Late morning smatterings

MWA has announced that 2007’s Raven Recipients are Kathy Harig, owner of Mystery
    Loves Company (Baltimore, MD and Oxford,
    MD), and Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books
    & Books (various locations in FL) and co-founder of Miami
    Book Fair International, two picks I could not agree more with. (hat tip: Mystery News)

David Montgomery offers his take on Michael Crichton’s latest science thriller, NEXT, for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Ali Karim offers his point of view of the book for The Rap Sheet.

The Nature Conservancy takes a look at one of its more surprising possessions – Ernest Hemingway’s last house.

Longtime book critic Merle Rubin died of cancer on November 30. She was 57.
 
When Laura Lippman offers writing advice, take it.

Duane Swierczynski bats around ideas for his next crime novel. The result goes from weird to strange…

Jeri Westerson interviewed a slew of independent crime fiction publishers, from Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai, Bitter Lemon Press’s Francois von Hurter, Audely Press’s Kay Lacey to Lynne Patrick at Creme de la Crime, to get their take on publishing, the mystery world and their own niche.

And finally, yes, this is speech-defying. Truly. (via Gawker.)