Here are your Agatha Award nominees

Picks of the Week

Adam Thirlwell: Politics: A Novel (P.S.)
One would think this book is about sex, And while it is, since the characters have so much about it, some of it is kinky, and threesomes play a big role in the narrative. mostly POLITICS is about everything else: the mechanics, the logistics, the emotional minefields, the awkward questions, the moral dilemmas, and, well, the politics of what it is to be with someone you love or someone you don't, and how an act that should be simple is anything but. Thirlwell was disgustingly young when he wrote this but he absolutely understands that to make this book work, there must be an underlying sweetness and sincerity to the entire story. Now I want to see what he's up to more recently. Amazon | Indiebound | B & N | Borders | Powell’s
Jennifer Mascia: Never Tell Our Business to Strangers: A Memoir
Years ago I was blown away by Mascia's Modern Love piece describing her parents' secret past: her father was a mobbed-up convicted murderer, and her mother not only knew all about it, but aided and abetted her husband when life required being a fugitive, selling drugs, and living at great highs and crushing lows. Mascia's book tells a more whole story about her peripatetic life, and even with every new shocking revelation what remained consistent was how much she loved her parents, no matter how deep those lows went, and how much she misses them now that they are gone. Unconditional love never goes away, no matter if those who receive it deserve it. Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N | Powell’s
Juli Zeh: In Free Fall
Give me a novel of ideas and if the story is good and the characters are believable and entertain me, I am there. Give me a crime novel of ideas, where two physics professors, friends and rivals, opposites but startlingly similar, do emotional battle on an intellectual canvas, raise the stakes through betrayal, the possible kidnapping of a child, and embroil a romantic-leaning police detective in the complicated machinations of quantum theory, and holy hell, I think I have myself one of my favorite books of the year. Powell’s | Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N
Simon Lelic: A Thousand Cuts
It appears to be a crime with an easy solution: a disgruntled schoolteacher shoots up his place of employment and kills several students in the process. But really, Lelic's novel is about the catastrophic consequences of bullying, and how this act is hardly limited to kids turning on other kids, but burrows deeply into adult relationships as well. He evokes empathy for the killer and sympathy for Lucia, the investigating officer who has to fight for every scrap of dignity as she pieces together the far more complex truth of what really happened at the school. Powell’s | Amazon | Borders | Indiebound | B & N
William Lindsay Gresham: Nightmare Alley
I cannot stop raving about this book to people. The circular narrative structure, the demented feel of a traveling carny troupe, and the extraordinary rise and precipitous fall of Stan Carlisle give off the persistent, raging feeling that hell is always with us, and success is basically a sucker's game. No matter what the biographical evidence on Gresham's state of mind leading up to and after the book's bestseller (and movie basis) status in 1946, I don't think we can really know what demons plagued him to produce this marvelous noir gem. B & N | Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | Powell’s

February 26, 2008

And they will be presented at the 20th Malice Domestic Convention held the weekend of April 25-27:

Best Novel

The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, by Donna Andrews (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Her Royal Spyness, by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)
Hard Row, by Margaret Maron (Grand Central Publishing)
A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Murder With Reservations, by Elaine Viets (NAL)

Best First Novel

A Beautiful Blue Death, by Charles Finch ( St. Martin 's Minotaur)
A Real Basket Case, by Beth Groundwater (Five Star)Silent In The Grave, by Deanna Raybourn (Mira)Prime Time, by Hank Phillipi Ryan (Harlequin)

Best Nonfiction

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life In Letters, by Charles Foley, Jon Lellenberg , and Daniel Stashower (Penguin Press)
The Official Nancy Drew Handbook, by Penny Warner (Quirck Productions)

Best Short Story

"A Rat's Tale", by Donna Andrews (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Sept/Oct, 2007)
"Please Watch Your Step", by Rhys Bowen (The Strand, Spring, 2007)"Casino Gamble", by Nan Higginson (Murder New York Style, L & L Dreamspell)
"Popping Round To The Post", by Peter Lovesey (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November, 2007)

"Death Will Clean Your Closet", by Elizabeth Zelvin (Murder New York Style, L & L Dreamspell)

Best Children's/Young Adult

A Light In The Cellar, by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl)
Bravo Zulu, Samantha!, by Kathleen Benner Duble (Peachtree Publishers)Cover-Up: Mystery At The Super Bowl, by John Feinstein (Knopf [Random House])
The Falconer's Knot, by Mary Hoffman (Bloomsbury USA Childrens' Books)

Theodosia And The Serpents Of Chaos, by R.L. LaFevers (Houghton Mifflin)

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Posted at 06:30 PM in World of Mystery | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451af9169e200e5509832478834

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Here are your Agatha Award nominees:

Comments

YAY!!! Many congrats to all the nominees!!!!

Posted by: Cornelia Read | February 26, 2008 at 07:25 PM

The authors of Murder New York Style shout a big hooray for Nan Higginson and Elizabeth Zelvin and for all the nominees.

Terrie

Posted by: Terrie Farley Moran | February 28, 2008 at 08:34 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Crime fiction, and more.

About

Follow Me

Picks of the Week

Archived Picks

Archives

Categories

The Harem of Cabana Boys

...And Cabana Girls, Too

Crime Fiction

They Write, They Blog

The Lit Brigade

The Idiosyncratic Part

Stats

February 26, 2008

Here are your Agatha Award nominees

TrackBack

Comments