Crime Wave 4 – Home Sweet Homicide (2026) is coming soon!
Available for preorder now
“These beautifully written short stories will draw you in immediately with their vivid settings and then at the end allow you, brimming with the happy knowledge of justice served, to go off and make yourself a celebratory cup of tea.” —Iona Whishaw, award-winning, bestselling author of the Lane Winslow Mysteries
What does home mean to you? Is it a cozy cottage in a forest, a house whose windows overlook the ocean, a bungalow filled with the smell of baking, a high-rise apartment in a big city?
The fourteen stories in this book showcase the creativity and talent of our authors. The homes include simple suburban houses that are unremarkable until you look closer, an Edwardian mansion in need of repair, cottages with delightful gardens hiding secrets, a glamourous gated mansion, a retirement community, simple shacks, basement suites, and even a convent.
Sometimes the characters in these stories are trying to protect their homes. Others have found those homes are not the havens they should be. Some people are just looking for a place to call home, and others have had more homes than they wanted. You’ll find characters who are frightened. Some are seeking justice. Many are hiding secrets. And some are just out for revenge.
Some of the stories will make you laugh. Others will make you cry. Some are frightening, some are heartbreaking. All of them are entertaining. We hope you will enjoy these fourteen approaches to Home Sweet Homicide.
Home Sweet Homicide is the fourth collection in the Crime Wave series of anthologies produced by the crime writers of western Canada. There may be murder, and often mayhem, but justice always prevails. Even if it’s not quite what you expect. The authors are:
- Shelley Adina
- JE Barnard
- Pam Barnsley
- AT Bennett
- Sandra Benson
- Craig H Bowlsby
- Susan Calder
- PJ Donison
- Debra Henry
- Winona Kent
- CJ Papoutsis
- Merrilee Robson
- Linda Sanche
- Jillian Grant Shoichet
Click here to find Crime Wave 4 at your favourite bookstore!
Crime Wave 3 – Dangerous Games (2024)
From cheating spouses to corporate team building to Live Action Role Play, the deadly games people play are on full display in the third biennial anthology from Sisters in Crime-Canada West.
Siblings to swindlers to murderous partners all come together in this playful array of stories centered on the theme of Dangerous Games.
Whether you are captivated by lotteries, haunted by summer camp, or just have a competitive streak, you’ll find engaging sleuths and conniving criminals to suit every mood.
The fifteen short stories in this collection range from hilarious to heartbreaking, and light-hearted to cold-blooded. All of them feature the type of Dangerous Games our talented and devious Canada West crime writers love to dream up!
Crime Wave 2 – Women of a Certain Age (2022)
Old woman or little girl, woman in a dirigible or woman on her death bed, woman in history or the girl next door—we know them because their experiences are ours. Well, maybe not all their experiences…
This second anthology from members of the Canada West Chapter of Sisters in Crime finds women and girls at perilous points in their lives. From real estate agents to house cleaners, school girls to exterminators, you will find a delicious array of women, some with outrage in their hearts—and some with murder—but all of them committing or solving crimes in new and imaginative ways.
The sixteen short stories in Crime Wave: Women of a Certain Age range from light-hearted to heart-breaking, and from romantic to treacherous. All of them deal with courageous women of a certain age.
Crime Wave 1 (2020)
Our first anthology, Canada West Crime Wave, was published November 2, 2020. It contains eight amazing stories. Two of the authors gained nominations for a Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence–Winona Kent for her novella Salty Dog Blues, and Marcelle Dubé for her short story Cold Wave, which ultimately won the Award of Excellence for Best Short Story!
The stories in Crime Wave 1 touch on Canada West locations (B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon and NWT) and involve a crime wave (any way the author interprets it.) Is it an escalating number of crimes? Is it crime that somehow involves the water? We left that open to our authors’ interpretation, but the stories involve a crime of some sort, even if the ‘crime’ is no longer a crime in the modern age.
