder is a huge ensemble show, with Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), her students, her coworkers, and a…
