2009 Edgar Award Winners Are Here!

Blue Heaven

Author: Box, C.J.
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 296pp.
Pub. Date: January 2008
Publisher: St. Martin’s Minotaur

Winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Novel

A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother go on the run in the woods of northern Idaho, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder — four men who know exactly who the children are, and where their desperate mother is waiting patiently by the phone for news of her children’s fate.

In a ranching community increasingly populated by L.A. transplants living in gaudy McMansions, the kids soon find they don’t know whom they can trust among the hundreds of retired Southern California cops who’ve given the area its nickname: “Blue Heaven.”

The Foreigner

Author: Lin, Francie
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 320pp.
Pub. Date: May 2008
Publisher: Picador

Winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best First Novel By An American Author

Set against the Taiwanese criminal underworld, The Foreigner is Francie Lin’s audacious debut novel. A noirish tale about family, fraternity, conscience, and the curious gulf between a man’s culture and his deepest self.

Emerson Chang is a mild mannered bachelor on the cusp of forty, a financial analyst in a neatly pressed suit, a child of Taiwanese immigrants who doesn’t speak a word of Chinese, and, well, a virgin. His only real family is his mother, whose subtle manipulations have kept him close — all in the name of preserving an obscure idea of family and culture.

But when his mother suddenly dies, Emerson sets out for Taipei to scatter her ashes, and to convey a surprising inheritance to his younger brother, Little P. Now enmeshed in the Taiwanese criminal underworld, Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle’s karaoke bar, and he conceals a secret — a crime that has not only severed him from his family, but may have annihilated his conscience. Hoping to appease both the living and the dead, Emerson isn’t about to give up the inheritance until he uncovers Little P’s past, and saves what is left of his family.

The Foreigner is a darkly comic tale of crime and contrition, and a riveting story about what it means to be a foreigner — even in one’s own family.

China Lake

Author: Gardiner, Meg
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 416pp.
Pub. Date: June 2008
Publisher: Penguin Group

Winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original

Evan Delaney learns that not only has her ex-sister-in-law joined a religious cult, but the unstable young mother plans to regain custody of her son and disappear with him into the fold of the fanatical group. But when murder raises the stakes, Evan is dragged even deeper into the nightmare.

Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories

Author: Poe, Harry Lee
Format: Hardcover
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 160pp.
Pub. Date: 2008
Publisher: Sterling Publishing/Metro Books

Winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical

Edgar Allan Poe has become so strongly associated with the dark nature of his work that, in some minds, it’s as if he’s the central character — rather than the author — of the many horror and mystery tales that bear his name. And yet, well over a century after his death, his story remains as fascinating as those he wove, largely because the shadow cast by Poe was not one of his own design.

In Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories, Poe’s biography comes to life through images and fascinating memorabilia, including:

• A portion of his handwritten manuscript for the poem “A Dream Within a Dream.”
• Contentious letters he exchanged with his foster father, John Allan.
• The bon indicating his intention to marry his cousin Virginia.
• His controversial obituary as it appeared in the New York Daily Tribune.

After touring his visual, interactive biography, fans of Poe will read “The Raven” and countless other classics with new appreciation.

American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century

Author: Blum, Howard
Format: Hardcover
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 352pp.
Pub. Date: September 2008
Publisher: Random House/Crown Publishers

Winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime

It was an explosion that reverberated across the country — and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.

In American Lightning, acclaimed author Howard Blum masterfully evokes the incredible circumstances that led to the original “crime of the century” — and an aftermath more dramatic than even the crime itself.

With smoke still wafting up from the charred ruins, the city’s mayor reacts with undisguised excitement when he learns of the arrival, only that morning, of America’s greatest detective, William J. Burns, a former Secret Service man who has been likened to Sherlock Holmes. Surely Burns, already world famous for cracking unsolvable crimes and for his elaborate disguises, can run the perpetrators to ground.

Through the work of many months, snowbound stakeouts, and brilliant forensic sleuthing, the great investigator finally identifies the men he believes are responsible for so much destruction. Stunningly, Burns accuses the men — labor activists with an apparent grudge against the Los Angeles Times’s fiercely anti-union owner — of not just one heinous deed but of being part of a terror wave involving hundreds of bombings.

While preparation is laid for America’s highest profile trial ever — and the forces of labor and capital wage hand-to-hand combat in the streets — two other notable figures are swept into the drama: industry-shaping filmmaker D.W. Griffith, who perceives in these events the possibility of great art and who will go on to alchemize his observations into the landmark film The Birth of a Nation; and crusading lawyer Clarence Darrow, committed to lend his eloquence to the defendants, though he will be driven to thoughts of suicide before events have fully played out.

“Skinhead Central”

Author: Parker, T. Jefferson
Format: Print Anthology
Type: Short Story
Pub. Date: April 2008
Published in: The Blue Religion: New Stories about Cops, Criminals, and the Chase

Winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Short Story

“Skinhead Central” is a short story by T. Jefferson Parker published in the anthology called Mystery Writers of America Presents — The Blue Religion: New Stories about Cops, Criminals, and the Chase edited by Michael Connelly.

Paper Towns

Author: Green, John
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 320pp.
Pub. Date: September 2008
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group/Dutton Children’s Books

Winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night-dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge — he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.

The Postcard

Author: Abbott, Tony
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 368pp.
Pub. Date: April 2008
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile

“So how smart are you?” said a man’s voice abruptly. And loudly. “Because now . . . it’s starting.”

A creepy phone call. An old, yellowed postcard. A bizarre magazine story. And a strange group of funeral-goers who seem to follow their every move — all contain clues that will send Jason and Dia on an adventure to uncover extraordinary family secrets.

Award-winning author Tony Abbott weaves an intriguing and entertaining mystery of adventure, friendship and family.

“Buckner’s Error”

Author: Guglielmelli, Joseph
Format: Print Anthology
Type: Short Story
Pub. Date: June 2008
Published in: Queens Noir

Winner of the 2009 Robert L. Fish Memorial Award

“Buckner’s Error” is a short story by Joseph Guglielmelli published in the anthology called Queens Noir edited by Robert Knightly.

The Killer’s Wife: A Novel

Author: Floyd, Bill
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 304pp.
Pub. Date: March 2008
Publisher: St. Martin’s/Minotaur

Winner of the 2009 Mary Higgins Clark Award

Six years after her courageous testimony helped put her husband on death row for a string of gruesome murders, Leigh Wren has almost succeeded in putting her past to rest. She has moved from the West Coast to North Carolina with her young son, adopting a new name and a new life. But the world that she has created for herself is shattered when the father of one of her ex-husband’s victims begins stalking her, then confronts her late one night. In the days that follow, he exposes Leigh, in newspapers and on television, to a startled North Carolina community. And just as her marriage to Randall Mosley, a man who became known to the world as a deviant serial killer, is brought back to light, a more deadly game of cat and mouse ensues.

A new killer has emerged, one whose methods are frighteningly similar to those used by Mosley, who is awaiting execution thousands of miles away. Leigh and her son appear to be in the assailant’s scope, and it becomes clear that he is more than a copycat killer — his targets are all tied to Leigh’s former life. With the clock ticking down and the victims of a new killer mounting, Leigh is forced to probe the darkest corridors of her past to protect her life and her son’s. She must also confront her own feelings of responsibility: Leigh has always professed her ignorance, but how complicit was she in her husband’s horrific murder spree, as it was taking place?

From a major new voice in suspense, The Killer’s Wife is a story driven by psychological insight and harrowing revelations, asking how well you can ever really know the person sleeping beside you.