Newsy Stuff – Award nominations!

The Strand Magazine have announced its nominees for the 2009 Strand Magazine Critics Awards. Recognizing excellence in the field of mystery fiction. They are as follows:-

Best Novel:

Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company)
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (Ballantine Books)
Life Sentences by Laura Lippman (William Morrow)
The Renegades by T. Jefferson Parker (Dutton)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Riverhead Books)

Best First Novel

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell (Little, Brown and Company)
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry (Penguin Press)
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin Books)
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley (Touchstone)
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke (Harper)

The 2009 Agatha Award nominations have also been announced. The nominations are as follows:-

Best Novel:
Swan for the Money by Donna Andrews (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
Bookplate Special by Lorna Barrett (Berkley Prime Crime)
Royal Flush by Rhys Bowen (Berkley Prime Crime)
A Brutal Telling by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Air Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan (MIRA)

Best First Novel:
For Better For Murder by Lisa Bork (Midnight Ink)
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (Delacorte Press)
Posed for Murder by Meredith Cole (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
The Cold Light of Mourning by Elizabeth Duncan (St. Martin’s Press)
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur Books)

Best Non-fiction:
Duchess of Death by Richard Hack (Phoenix Books)
Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James (Knopf)
Blood on the Stage by 1925-1950 by Amnon Kabatchnik (Scarecrow Press)
Dame Agatha’s Shorts by Elena Santangelo (Bella Rosa Books)
The Talented Miss Highsmith by Joan Schenkar (St. Martin’s Press)

Best Short Story:
“Femme Sole” by Dana Cameron, Boston Noir (Akashic Books)
“Handbaskets, Drawers and a Killer Cold” by Kaye George, Crooked ezine
“The Worst Noel” by Barb Goffman, The Gift of Murder (Wolfmont Press)
“On the House” by Hank Phillippi Ryan, Quarry (Level Best Books)
“Death Will Trim Your Tree” by Elizabeth Zelvin, The Gift of Murder (Wolfmont Press)

Best Children's/Young Adult:
The Morgue and Me by John C. Ford (Viking Juvenile)
The Hanging Hill by Chris Grabenstein (Random House)
The Case of the Poisoned Pig by Lewis B. Montgomery (Kane Press)
The Other Side of Blue by Valerie O. Patterson (Clarion Books)
The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer (Philomel)

The Agatha Awards honor the "traditional mystery." That is to say, books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie as well as others. For our purposes, the genre is loosely defined as mysteries that:

•contain no explicit sex
•contain no excessive gore or gratuitous violence
Materials generally classified as "hard-boiled" are not appropriate.

A ballot listing each category's nominees will be given to all attendees of Malice Domestic 22, which will be held April 30 - May 2, 2010. Attendees will vote by secret ballot, the ballots will be tabulated and the winners will be announced at the 2009 Agatha Awards banquet to be held on Saturday, May 1, 2010.

Congratulations to all the nominees for the Strand Magazine Critics Awards and the Agatha Awards.