Reminder: get your entries in to win eight Kiwi crime novels

The entries are starting to flow in for the competition to win all eight titles longlisted for the upcoming 2011 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. One lucky person is going to be getting some pretty great reading that should keep them entertained for a while! Make sure you get your own entry in sometime between now and 18 August.

To refresh your memories: the prize is open worldwide, and is a terrific line-up of crime and thriller fiction, with the eight longlisted titles offering a diverse range of writing styles, settings, protagonists, and storytelling. Early comments from the international judging panel, which has been "impressed" by the calibre of New Zealand crime fiction in the running this year, include "such good books, but all so different", and "NZ is such a rich environment for writing... there should be a way to spread the news about these fine authors".

Now you have a chance to try for yourself the entire line-up that has been impressing the Ngaio Marsh Award judging panel. You can enter the prize draw simply by emailing a photo of yourself reading any New Zealand crime, mystery, or thriller title - contemporary or from days gone by - to ngaiomarshaward@gmail.com. The book in your picture doesn't have to be set in New Zealand, as long as the author is associated with New Zealand (lives in New Zealand, was born or grew up in New Zealand, etc). If you need some inspiration when it comes to finding an eligbile, mystery, or thriller novel to read and photograph, check out this list of more than 80 authors and more than 250 titles here.

Photos will be displayed on the Ngaio Marsh Award Facebook page, which you can visit and 'like' here. The winner of the competition will be randomly drawn from the entered photos on 18 August 2011, and announced prior to the presentation of the Ngaio Marsh Award on 21 August 2011.