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Edgar Allan Poe Award Winners (mystery)
Description: The Edgar Allan Poe Awards are given annually by the Mystery Writers of America to honor the best in the mystery genre. Bookshare is pleased to offer the following titles awarded the Edgar Award for best novel. #award
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Hopscotch
by Brian GarfieldBored with retirement, an ex-spy embarks on a dangerous game, in this Edgar Award winner from a crime writer who is &“one of the best&” (The New York Times). Miles Kendig is one of the CIA&’s top deep-cover agents, until an injury ruins him for active duty. Rather than take a desk job, he retires. But the tawdry thrills of civilian life—gambling, drinking, sex—offer none of the pleasures of the intelligence game. Even a Russian agent&’s offer to go to work against his old employers seems dull. Without the thrill of unpredictable conflict, Kendig skulks through Paris like the walking dead. To revive himself, he begins writing a tell-all memoir, divulging every secret he accumulated in his long career. Neither CIA nor KGB can afford to have it in print, and so he challenges them both: Until they catch him, a chapter will go to the publisher every week. Kendig&’s life is fun again, with survival on the line.
The Janissary Tree
by Jason GoodwinIstanbul, the year is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the sultan of the Ottoman Empire feels he has no choice but to follow suit. But just as he's poised to announce sweeping political change, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind the killings? Deep in the Abode of Felicity, the most forbidden district of Topkapi Palace, the sultan--ruler of the Black Sea and the White, ruler of Rumelia and Mingrelia, lord of Anatolia and Iona, Romania and Macedonia, Protector of the Holy Cities, steely rider through the realms of bliss--announces, "Send for Yashim." Leading us through the palace's luxurious seraglios and Istanbul's teeming streets, Yashim pieces together the clues. He is not alone. He depends on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and the Creole-born queen mother. He manages to find sweet salvation in the arms of another man's wife (this is not your everyday eunuch!). And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For four hundred years, they were the empire's elite soldiers. But they grew too powerful, and ten years earlier the sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback? And if they are, how can they be stopped without throwing Istanbal into political chaos? [from inside book flap]
The Stranger Diaries
by Elly Griffiths"This lively whodunit keeps you guessing until the end." —People“Utterly bewitching…As unforgettable as it is original.” —A.J. Finn“Goose-bump spooky, smart, and haunting…I loved this book!” —Louise PennyDeath lies between the lines when the events of a dark story start coming true in this haunting modern gothic mystery, perfect for fans of Magpie Murders and The Lake House. Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare’s colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R. M. Holland’s most famous story, “The Stranger,” left by her body, Clare is horrified to see her life collide with the storylines of her favorite literature. To make matters worse, the police suspect the killer is someone Clare knows. Unsure whom to trust, she turns to her closest confidant, her diary, the only outlet she has for her darkest suspicions and fears about the case. Then one day she notices something odd. Writing that isn't hers, left on the page of an old diary:Hallo Clare. You don’t know me.Clare becomes more certain than ever: “The Stranger” has come to terrifying life. But can the ending be rewritten in time?
The Quiller Memorandum
by Adam HallYou are a secret agent working for the British in Berlin. You are due to go home on leave, but you are being followed-by your own people, or by the enemy. A man meets you in the theater and briefs you on a plot to revive the power of Nazi Germany. You do not believe him, but you remember that one of the suspects mentioned was a senior SS officer you met with in the days when you were working as a spy in Nazi Germany. The next day you make contact with a beautiful girl who may know something. Someone tries to kill both of you... Your name is Quiller. You are the hero of an extraordinary novel which shows how a spy works, how messages are coded and decoded, how contacts are made, how a man reacts under the influence of truth drugs-and which traces the story of a vastly complex, entertaining, convincing, and sinister plot.
Edgar Allen Poe Award Winner.
Catch Me Kill Me
by William H. HallahanThe kidnapping by Soviet U.N. officials of defected Russian poet Boris Kotiikoff sets off a flurry of searches by defensive U.S. government officials, CIA hatchet man Gus Geller, and dogged immigration and naturalization agent Ben Leary
Edgar Allan Poe Award Winner
The Lock Artist
by Steve Hamilton"I was the Miracle Boy, once upon a time. Later on, the Milford Mute. The Golden Boy. The Young Ghost. The Kid. The Boxman. The Lock Artist. That was all me. But you can call me Mike." MARKED BY TRAGEDY, traumatized at the age of eight, Michael, now eighteen, is no ordinary young man. Besides not uttering a single word in ten years, he discovers the one thing he can somehow do better than anyone else. Whether it's a locked door without a key, a padlock with no combination, or even an eight hundred-pound safe . . . he can open them all. It's an unforgivable talent. A talent that will make young Michael a hot commodity with the wrong people and, whether he likes it or not, push him ever closer to a life of crime. Until he finally sees his chance to escape, and with one desperate gamble risks everything to come back home to the only person he ever loved, and to unlock the secret that has kept him silent for so long. Steve Hamilton steps away from his Edgar Award-winning Alex McKnight series to introduce a unique new character, unlike anyone you've ever seen in the world of crime fiction.
Down River
by John HartLies, greed, revenge ... The river holds its secrets close. After being narrowly acquitted of a murder, Adam Chase disappears for 5 years: not a clue, not a trace. Now he's back and more bodies surface...
The Last Child
by John HartFresh off the success of his Edgar Award-winning, "New York Times" bestseller "Down River," Hart returns with the story of a young boy's hunt for his missing sister, and the dark truths he uncovers in his North Carolina hometown.
Before the Fall
by Noah HawleyOn a foggy summer night, eleven people--ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter--depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs--the painter--and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family.
With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members--including a Wall Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot--the mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens. As the passengers' intrigues unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far more sinister at work? Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage.
Amid pulse-quickening suspense, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, human nature, and the inextricable ties that bind us together.
A New York Times Bestseller
Gone
by Mo HayderGone is Mo Hayder at her terrifying best. Each dark and captivating twist reveals a new dimension to this tight-knight plot, burrowing deeper into the chilling and clever world Mo Hayder creates.
Dance Hall of the Dead
by Tony HillermanTwo Native-American boys have vanished into thin air, leaving a pool of blood behind them. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police has no choice but to suspect the very worst, since the blood that stains the parched New Mexican ground once flowed through the veins of one of the missing, a young Zuñi. But his investigation into a terrible crime is being complicated by an important archaeological dig... and a steel hypodermic needle. And the unique laws and sacred religious rites of the Zuñi people are throwing impassable roadblocks in Leaphorn's already twisted path, enabling a craven murderer to elude justice or, worse still, to kill again.
Edgar Allen Poe Award Winner
Beat Not The Bones
by Charlotte JayA young Australian woman comes alone to Marapai on the island of New Guinea to find out why her husband committed suicide. It is hard to believe that drink and debt could have affected David Warwick, a distinguished anthropologist in charge of protecting the natives from exploitation. Stella must penetrate deep into the heart of the jungle to solve the mystery of her husband's death.
Edgar Allan Poe Award Winner
A Cold Red Sunrise
by Stuart KaminskyOne Dead Commissar. At an icebound naval weather station in far Siberia, the young daughter of an exiled dies under suspicious circumstances. The high-ranking Commissar sent to investigate the mystery suffers a similar fate: he is murdered by an icicle thrust into his skull. One Live Cop. Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is dispatched to solve the Commissar's murder, with one caveat: he is not to investigate the girl's death. Even if all the clues tell him that the two cases are linked. One Cold Killer. In a single, fateful day, Rostnikov will hear two confessions, watch someone die, conspire against the government, and nearly meet his own death. All under the watchful eye of the KGB -- and someone much closer and infinitely more terrifying.
Five Decembers
by James KestrelFive Decembers is a gripping thriller, a staggering portrait of war, and a heartbreaking love story, as unforgettable as All the Light We Cannot See."Read this book for its palpitating story, its perfect emotional and physical detailing and, most of all, for its unforgettable conjuring of a steamy quicksilver world that will be new to almost every reader."Pico Iyer December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. Because the trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn't know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor. This extraordinary novel is so much more than just a gripping crime story—it's a story of survival against all odds, of love and loss and the human cost of war. Spanning the entirety of World War II, FIVE DECEMBERS is a beautiful, masterful, powerful novel that will live in your memory forever.
Mr. Mercedes
by Stephen KingIn a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands.In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes. In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the "perk" and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy. Brady Hartsfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady's next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands. Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.
Ordinary Grace
by William Kent KruegerNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2014 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL WINNER OF THE 2014 DILYS AWARD A SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2013 From New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger, a brilliant new novel about a young man, a small town, and murder in the summer of 1961.“That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.” New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder. Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years. Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.
Notes on an Execution
by Danya KukafkaIn the tradition of Long Bright River and The Mars Room, a gripping and atmospheric work of literary suspense that deconstructs the story of a serial killer on death row, told primarily through the eyes of the women in his life—from the bestselling author of Girl in Snow.
Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood.
Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake.
Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.
Room To Swing
by Ed LacyIf you're Toussaint Moore, a private investigator from New York City, and a Negro, framed in your own city for a white man's murder, you are going to find it tricky sledding in a small Ohio town, close to the Kentucky border. But the small town was where Moore felt he had to be, to try to find proof for the police that he was innocent of the killing. Moore's problems had started in New York, when the publicity woman from a television show called You-Detective came to ask him to shadow a man. The idea of the show was that the viewers were given information about a wanted man, and the first viewer to find the man and report him to the police won a reward. In short, it was a combination adventure and give-away show. Ed Lacy has written his most unusual story-a very exciting one, and one which handles with exceptional insight a Negro's experiences in a large northern city and a small, bordering-on-the-South town.
Edgar Allan Poe Award Winner
The Bottoms
by Joe R. LansdaleThe Great Depression, East Texas. The woods are thick, the rivers wild, the weather ripe with tornadoes, and the Crane family, like most families in that neck of the woods, are eking out a thin living. When young Harry Crane discovers a mutilated body bound to a tree with barbed wire in the river bottoms, the underbelly of East Texas is exposed. Whites fear a renegade Negro. Blacks fear a vengeful massacre, or, if the killer is white, that the law will let him slip through its fingers. Harry believes the murderer is the Goat Man, an East Texas monster of legend who lurks beneath the swing bridge on the Sabine River, like the Billy Goat Gruff. Harry and his sister have actually seen the Goat Man, or something much like him, in his nocturnal haunts. As the bodies mount up, an elderly black man is lynched, both blacks and whites are terrorised, and Harry's father - the local law - and grandmother investigate, searching for a killer who may be a lot closer than they think.
Live by Night
by Dennis LehaneA New York Times best-selling author with multiple awards to his name, Lehane sets his latest in Roaring Twenties Boston, Florida, and Cuba; its no surprise that the promotion brings up HBOs Boardwalk Empire. Youngest son of an upright Boston police sergeant, Joe Coughlin opts for the dark side, working his way to the top of organized crime but also setting himself up, inevitably, for betrayal and revenge.
Labrava
by Elmore LeonardJoe LaBrava first fell in love with femme fatale movie queen Jean Shaw in a darkened theater when he was twelve. Now he's finally meeting his dream woman in the flesh, albeit in a rundown Miami crisis center. Cleaned up and sober, though, she still makes LaBrava's heart race. And now that Jean's being terrorized by redneck thug Richard Nobles and his slimy Marielito partner Cundo Rey, Joe has a golden opportunity to play the hero. Or he could wind up the patsy--or dead--in the final reel.
Edgar Allen Poe Award Winner
Bluebird, Bluebird
by Attica LockeA powerful thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire.
When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well.
Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.
When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment.
Darren must solve the crimes--and save himself in the process--before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt.
A rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is an exhilarating, timely novel about the collision of race and justice in America.
2018 Edgar Award Winner for Best Novel
Maigret in Exile, The Rheingold Route, and The Murder of Miranda
by Georges Simenon and Margaret Millar and Arthur MalingMaigret in Exile by Georges Simenon
Inspector Jules Maigret has fallen into disfavor with his Paris superiors and has been shunted to a district supervisor's job on the northern French coast. Depressed and bored, Maigret regains a sense of purpose when a corpse is discovered in the house of a retired judge.
The Rheingold Route by Arthur Maling
An ex-U.S. Treasury agent is hired to smuggle money from England to Switzerland by a double crossing lawyer.
The Rheingold Route won the Edgar Allan Poe Award.
Murder of Miranda by Margaret Millar
Where is Miranda Shaw? She had just been widowed and her lawyer needs her signature for probate, but her mansion is empty and two addled teenagers, Cordelia and Juliet, are wearing her jewellery. Has she eloped? With Grady, the lifeguard at her club, who is also missing? Is she dodging her lawyer? Or has she been murdered ... ?
Bootlegger's Daughter
by Margaret MaronUnconventional, still unwed (at the ripe old age of 34) North Carolina attorney Deborah Knott has done the unthinkable: tossed her hat into the heated race for district judge of old boy-ruled Colleton County. The only female candidate, she's busy defending indigent clients and reeling in voters. Then suddenly, the young daughter of Janie Whitehead begs her to help solve Janie's senseless, never-solved, eighteen-year-old murder. Deborah takes on the case: following twisted, typically Southern bloodlines, turning up dangerous, decades-old secrets, and inspiring someone to go on an all-out campaign to derail her future--political and otherwise. But it will take more than sleazy smear tactics to scare this determined steel magnolia off the scent of down-home deceit...even in a town where a cool slug of moonshine made by Deborah's father can go down just as smoothly as a cold case of triple murder.
Edgar Allen Poe Award Winner.