Ladies Killing Circle Books In Order

Publication Order of Ladies Killing Circle Books

The Ladies’ Killing Circle
The Ladies’ Killing Circle is made up of authors Mary Jane Maffini, Sue Pike, Linda Wiken, Vicki Cameron, Audrey Jessup, and Joan Boswell.

The Ladies’ Killing Circle is an Ottawa phenomenon, since that is where most of the writers are based. During the 1990s, this six-member critiquing group knew that their mystery short stories were all good and should be released for the people to read.

Vicki Cameron, whose non-fiction work was published by General Store proposed these women, who became the Ladies’ Killing Circle, put a book together for an editor’s consideration. He jumped at the opportunity and “The Ladies’ Killing Circle”, a book with stories from twelve women and some wonderful poems by Joy Hewitt Mann appeared in the year 1995. The book was published by RendezVous Crime.

“Cotton Armour”, written by Mary Jane Maffini, won the Arthur Ellis best short story award, as did her story published in the Ladies’ “Menopause is Murder” anthology. Both the Glob and Mail reviewed “The Ladies’ Killing Circle” favorably. Sue Pike won an Arthur Ellis award for her story “Widow’s Weeds”. The rest of the anthologies have at least garnered at least a shortlist nomination.

The Ladies were given the Grant Allen Award from the Scene of the Crime Festival. It awards contributions made to Canadian mystery and crime writing.

The stories published in the anthologies run the gamut from darkly brooding to mystery to ones that will make you die laughing. Each of the anthologies has themed poems from different award-winning writers.

Sadly, Audrey Jessup (one of the founding Ladies) died in 2003 before “Bone Dance”, the fifth anthology, was released and continues to be missed. Both her grammatical edits and warmth remains with all of the members still to this very day.

Many individual members of the Killing Circle went on to have many books and short stories published and won prizes. The group still meets, critiques, and has fun. The group is engaged in the art of killing people and solving the crimes, all of which is done on paper only.

A total of seven anthologies were published, with “Going out With a Bang” being the most recent, having seen a release in the year 2008.

Four of the Ladies (Mary Jane Maffini, Joan Boswell, Linda Wiken, Barbara Fradkin) are writing series novels. Besides being published in “Killing Circle” anthologies, the authors have all been published in other anthologies as well.

Besides slaving away writing stories, they have also been known to travel to warmer climates, eat a ton of lunches, go on shopping sprees, and hit the conferences.

Barbara Fradkin is an award-winning crime writer and a child psychologist with a strong interest in how people turn bad. Two of the books in her “Inspector Michael Green” series have won unprecedented back-to-back Arthur Ellis Awards for the Best Canadian Crime Novel from the CWA.

Linda Wiken worked as a radio producer, advertising copywriter, journalist, and a community education worker. She is an avid chorister and loves being a choir member.

She writes the “Dinner Club Mystery” series of cozy mystery novels, the first of which was released in the year 2016, and was called “Toasting Up Trouble”. She has also written the “Castle Bookshop Mysteries” series and the “Ashton Corners Book Club Mysteries” series. She also writes as Erika Chase and Essie Lang.

For over fifteen years, she volunteered with the Ottawa Police Service, and developed strong, at times scary interest in the procedure of the police. She once wrote weekly crime stats articles for the local newspapers for them, along with the stories for the OPS internal newsletter.

Linda also co-edited three of the Killing Circle collections. Her short fiction has appeared in Over My Dead Body and Mysterious Intent as well as all seven of the Killing Circle books.

Linda Wiken, along with Mary, bought Prime Crime (Ottawa’s mystery book store). Linda ran the place for fourteen years before the place closed down, and she did so with a sense of anticipation and much sadness.

Joan Boswell was born in Toronto and grew up in Ottawa, Oakville, Edmonton, and Halifax. Joan graduated with an Honours BA in History and Economics from the University of New Brunswick, then got married, and moved to the bush in Northern Quebec.

She and her husband lived there for two years before moving to London, Ontario. Here, she attended Teachers’ College and taught in a three-grade and one-room school on the Six Nations Oneida Indian Reserve.

Then they moved to Ottawa where she went back to all the joys of academic life and got her MA in Canadian Studies from Carleton University as well as a PhD from the University of Ottawa.

She writes the “Hollis Grant” series of novels, the first of which was released in the year 2005 and called “Cut Off His Tale”.

Mary Jane Maffini was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia and has a BA and a Masters in Library Science from Dalhousie. She is the former co-owner of Prime Crime Mystery Bookstore. She is a lapsed librarian.

She writes cozy mysteries and has written the novels in the “Fiona Silk” series, the “Charlotte Adams” series, and the “Camilla MacPhee” series.

She is a native of Nova Scotia, just like a lot of her characters, and lives with her husband and pair of tiny dachshunds.

Sue Pike, also based in Ottawa, writes mystery short stories and edited for the Ladies’ anthologies.

During book readings in Ottawa, Audrey Jessup was the woman, smartly dressed with a mischievous twinkle in her eye and the elegant. She also the one who always asked the most incisive questions. Audrey was a charter member and former president of Capital Crime Writers, and co-chair of Bloody Words V. She was a member of Crime Writers of Canada since the mid-90s.

Vicki Cameron writes young adult novels and mystery short stories. She is the author of “Clue Mysteries”, short stories based off of the board game Clue, as well as its sequel . She was nominated for an Edgar for “That Kind of Money” and an Arthur Ellis Award.