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Edgar Awards
The Edgar Awards (named after Edgar Allan Poe) are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America. They honor the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, film, TV, and theater. Click here to visit the website.
Edgar Awards
Best Novel
Bluebird, Bluebird by Call Number: MYSTERY LOCKEWhen 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.
Finalists
- The Dime by Kathleen Kent
- Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr
- A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
- The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti
Best First Novel
She Rides Shotgun by Call Number: FICTION HARPERWhen enemies from his time in prison put a bounty on his head and target his family, Nate McClusky takes his eleven-year-old daughter Polly from in front of her school into a world of robbery, violence, and the constant threat of capture, or death.
Finalists
- Dark Chapter by Winnie M. Li
- Lola by Melissa Scrivner Love
- Tornado Weather by Deborah E. Kennedy
- Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
Best Paperback Original
The Unseeing by Call Number: EBOOKA thrilling debut based based on the real case of Sarah Gale, a seamstress and mother sentenced to hang for her alleged role in a shocking murder, bringing together the accused with an idealistic young lawyer assigned to investigate whether she is a guilty murderer or an unfortunate victim.
Finalists
- In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen
- Ragged Lake by Ron Corbett
- Black Fall by Andrew Mayne
- Penance by Kanae Minato
- The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong
Best Fact Crime
Killers of the Flower Moon by Call Number: 976.6004 GRANNPresents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
Finalists
- The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and People's Temple by Jeff Guinn
- American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse
- The Man From the Train: The Solving of a Century Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill & Rachel McCarthy James
- Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation by Brad Ricca
Best Critical/Biographical
Chester B. Himes by In his Chester B. Himes (1909–1984), Lawrence P. Jackson depicts the improbable life of the controversial writer whose novels confront sexuality, racism, and social injustice. In absorbing detail, Jackson explores Chester Himes’s middle-class origins, eight years in prison, painful odyssey as a black World War II–era artist, and escape to Europe, where Himes became internationally famous for his Harlem detective series.
Finalists
- From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon by Mattias Bostrom
- Manderley Forever: A Biography of Daphne du Maurier by Tatiana de Rosnay
- Murder in the Closet: Essays on Queer Clues in Crime Fiction Before Stonewall by Curtis Evans
- Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes by Michael Sims
Best Juvenile
Vanished! by After helping the FBI solve an art theft at the National Gallery and uncovering a DC spy ring, Florian’s finding life at Alice Deal Middle School a little boring. But that’s all about to change! His FBI handler, Marcus, has a job for him! Is it a bank robbery? Counterfeit ring? International espionage? Actually it’s middle school pranks…Sounds pretty ordinary except that the pranks are happening at a prestigious private school attended by the President’s daughter who may—or may not—be involved. So Florian and Margaret are going undercover to see if they can use their TOAST skills to figure out what’s going on before the media gets hold of the story.
Finalists
Best Young Adult
Long Way Down by Call Number: YA FICTION REYNOLDSAs Will, fifteen, sets out to avenge his brother Shawn's fatal shooting, seven ghosts who knew Shawn board the elevator and reveal truths Will needs to know.
Finalists
Mary Higgins Clark Award
The Widow's House by Call Number: EBOOKWhen Jess and Clare Martin move from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to their former college town in the Hudson River valley, they are hoping for rejuvenation—of their marriage, their savings, and Jess's writing career. But their new life isn't all quaint town libraries and fragrant apple orchards. There is a haunting pall that hangs over Riven House like a funeral veil. Something is just not right. Soon, Clare begins to hear babies crying at night, and sees strange figures in fog at the edge of their property. Diving into the history of the area, she realizes that Riven House has a dark and anguished past. And whatever this thing is—this menacing force that destroys the inhabitants of the estate—it seems to be after Clare next…
Finalists
- The Vineyard Victims by Ellen Crosby
- You'll Never Know, Dear by Hallie Ephron
- Uncorking a Lie by Nadine Nettman
- The Day I Died by Lori-Rader Day
Best Novel
Before the Fall by Call Number: FICTION 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.
Finalists
Best First Novel
Under the Harrow by When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel's familiar house, what she finds is entirely different: her sister has been the victim of a brutal murder. Stunned and adrift, Nora finds she can't return to her former life. An unsolved assault in the past has shaken her faith in the police, and she can't trust them to find her sister's killer. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As Nora's fear turns to obsession, she becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers.
Finalists
- Dodgers - Bill Beverly
- IQ - Joe Ide
- The Drifter - Nicholas Petrie
- Dancing With the Tiger - Lili Wright
- The Lost Girls - Heather Young
Best Paperback Original
Rain Dogs by When journalist Lily Bigelow is found dead in the courtyard of Carrickfergus castle, it looks like a suicide. Yet there are just a few things that bother Sean Duffy enough to keep the case file open. Which is how he finds out that she was working on a devastating investigation of corruption and abuse at the highest levels of power in the UK and beyond.
Finalists
- Shot in Detroit - Patricia Abbott
- Come Twilight - Tyler Dilts
- The 7th Canon - Robert Dugoni
- A Brilliant Death - Robin Yocum
- Heart of Stone - James W. Ziskin
Best Fact Crime
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Early in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his twelve-year-old brother Nattie set out from their small, East London home to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbours, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next ten days Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate from the building. When the police were finally called to investigate, the discovery they made sent the press into a frenzy of horror and alarm, and Robert and Nattie were swept up in a criminal trial that echoed the outrageous plots of the 'penny dreadful' novels that Robert loved to read.
Finalists
- The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan - Laurence Leamer
- Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder: The Unsolved Murder that Shocked Victorian England - Paul Thomas Murphy
- While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man's Descent into Madness - Eli Sanders
- Morgue: A Life in Death - Dr. Vincent diMaio & Ron Franscell
Best Critical/Biographical
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Still known to millions primarily as the author of the The Lottery, Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) has been curiously absent from the mainstream American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense and psychological horror, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America more deeply than anyone. Now, biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author of such classics as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Finalists
- Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life - Peter Ackyroyd
- Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime: Works and Authors of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden since 1957 - Mitzi M. Brunsdale
- Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula - David J. Skal
Best Juvenile
OCDaniel by Call Number: TEEN KINGA thirteen-year-old boy's life revolves around hiding his obsessive compulsive disorder until a girl at school, who is unkindly nicknamed Psycho Sara, notices him for the first time and he gets a mysterious note that changes everything.
Finalists
- Summerlost - Ally Condie
- The Bad Kid - Sarah Lariviere
- Some Kind of Happiness - Clare Legrand
- Framed! - James Ponti
- Things Too Huge to Fix By Saying Sorry - Susan Vaught
Best Young Adult
Girl in the Blue Coat by Call Number: TEEN HESSEIn 1943 Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, teenage Hanneke--a 'finder' of black market goods--is tasked with finding a Jewish girl a customer had been hiding, who has seemingly vanished into thin air, and is pulled into a web of resistance activities and secrets as she attempts to solve the mystery and save the missing girl.
Finalists
Mary Higgins Clark Award
The Shattered Tree by World War I battlefield nurse Bess Crawford goes to dangerous lengths to investigate a wounded soldier’s background—and uncover his true loyalties—in this thrilling and atmospheric entry in the bestselling series.
Finalists
- The Other Sister - Dianne Dixon
- Quiet Neighbors - Catriona McPherson
- Say No More - Hank Phillippi Ryan
- Blue Moon - Wendy Corsi Staub
Best Novel
Let Me Die in His Footsteps by Call Number: MYSTERY ROYEdgar Award–winner Lori Roy wrests from a Southern town the secrets of two families touched by an evil that has passed between generations.
Finalists
- The Strangler Vine - M.J. Carter
- The Lady From Zagreb - Philip Kerr
- Life or Death - Michael Robotham
- Canary - Duane Swierczynski
- Night Life - David C. Taylor
Best First Novel
The Sympathizer by Call Number: FICTION NGUYENWith the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow,The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,” a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam.The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.
Finalists
- Unbecoming - Rebecca Schern
- Past Crimes - Glen Erik Hamilton
- Where All Light Tends to Go - David Joy
- Luckiest Girl Alive - Jessica Knoll
Best Paperback Original
The Long and Faraway Gone by In the summer of 1986, two tragedies rocked Oklahoma City. Six movie-theater employees were killed in an armed robbery, while one inexplicably survived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from the annual State Fair. Neither crime was ever solved. 25 years later, the reverberations of those unsolved cases quietly echo through survivors’ lives. A private investigator in Vegas, Wyatt’s latest inquiry takes him back to a past he’s tried to escape—and drags him deeper into the harrowing mystery of the movie house robbery that left six of his friends dead.
Finalists
- Woman With a Blue Pencil - Gordon McAlpine
- Gun Street Girl - Adrian McKinty
- The Daughter - Jane Shemilt
- The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter - Malcom McKay
- What She Knew - Gillian Macmillan
Best Fact Crime
Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search for My Twelve-Year-Old Bully by Equal parts investigative memoir, crime procedural, and revenge thriller, Whipping Boy chronicles the author’s real-life search for the childhood nemesis who has haunted his life for over forty years
Finalists
- Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide - Eric Bogosian
- Where the Bodies Were Buried: Whitey Bulger and the World That Made Him - T.J. English
- Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime - Val McDermid
- American Pain: How a Young Felon and his Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic - John Temple
Best Critical/Biographical
The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story by This is the first book about the Detection Club, the world’s most famous and most mysterious social network of crime writers. Drawing on years of in-depth research, it reveals the astonishing story of how members such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers reinvented detective fiction.
Finalists
- The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue - Frederick Forsyth
- Meanwhile There are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald - Suzanne Mars & Tom Nolan
- Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica - Matthew Parker
- The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett - Nathan Ward
Best Juvenile
Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy by Footer Davis is on the case when two kids go missing after a fire in this humorously honest novel that is full of Southern style.
Finalists
- Catch You Later, Traitor - Avi
- If You Find This - Matthew Baker
- Curiosity House - The Shrunken Head - Lauren Oliver & H.C. Chester
- Blackthorn Key - Kevin Sands
Best Young Adult
A Madness So Discreet by Call Number: YA FICTION MCGINNISNear the turn of the nineteenth century, Dr. Thornhollow helps teenaged Grace Mae escape from the Boston asylum where she was sent after becoming pregnant by rape, and takes her to Ohio where they put her intelligence and remarkable memory to use in trying to catch murderers.
Finalists
- Endangered - Lamar Giles
- The Sin Eater's Daughter - Melinda Salisbury
- The Walls Around Us - Nova Ren Suma
- Ask the Dark - Henry Turner
Mary Higgins Clark Award
Little Pretty Things by Juliet Townsend is used to losing. Back in high school, she lost every track team race to her best friend, Madeleine Bell. Ten years later, she's still running behind, stuck in a dead-end job cleaning rooms at the Mid-Night Inn, a one-star motel that attracts only the cheap or the desperate. But what life won't provide, Juliet takes. Then one night, Maddy checks in. Well-dressed, flashing a huge diamond ring, and as beautiful as ever, Maddy has it all. By the next morning, though, Juliet is no longer jealous of Maddy--she's the chief suspect in her murder. To protect herself, Juliet investigates the circumstances of her friend's death. But what she learns about Maddy's life might cost Juliet everything she didn't realize she had.
Finalists
- A Woman Unknown - Francis Brody
- The Masque of a Murderer - Susanna Calkins
- Night Night, Sleep Tight - Hallie Ephron
- The Child Garden - Catriona McPherson
- Heart of Stone - James W. Ziskin
Best Novel
Mr. Mercedes by 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.
Finalists
- This Dark Road to Mercy - Wiley Cash
- Wolf - Mo Hayder
- The Final Silence - Stuart Neville
- Saints of the Shadow Bible - Ian Rankin
- Cop Town - Karin Slaughter
Best First Novel
Dry Bones in the Valley by Call Number: MYSTERY BOUMANThe lone policeman in a small township on the sparse northern border [of Pennsylvania], Henry Farrell expected to spend his mornings hunting and fishing, his evenings playing old-time music. Instead, he has watched the steady encroachment of gas drilling bring new wealth and erode neighborly trust. The drug trade is pushing heroin into the territory. There are outlaws cooking meth in the woods, guys Henry grew up with. When a stranger turns up dead, Henrys search for the killer will open old wounds, dredge up ancient crimes, and exact a deadly price.
Finalists
- Invisible City - Julia Dahl
- The Life We Bury - Allen Eskens
- Bad Country - C.B. McKenzie
- Shovel Ready - Adam Sternbergh
- Murder at the Brightwell - Ashley Weaver
Best Paperback Original
The Secret History of Las Vegas by Before he can retire, Las Vegas detective Salazar is determined to solve a recent spate of murders. When he encounters a pair of conjoined twins with a container of blood near their car, he’s sure he has apprehended the killers, and enlists the help of Dr. Sunil Singh, a South African transplant who specializes in the study of psychopaths. As Sunil tries to crack the twins, the implications of his research grow darker. Haunted by his betrayal of loved ones back home during apartheid, he seeks solace in the love of Asia, a prostitute with hopes of escaping that life. But Sunil’s own troubled past is fast on his heels in the form of a would-be assassin.
Finalists
- Stay With Me - Alison Gaylin
- The Barkeep - William Lashner
- The Day She Died - Catriona McPherson
- The Gone Dead Train - Lisa Turner
- World of Trouble - Ben H. Winters
Best Fact Crime
Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by Call Number: 364.1523 MANNHollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, and the diverse cast that surrounded him before he was murdered in 1922--including three beautiful, ambitious actresses, the ruthless founder of Paramount locked in a struggle for control of the film industry, a grasping stage mother, a devoted valet, and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet.
Finalists
- Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime that Changed America - Kevin Cook
- Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art - Carl Hoffman
- The Other Side: A Memoir - Lacy M. Johnson
- The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder That Shook the Nation - Harold Schechter
Best Critical/Biographical
Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe was an oddity: his life, literature, and legacy are all, well, odd. In Poe-Land, J. W. Ocker explores the physical aspects of Poe s legacy across the East Coast and beyond, touring Poe s homes, examining artifacts from his life locks of his hair, pieces of his coffin, original manuscripts, his boyhood bed and visiting the many memorials dedicated to him.
Finalists
- The Figure of the Detective: A Literary History and Analysis - Charles Brownson
- James Ellroy: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction - Jim Mancall
- Kiss the Blood Off My Hands: Classic Film Noir - Robert MIklitsch
- Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law: Exploring the Legal Dimensions of Fiction and Film - Francis M. Nevins
Best Juvenile
Greenglass House by Call Number: J MILFORDAt Greenglass House, a smuggler's inn, twelve-year-old Milo, the innkeepers' adopted son, plans to spend his winter holidays relaxing but soon guests are arriving with strange stories about the house sending Milo and Meddy, the cook's daughter, on an adventure.
Finalists
Best Young Adult
The Art of Secrets by Call Number: TEEN KLISEWhen some quirky art donated to a school fundraising effort to help a Pakistani American family, victims of a possible hate crime, is revealed to be an unknown work by a famous outsider artist, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, adults and teenagers alike debate who should get the money and begin to question each other's motivations.
Finalists
- Fake ID - Lamar Giles
- The Prince of Venice Beach - Blake Nelson
- The Doubt Factory - Paolo Bacigalupi
- Nearly Gone - Elle Cosimano
Mary Higgins Clark Award
The Stranger You Know by He meets women. He gains their trust. He kills them. That's all London police detective Maeve Kerrigan knows about the man she is hunting. Three women have been strangled in their homes, and it appears to be the work of the same sadistic killer. With no sign of break-ins, every indication shows that the women let their attacker in willingly. The victims' neighbors and friends don't seem to remember anything unusual or suspicious, and Maeve is almost at a loss about how to move forward with the investigation. Then the evidence starts to point to a shocking suspect: DCI Josh Derwent, Maeve's partner on the police force. Maeve refuses to believe he could be involved, but how well does she really know him?
Finalists
- A Dark and Twisted Tide - Sharon Bolton
- Invisible City - Julia Dahl
- Summer of the Dead - Julia Keller
- The Black Hour - Lori Rader-Day
- The Snow Angel - Doug Allyn
Best Novel
Ordinary Grace by Call Number: MYSTERY KRUEGERLooking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.
Finalists
- How the Light Gets In - Louise Penny
- Sandrine's Case - Thomas H. Cook
- Standing in Another Man's Grave - Ian Rankin
- The Humans - Matt Haig
- Until She Comes Home - Lori Roy
Best First Novel
Red Sparrow by Call Number: MYSTERY MATTHEWSDrafted against her will to serve the regime of Vladimir Putin as an intelligence seductress, Dominika Egorova engages in a charged effort of deception and tradecraft with first-tour CIA officer Nathaniel Nash before a forbidden attraction threatens their careers.
Finalists
- Ghostman - Roger Hobbs
- Rage Against the Dying - Becky Masterman
- Reconstructing Amelia - Kimberly McCreight
- The Resurrectionist - Matthew Guinn
Best Paperback Original
The Wicked Girls by Call Number: MYSTERY MARWOODOn a fateful summer morning in 1986, two eleven-year-old girls meet for the first time. By the end of the day, they will both be charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, journalist Kirsty Lindsay is reporting on a series of sickening attacks on young female tourists in a seaside vacation town when her investigation leads her to interview carnival cleaner Amber Gordon. For Kirsty and Amber, it's the first time they've seen each other since that dark day so many years ago. Now with new, vastly different lives--and unknowing families to protect--will they really be able to keep their wicked secret hidden?
Finalists
- Almost Criminal - E.R. Brown
- Brilliance - Marcus Sakey
- Joe Victim - Paul Cleave
- Joyland - Stephen King
- The Guilty One - Lisa Ballantyne
Best Fact Crime
The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War by Call Number: 973.7092 STASHOWETwo-time Edgar award-winning author Daniel Stashower uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War.
Finalists
- Duel with the Devil: The True Story of how Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery - Paul Collins
- Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal - Michael D'Antonio
- The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder - Charles Graeber
- The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and the Medics Behind Nazi Lines - Cate Lineberry
Best Critical/Biographical
America Is Elsewhere: The Noir Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture by America is Elsewhere provides a rigorous and creative reconsideration of hard-boiled crime fiction and the film noir tradition across the second half of the American 20th century.
Finalists
- Ian Fleming - Andrew Lycett
- Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories - Bill Alder
- Middlebrow Feminism in Classic British Detective Fiction - Melissa Schaub
- Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing - Justin Gifford
Best Juvenile
One Came Home by Call Number: J TIMBERLAIn 1871 Wisconsin, thirteen-year-old Georgia sets out to find her sister Agatha, presumed dead when remains are found wearing the dress she was last seen in, and before the end of the year gains fame as a sharpshooter and foiler of counterfeiters.
Finalists
- Lockwood and Co.: The Screaming Staircase - Jonathan Stroud
- Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking - Erin Dionne
- P.K. Pinkerton and the Petrified Man - Caroline Lawrence
- Strike Three, You're Dead - Josh Berk
Best Young Adult
Ketchup Clouds by Call Number: YA FICTION PITCHERZoe, a teenager in Bath, England, writes letters to a death-row inmate in Texas, hoping to find comfort in sharing her guilty secret over the death of a friend with someone who can never tell her family.
Finalists
Mary Higgins Clark Award
Cover of Snow by Waking up one wintry morning in her old farmhouse nestled in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Nora Hamilton finds that her husband, Brendan, has committed suicide. But Brendan left no note and gave no indication that he was contemplating taking his own life. Why would a rock-solid police officer with unwavering affection for his wife, job, and quaint hometown suddenly choose to end it all? Having spent a lifetime avoiding hard truths, Nora must now start facing them.
Finalists
- Fear of Beauty - Susan Froetschel
- The Money Kill - Katia Lief
- The Sixth Station - Linda Stasi
- There Was an Old Woman - Hallie Ephron