Today we begin a special series of blog posts presenting the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Award Nominations.
The Edgar Awards are given out at the Annual Edgar Awards Banquet. This year is the 65th Annual Edgar Awards Banquet which will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City on Thursday April 28, 2011.
Best Novel
Remember, click the mouse on the book covers to order one of these books from the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library.
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CaughtAuthor: Coben, Harlan |
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Nominated for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel The eBook and audio book is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection. From the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense comes a fast-paced, emotion-packed novel about guilt, grief, and our capacity to forgive. 17-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst. Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate — and nationally televised — sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined. In a novel that challenges as much as it thrills, filled with the astonishing tension and unseen suburban machinations that have become Coben’s trademark, Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can’t trust her own instincts about this story — or the motives of the people around her. |
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Crooked Letter, Crooked LetterAuthor: Franklin, Tom |
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Nominated for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel The eBook and audio book is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection. Tom Franklin’s extraordinary talent has been hailed by the leading lights of contemporary literature — Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Lee Smith, and Dennis Lehane. Reviewers have called his fiction “ingenious” (USA Today) and “compulsively readable” (Memphis Commercial Appeal). His narrative power and flair for characterization have been compared to the likes of Harper Lee, Flannery O’Connor, Elmore Leonard, and Cormac McCarthy. Now the Edgar Award-winning author returns with his most accomplished and resonant novel so far — an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32″ Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county — and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town. More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they’ve buried and ignored for decades. |
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Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad Series #3)Author: French, Tana |
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Nominated for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel The eBook book is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection. The hotly anticipated third novel of the Dublin murder squad from the New York Times bestselling author. Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin’s inner city, and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives. But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him — probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again. Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie’s suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not. Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly — and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done. |
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The Queen of Patpong (Poke Rafferty Series #4)Author: Hallinan, Timothy |
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Nominated for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel For American travel writer Poke Rafferty, life finally seems to hold some semblance of stability. He and his longtime love, Rose, have gone through with their much-deferred marriage ceremony, their adopted daughter, Miaow, a former street child, has become a loving — if sometimes difficult — part of the family, and the three of them live in relative comfort thanks to Rose’s housekeeping business and Rafferty’s writing. Then a nightmare figure from Rose’s time as a Patpong dancer barges into their world, shattering the peace they’ve worked so hard to obtain. His appearance threatens everything they cherish: their love, their home . . . their very lives. As a foreigner who’s seen some of the worst Bangkok has to offer and survived confrontations with Thailand’s most powerful and dangerous elements, Rafferty feels equal to most of the challenges Bangkok can throw at him. But now his only hope is to discover the whole truth of Rose’s past — a journey down the dark and twisting road that turned a shy, awkward village teenager into the queen of Asia’s most lurid red-light street: Patpong Road. And just when Rafferty thought life was looking good, reality comes crashing in as he learns that the secrets from Rose’s former life are almost impossible to accept — and even harder to survive. The Queen of Patpong is a terrifying, heart-breaking, electrifying story of peril, love, and, ultimately, redemption in modern-day Thailand — and the most ambitious, affecting novel yet from thriller master Timothy Hallinan. |
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The Lock ArtistAuthor: Hamilton, Steve |
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Nominated for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel The audio book is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection. 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. |
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I’d Know You AnywhereAuthor: Lippman, Laura |
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Nominated for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel The eBook is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection. The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author returns with a new stand-alone novel — a powerful and utterly riveting tale that skillfully moves between past and present to explore the lasting effects of crime on a victim’s life . . . . I’d Know You Anywhere. Eliza Benedict cherishes her peaceful, ordinary suburban life with her successful husband and children, thirteen-year-old Iso and eight-year-old Albie. But her tranquility is shattered when she receives a letter from the last person she ever expects — or wants — to hear from: Walter Bowman. There was your photo, in a magazine. Of course, you are older now. Still, I’d know you anywhere. In the summer of 1985, when she was fifteen, Eliza was kidnapped by Walter and held hostage for almost six weeks. He had killed at least one girl and Eliza always suspected he had other victims as well. Now on death row in Virginia for the rape and murder of his final victim, Walter seems to be making a heartfelt act of contrition as his execution nears. Though Eliza wants nothing to do with him, she’s never forgotten that Walter was most unpredictable when ignored. Desperate to shelter her children from this undisclosed trauma in her past, she cautiously makes contact with Walter. She’s always wondered why Walter let her live, and perhaps now he’ll tell her — and share the truth about his other victims. Yet as Walter presses her for more and deeper contact, it becomes clear that he is after something greater than forgiveness. He wants Eliza to remember what really happened that long-ago summer. He wants her to save his life. And Eliza, who has worked hard for her comfortable, cocooned life, will do anything to protect it — even if it means finally facing the events of that horrifying summer and the terrible truth she’s kept buried inside. An edgy, utterly gripping tale of psychological manipulation that will leave readers racing to the final page, I’d Know You Anywhere is a virtuoso performance from acclaimed, award-winning author Laura Lippman that is sure to be her biggest hit yet. |
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The 2011 Edgar Award Nominations Series:
Part 1 — Best Novel
Part 2 — Best First Novel By An American Author
Part 3 — Best Paperback Original
Part 4 — Best Fact Crime
Part 5 — Best Short Story
Part 6 — Best Critical/Biographical
Part 7 — Best Juvenile
Part 8 — Best Young Adult
Part 9 — Misc. Edgars
Part 10 — The Simon and Schuster – Mary Higgins Clark Award
Part 11 — The 2011 Edgar Award Winners
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