News & Notes – Coronavirus Edition, Week 7 (4/25/2020)

April 25, 2020 News & Notes 4


News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff

Literary Losses

Sheila Connolly

Sheila Connolly, beloved author of a number of cozy mystery series, died April 20, 2020. Fellow writers say she had been fighting cancer. Connolly was the author of the Orchard Mystery, County Cork, Relatively Dead, Museum, and Victorian Village Mystery series.

Her first published book, Through a Glass, Deadly appeared under the pen name Sarah Atwell in March 2008. The first Orchard Mystery, One Bad Apple, was published in August of the same year. As Sarah Atwell, Connolly wrote two more books in the Glassblowing Mystery series, but she concentrated most on the many series she wrote under her own name. In her 12 years as a writer, Ms. Connolly published 40 books, a significant legacy for such a short time. She was a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Romance Writers of America, and wrote a monthly blog post for the Killer Characters blog.

Ms. Connolly was born in the US in 1950, and lived in several states, most recently Massachusetts. A few years ago, she bought a cottage in Ireland. An art historian by training, she graduated from Wellesley College and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University; she then went on to earn an M.B.A. from UCLA Berkley. She worked as an art history, a municipal financial advisor, a fund-raiser, and a professional genealogist before turning to writing full-time. She was married and had one daughter.

SOURCES: Obituaries and tributes: Tribute from her literary agent, Jessica Faust; Killer Characters. Bibliography and Biography: Goodreads; Wikipedia; author’s website

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Donna Kauffman

Bestselling romance author Donna Kauffman died April 9, 2020, of pancreatic cancer. She was 60 years old. Kauffman wrote more than 70 romances, most set in small towns. Her books featured on the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists, and were published in 26 countries. Her most recent romance, Under a Firefly Moon, was released in February.

SOURCES: Obituaries and tributes: Legacy.com; USA Today. Bibliography and Biography: Goodreads; author’s website

Bookish News

Worth Reading/Viewing (not all book-related)

Movies & Shows

Some of these are fundraisers or require tickets. Please consider purchasing or donating to keep these arts institutions alive!

More Stay-At-Home Resources

Bookish Quote

4 Responses to “News & Notes – Coronavirus Edition, Week 7 (4/25/2020)”

  1. Ashley Montgomery

    I love that quote! I love escaping into someone else’s life, especially nowadays.

  2. Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits

    There are some fun links here! I spent a good deal of time scrolling through the list of book publication date changes to see if anything I was interested in had been moved. I found one particularly interesting (but not surprising) change: How To Raise a Loaf (book about baking sourdough bread) by Roly Allen has been moved *up* to a May release from its original June release. 😀

    I love the virtual train rides. <3
    Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits recently posted…The Tuft of Flowers by Robert FrostMy Profile