Brought to Book by Liz Filleul, 2004 Winner Scarlet Stiletto Award

Everyone seems to be buying, selling, even collecting online – but scammers are lurking in cyberspace and even hard copy vintage books are targeted, as you’ll see in today’ s story.When Liz Filleul won the Scarlet Stiletto Award in 2004, she had recently rediscovered the children’s books she’d loved growing up in England – books like the Famous Five, the Chalet School, the Lone Piners, and Antonia Forest’s Marlows series. This inspired her winning entry, “Brought to Book”.At the time, Liz hoped her Scarlet Stiletto success would be a springboard to a career as a novelist. And it actually did lead to having a detective novel set in the world of vintage children’s fiction collectors published by a niche publisher in the UK. But the success she’d dreamed of – having a mainstream novel published – didn’t happen, and still hasn’t.For over a decade, Liz worked on various novels, periodically taking time out to write short stories. She continued to do well in the Scarlet Stiletto Awards, with the runners-up prize in 2007, 2011 and 2016, and the Cross-Genre Prize in 2011 and the Mystery with History Prize in 2016. Eventually, it dawned on her that maybe her forte was writing short stories. Liz put one of her YA novels on submission and decided to focus on short stories for a while.It was the best writing decision she has ever made. In the past three years, she has had 40 short stories and three serials published in UK magazine The People’s Friend, and she has also been published in the USA magazine Woman’s World. One of her crime stories in The People’s Friend, “Dead Men Tell No Tales”, set in 1830s Van Diemen’s Land and featuring a convict constable, was a finalist in the 2023 Derringer Awards, run by the Short Mystery Fiction Society in the USA.CreditsConcept designer, co-producer and narrator: Susanna LobezCo-producer: Carmel ShuteAnnouncer: Leigh RedheadProduction Manager: Tim CoyGraphic Designer: Caz BrownMusic: sampled & inspired by ProkofievCopyright Sisters in Crime Australia 2023