Mel Anastasiou

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About Mel Anastasiou

Mel Anastasiou has been longlisted for the prestigious Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, 2018, with her novel Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries. A big Leacock fan, Mel in her extreme youth would take friends to look at Eric Nicol's house and say, "He won the Leacock three times." Nowadays, Mel says, "I love Stephen Leacock and Eric Nicol, and so does Stella."

Mel loves her writing life in BC and the UK. She is senior acquisitions editor with Pulp Literature Press and writes mysteries starring sleuths who are often fish out of water and gifted amateur detectives. Mel can be found every day writing, walking for miles to look at inspired Victorian architecture, and dreaming up crimes for her octagenarian sleuth, Stella Ryman, to solve .

Mel is the author of two illustrated 30-day workbooks on story structure, the steampunk-themed The Writer's Boon Companion, and The Writer's Friend and Confidante. She writes the Hertfordshire Pub Mysteries, the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, and the Monument Studios Mysteries. For news on these series, information about speaking engagements, tips on structure, and keys to time management for writers, visit her website, melanastasiou.wordpress.com.

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Paperback
Stella Ryman & the Four Digit Puzzle: Stella 3 (The Fairmount Manor Mysteries) (Volume 3)

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Stella Ryman & the Case of the Vanished Resident: Stella Novella #4 (The Fairmount Manor Mysteries) (Volume 4)

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Stella Ryman and the Poison Pen Affair (The Fairmount Manor Mysteries)

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Author Updates

Books By Mel Anastasiou

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Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries Apr 15, 2017

by Mel Anastasiou

( 7 )

$4.99

On this particular sun-and-shade April morning at Fairmount Manor, Stella Ryman no more entertained the idea of becoming an amateur sleuth than she did of entering next spring’s Boston Marathon. For not only was Stella eighty-two years old, but she had lately sold her home and a lifetime of gathered possessions and washed up at Fairmount Manor Care Home in such a state that she would have bet her remaining seven pairs of socks that she’d be dead in half a year.

But when money goes missing and an innocent woman stands to lose her job at Fairmount; when malicious poison pen letters find their way into the hands of staff and residents; and when a resident vanishes without a trace, Stella takes matters into her own hands. To hell with being elderly — Stella will break every one of the Director’s rules and slash all the institutional red tape in the place in her struggle to solve mysteries and protect the innocent. Over the course of the first five mystery adventures, Mrs Stella Ryman transforms from a woman on her deathbed to a force of nature and intellect. She’s a fish out of water, a stranger in a strange land, and an amateur sleuth trapped in a down-at-the-heels care home.

You’d be cranky, too.

Readers are saying
“witty and endearing”
“beautifully written with humour, grace, and suspense”
“You know a story’s good when you keep finding yourself laughing out loud."
“Stella Ryman is my new hero!”

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The Seven Swans: A Hertfordshire Pub Mystery (The Seven Swans Pub Mysteries Book 1) Jun 23, 2016

by Mel Anastasiou

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$2.99

Take a wry protagonist with a cast of quirky frenemies, add a dash of Wodehousian wit, mix in a mystery that would stump Miss Marple, throw it all through time, and you have the charming and delightful Seven Swans Mysteries.
With the loss of his wife and livelihood, sixty-year-old Spencer Stevens has nothing much left except a forty-year-old snapshot of a lost love and the right to renovate and run a derelict Hertfordshire public house. Spencer's struggle to solve the mysteries of his failed life and loves precipitates him into a long-ago mystery involving plague, a conniving abbot, and a beautiful girl in a swan-white gown, shot in the back with an arrow.
The Seven Swans pub is loaded with secrets spanning centuries, and one of them may hold the key to a second chance for Spencer's happiness.
This is the first in the "Hertfordshire Pub Mystery" series of novellas, by the author of the delightful "Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries."

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The Sword and Pikestaff Mystery: A Hertfordshire Pub Mystery (The Seven Swans Book 2) Jun 23, 2016

by Mel Anastasiou

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The Seven Swans has waited a long time for a true heart to come along, even within a flawed and lovelorn sixty-year-old man, and will fling him into a crucible of mysteries and dangers set in the pub’s deep past, to give Spencer Stevens and the Seven Swans a second chance for happiness.
What readers are saying:
Take a wry protagonist with a cast of quirky fren-emies, add a dash of Wodehousian wit, mix in a mystery that would stump Miss Marple, throw it all through time, and you have the charming and delightful Seven Swans Mysteries.

Other Formats: Paperback

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Pulp Literature Winter 2016: Issue 9 Dec 27, 2015

by George McWhirter , Mel Anastasiou , Susan Pieters , JM Landels , Greg Walklin , Matt Andrew , Stephanie Charette , Anat Rabkin , Mary H Auerbach Rykov , Ashley-Elizabeth Best

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A GMO future fairytale by George McWhirter; time-travelling mystery by Mel Anastasiou; spec-fic, horror and steampunk by Greg Walklin, Matt Andrew and Stephanie Charette; winter poetry by Ashley-Elizabeth Best and Mary H Auerbach Rykov; comic-book philosophy by Anat Rabkin; the next instalment of Allaigna’s Song by JM Landels; and the winners of the 2015 Hummingbird Prize for Flash Fiction.

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Pulp Literature Winter 2015: Issue 5 Jan 18, 2015

by Eileen Kernaghan , Mel Anastasiou , Susan Pieters , JM Landels , Rebecca Gomez Farrell , Donald Dewey , Stephen Case , Margaret Kingsbury , R Daniel Lester , Kris Sayer

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We dare you to be held captive by Eileen Kernaghan’s ‘The Robber Maiden’s Story’, and then try to escape alongside the intrepid Stella Ryman as she attempts a jailbreak in The Four Digit Puzzle by Mel Anastasiou.
Next, travel by boat and by bus to places you’d rather not go, with the fantastical ‘Polycarp on the Sea’ by Stephen Case and the gritty detective Finley in ‘The Pledge’ by Donald Dewey.
Three pulp poems by Mark J Mitchell will prepare you for the cruel transformations of ‘Thlush-a-lum’ by Rebecca Gomez Farrell and ‘Some Say the World Will End in Fire’ by R Daniel Lester.
These are followed by a few stories of wishing for more, in ‘A Discussion of Keats’s Negative Capability’ by Susan Pieters and Margaret Kingsbury’s ‘The Longing is Green when Branches are Trees’.
A treat lies in store as we publish the winners of the first annual Hummingbird Prize for Flash Fiction, followed by the short, sharp horror cartoon ‘Bait’ by Kris Sayer.
For dessert, we hope you’ve saved room for the next installment of Allaigna’s Song. It’s the perfect way to round out a good family feast.
All this beneath a beautiful new cover entitled “Fondly Remembered Magic” by our first cover artist Melissa Mary Duncan.

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Pulp Literature Summer 2014: Issue 3 Jul 1, 2014

by Joan MacLeod , Bob Thurber , Mel Anastasiou , Susan Pieters , JM Landels , Conor Powers-Smith , Sylvia Stopforth , Laird Long , Fred Zackel , Deborah Walker

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Genre-busting short stories, novellas, serials and graphic novels in a pulp anthology magazine.
In this issue:
- Joan MacLeod’s ‘The Salt Tour’, an exceptionally beautiful story from the golden age of European backpacking.
- ‘The Poison Pen Affair’, where Mel Anastasiou’s intrepid amateur sleuth Stella Ryman defies the constraints of her care home.
- Gritty storytelling that continues to amaze us in ‘Wager’ by Bob Thurber.
- Poetry by Diane Tucker, Darrell Lindsey and Jeffrey C Alfier.
- Susan Pieters’ ‘Invisible’, Laird Long’s ‘The Big Con’, and Conor Power-Smith’s ‘Love for Sale’, all stories that involve different kinds of love, and different kinds of blindness
- Our graphic novel adaptation of Sylvia Stopforth’s ‘Dragon Rock’, describing the biggest blind spot of all.
- Quantum physics in a handbag and stalker mascots in a theme park with Deborah Walker’s ‘Aunty Merkel’ and Fred Zackel’s “Snow White is Mine!”
- And our next installment of Allaigna’s Song, in which our heroine learns to illuminate the ordinary.

Other Formats: Paperback

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PULP Literature Winter 2014: Issue 1 Dec 26, 2013

by C.C. Humphreys , Mel Anastasiou , JM Landels , Susan Pieters , Beverley Boissery , SL Nickerson , Tyner Gillies , Angela Melick , Melissa Mary Duncan

( 6 )

$4.99

Genre-busting short stories, novellas, serials and graphic novels in a pulp anthology magazine.
In this issue:
"Where the Angels Wait", haunting contemporary fiction by CC Humphreys;
"Stella Ryman and the Case of the Third Option", a Fairmount Manor Mystery by Mel Anastasiou;
Poetry from acclaimed YA author Beverley Boissery;
Post-apocalyptic spec fic from SL Nickerson in "Only the Loons Know";
A touch of swordplay and slapstick, buddy-cop style, in "Of Siege and Sword", by Tyner Gillies;
The award winning short story, "The Glass Curtain", by Susan Pieters;
"The Mechanics", a cautionary tale by cartoonist Angela Melick;
Epic Fantasy and base sibling rivalry in "Allaigna’s Song" by JM Landels.

This quarterly anthology brings you literary writers doing SF, romance authors writing zombies, and swashbuckling historical fiction scribes turning their hands to gorgeous contemporary prose, plus illustrations by comic artists, and sequential art by illustrators. Good books for the price of a beer!

Other Formats: Paperback

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