My new story, "Ghost Station", is part of this anthology marking the wonderful Peter Lovesey's 80th birthday.

If you're in Bath and want copies of Lady Bag, Miss Terry or Ballad of a Dead Nobody, they're available at Toppings bookstore, on the Paragon.


Click here to get info about Toppings.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine has a blog and I've contributed to it. Click here for my "Sick Hazel", posted 29 October.
I've tried to give an idea of the kind of stories that led me toward writing LADY BAG.


Fluffy best of the year?

In the 2014 summer issue of the magazine Deadly Pleasures, Marv Lachman listed his ten favourite short stories for 2013. Not only did he include my story, “I Am Not Fluffy” but he said “Liza Cody’s was my favorite story for the year.” What a lovely, lovely surprise. Thank you, Marv! The story was in the December 2013 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.


Do you know Deadly Pleasures? It’s described as America's premier fan-oriented mystery magazine. Click here to have a look at their site.
Do you know Ellery Queen’s MM? It’s the world’s leading publisher of short mystery fiction. Click here to have a look at their site.
If you missed "I Am Not Fluffy" in Ellery Queen's MM, you can get it now digitally from Amazon The Crooked Road, Volume 3: Ellery Queen Presents Stories of Grifters, Gangsters, Hit Men and Other Career Crooks.

Click here to go to it on Amazon UK.
Click here to go to it on Amazon US.
My latest story, A Hand, is in the June issue of Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine. Set in Whitby it introduces a new female police character, Shareen Manasseh. Click here to go to the EQMM site.


Now you can follow LizaCody on Twitter.


I promise I won't flood you with tweets.

Interested in an update on Anna Lee? Well, there are some hints in my story in DEADLY PLEASURES, the CWA 60th Anniversary collection just out in the UK. The story is actually my second about a new character, Shareen Manasseh. The first will be available soon in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Do you read books on an electronic platform? If so, you can get more of my books that way than just the recent MISS TERRY and BALLAD OF A DEAD NOBODY.

Bloomsbury has published four of my older books for electronic readers. They're the three Eva Wylie novels and GIMME MORE. Click on the links:


BUCKET NUT
MONKEY WRENCH
MUSCLEBOUND
GIMME MORE

And you can also get one of my stories electronically. "The Old Story" is included in The Crooked Road: Ellery Queen Presents Stories of Grifters, Gangsters, Hit Men, and Other Career Crooks.



This is a very sweet trio of stories by Michael Z Lewin which I helped edit. Factoids: my grandson Sam Camden-Smith was the photographer for this cover, his mate Nathan is the malefactor pictured, and I am about to be the innocent victim.

GIMME MORE was published in the US by Bloody Brits Press. That's what it looks like below but for a bigger picture and more information go to my Works page.


It's published by Bloody Brits (Bywater Books) ISBN-10: 1932859659 ISBN-13: 978-1932859652

Here's something unsual - and free. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine has a podcast featuring writers reading one of their EQMM stories. A recent one has me, Michael Z. Lewin and Peter Lovesey all reading stories inspired by the same newspaper article. We also talk about how we came to write them, though the sound for that bit is not as clear as for the stories themselves.

Click here to go to the magazine's podcast page. Scroll to Episode 7, click on it and then click on "download" at the bottom of that page,
Into the 20th Century at last. For another picture go to the bottom of the central column of this page.

If you don't already know my work, here are a few comments about it.


“Electric with suspense, fast and funny...”
Publisher’s Weekly

“Add Liza Cody’s name to that remarkably long list of British women who have a special flair for turning out stylish, literate mysteries.”
Washington Post

“Eva’s one of those characters, like Salinger’s Holden Caulfield or Morrison’s Sethe, whose voices are so rich they create a whole world out
of a few sentences.”
Maureen Corrigan, National Public Radio

“One of the best conceived and beautifully drawn characters in modern crime fiction.”
Mystery News

“A tour de force.”
Los Angeles Times

“It’s like a rock-and-roll version of Pilgrim’s Progress. Eva is rude crude,funny, touching and perhaps the boldest creation to land in recent crime
fiction.”
Philadelphia Inquirer

“Ferocious stuff … Exceedingly funny … Truthful too.”
Literary Review

Quick Links

If you want to get in touch with me, or have an enquiry about rights, possible commissions, or adaptations then click here to send me an email..
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is where I often publish stories that aren't in anthologies. Click here to have a look at EQMM.
To check availability of my books on Amazon UK click here.
Or Amazon in the US, click here.
Or for my books on Barnes & Noble, click here.
Or for a link to AbeBooks and access to a raft of smaller sellers of my books click here.
For the current list of my books available on eBay UK click here.
And if you know a bookstore that has a lot of my books in stock and might want me to add a link, click here and email the information. Thanks.
Are you looking to connect to a book club or find an independent bookstore? Click here for Reader's Circle.
Find Authors

Welcome

They've been a long time coming, but the Anna Lee novels have now been republished electronically and in paperback and they're all available from Amazon. I'm so very pleased to be able to offer them again.

And, as a bonus, two more books are also freshly reissued the same ways: my novel Rift and the collection Lucky Dip and other stories.


This image, in different colours, adorns all the new Anna Lee books. The model is my daughter, Kate, wearing one of my hats.

Here's the new cover for LUCKY DIP - from a pencil drawing of mine.

Also ~ in paperback and on electronic platforms - my latest novel.



'The homeless narrator of Liza Cody's Lady Bag (iUniverse, £11.95) spends her days around the West End of London. She begs alongside her rescue dog, an ex-racing greyhound named Electra, self-medicating with slurps of Algerian red.

Then one day, by chance, she sees the man she calls the "Devil." Years ago, she paid for her misplaced faith in him with her home, her freedom and a good deal of her sanity. He, of course, got away scot free and now, it seems, he's lining up his next victim.

You won't read many fresher or more distinctive novels this year but it's the sharp writing as much as the unusual setting that makes this book such a joy.

Cody's dialogue is always funny and full of purpose, and here she's found her perfect protagonist - a creative mangler of platitudes, an uncontrollable shredder of pomp and hypocrisy.'

Mat Coward, in The Morning Star of 25 Feb 14


Here's me toasting the arrival of LADY BAG - paperbacks and electronic versions, all available. For this book only the whole bottle would do.



My previous novel is MISS TERRY is in paperback and hardback and all the main electronic formats.

This is how the first chapter of MISS TERRY begins:

'If you could watch Nita Tehri while she was sleeping you’d probably get the wrong impression. She looks dishevelled and mellow, an independent modern woman alone in her double bed, in her own flat. Her hair fans out on the pillow like an open crow’s wing. Her mouth is sweet with dreams–she’s almost smiling. Relaxed, her arm is naked to the elbow because the sleeve of her Snoopy pyjama top is rucked up. With her hand curled near her face and she looks almost young enough to suck her thumb.
But sometimes the fates decide to play games with smiling young women.'




And here, the book before Miss Terry, can still be ordered from good bookstores and from online sources. There are paperback and hardback editions as well as low-cost electronic editions. There are already a couple of rave reader review ons the UK's Amazon site and one on the US Amazon site.

The electronic edition is available on Kindle, Nook and the other major electronic platforms at about $2.99. You can also get it to read on your computer even if you don't have an e-reader: for instance from iUniverse or Amazon.

And this is an early newspaper review from England's Morning Star:
"Adventurous in form, sparklingly written and with every page more gripping than the last, this bluesy novel may well be the already garlanded Cody's best yet." Mat Coward, 17 August 2011


You can read about the cover photo in my Newsletter Number Two. There's an extract from the book in the newsletter too.


To tell you the truth, I never thought that I'd ever have a website of my own. It's too technical. In fact, as someone who can cause a toaster to malfunction just by looking at it, I thought that even owning a computer would be an expensive catastrophe.

But in January, 2006, in the 21st century, l gave in and joined the 20th with my first computer.

Yes, until then I wrote everything longhand. Here's a page from GIMME MORE.


How 19th Century is that?

But there was one big advantage to working with paper and pencil: when stuck for words I could always draw.

Sometimes drawing clears my mind; sometimes it helps me think; sometimes it stops me thinking in spirals. Drawing, like a cup of tea, can be a remedy for many ills. It can also be a waste of time.



I did this drawing on the page next to the text that is circled above.


Now, as you can see, I have the sort of technology that allows me to continue writing by hand. It cuts out the typing stage in the life of a manuscript, but unfortunately it won't let me draw any more.

At work in July 08.

Selected Works

Previous Previous Latest Novel
All Birdie Walker wants is some justice for her husband, Jack. But since Jack was a rock star and the justice has to come from the music business, Birdie absolutely has to take some extreme measures.Click on the title for more information.
Short stories
All my short stories up to 2003 are in this collection. It includes two written specially. Click on the title for a bit about how I came to write short stories and more information.
The Anna Lee series
I wrote six novels about Anna Lee. Click on the titles for more information.
The Eva Wylie series
Professional wrestler Eva Wylie appeared in three novels in the '90s. Click on the titles for more information.
The other stand-alone novel...
This novel is set in the Ethiopia of the 1970s. Click on the title for more information.
The story collections I co-edited for Britain's Crime Writers' Association.
In the early '90s I helped edit these three books - aiming them to be more annuals than anthologies. They include many things we're proud to have published. Click on the titles for more information.