New M.C. Beaton Website

The original M.C. Beaton website launched over a decade ago, aiming to keep readers updated with all of the latest book releases, news and information. But since M.C. Beaton's passing in 2019, the role the website plays in promoting her books and entertaining and informing fans has changed. Technical constraints meant the old website was unable to support longer articles and high-resolution images, and it was difficult to keep up-to-date. With the launch of the new M.C. Beaton site, we hope to be able to fix these existing shortcomings.

So what does this mean for the readers and fans who come here? Well, firstly we've added an updated author biography with more details about M.C. Beaton's life and work, along with family photographs that have never been seen before. R.W. Green, the author she chose to continue writing books in her series, also gets a biographical write-up.

We are now able to bring you longer features about the writer, the books and the series, starting with M.C. Beaton's Writing Advice. This is a summary of the advice she gave to potential writers of commercial fiction - advice she gave verbally but largely never committed to print. Future topics for articles will be the origins of the characters Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin - how the characters came to be; M.C. Beaton's many pen names - how the writer known as Marion Chesney could end up writing under so many other names; and M.C. Beaton's views on "cozy crime" - her love/hate relationship she would have with the genre she helped to define.

We have updated all of the book listings to include the latest titles, complete with ISBNs and links to all the major retailers. Short stories such as Agatha's First Case and Hamish Macbeth in Death of a Laird are there, along with compilations.

We have more information about the television and radio series that have been based on her novels, including both the 90s television adaptation of Hamish Macbeth and the more recent adaptation of Agatha Raisin, as well as the much-loved radio adaptation of Agatha Raisin starring Penelope Keith as the eponymous heroine.

In future, we hope to add more useful features, such as a printable book list of all of the M.C. Beaton works in order. This will help readers keep track of what titles they have yet to read and ensure that nothing gets missed. We also plan to provide a downloadable press pack with much of the information from the site presented in PDF form.

But ultimately, this site is for you. What features would you like us to add? What features would you like to see? You can contact us to let us know, either directly or through the M.C. Beaton social media channels.