by Greg "The Undead Rat" on March 12, 2010
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This is the sixth installment of the 2010 Edgar Award Nominations.
Best Juvenile
Click the mouse on the book covers to order these books from the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library.
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The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity (The Brixton Brothers Series #1)
Author: Barnett, Mac
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 192pp.
Pub. Date: October 2009
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile
Audio book is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection.
Steve Brixton always wanted to be a detective . . .
until he found out he already WAS one.
It all starts here: The thrilling story of Steve Bixton’s first case.
Our hero has a national treasure to recover, a criminal mastermind to unmask, and a social studies report due Monday — all while on the run from cops, thugs, and secret-agent librarians.
Since when can librarians rappel from helicopters? Does Steve have any brothers or sisters? If not, then why is this series called The Brixton Brothers? You will solve all these mysteries and many more by the time you finish The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity.
We think you’ll agree: Steve Brixton’s first adventure is his best adventure yet.
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The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour
Author: Beil, Michael D.
Format: Hardcover
Type: Story
Page Count: 304pp.
Pub. Date: April 2009
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books/Alfred A. Knopf
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile
eBook and Audio book is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection.
It all began with The Scream.
And ended with . . . well, if we told you that, it wouldn’t be a mystery!
But in between The Scream and The Very Surprising Ending, three friends find themselves on a scavenger hunt set up for a girl they never met, in search of a legendary ring reputed to grant wishes. Are these sleuths in school uniforms modern-day equivalents of Nancy, Harriet, or Scooby?
Not really, they’re just three nice girls who decide to help out a weird lady, and end up hiding under tables, tackling word puzzles and geometry equations, and searching rather moldy storage rooms for “the stuff that dreams are made of” (that’s from an old detective movie). Oh, and there’s A Boy, who complicates things. As boys often do.
Intrigued? The Red Blazer Girls offers a fun, twisty adventure for those who love mystery, math (c’mon, admit it!), and a modest measure of mayhem.
Michael Beil, a New York City high school English teacher, makes his literary debut with this fun and brainy mystery.
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Closed for the Season: A Mystery Story
Author: Hahn, Mary Downing
Format: Hardcover
Type: Story
Page Count: 192pp.
Pub. Date: June 2009
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Books
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile
A contemporary thriller by the bestselling author of The Old Willis Place.
Two 13-year-old boys, Arthur and Logan, set out to solve the mystery of a murder that took place some years ago in the old house Logan’s family has just moved into. The boys’ quest takes them to the highest and lowest levels of society in their small Maryland town, and eventually to a derelict amusement park that is supposedly closed for the season.
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Creepy Crawly Crime (The Joey Fly Private Eye Series #1)
Author: Reynolds, Aaron
Artist: Neil Numberman
Format: Hardcover
Type: Graphic Novel
Page Count: 96pp.
Pub. Date: April 2009
Publisher: Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile
Have you ever had one of those moments?
You know — you’re trying to find a stolen diamond pencil box for your beautiful butterfly customer, your mosquito witness won’t give you any information, and your clumsy scorpion assistant has just tampered with your only bit of evidence?
Joey Fly has those moments a lot. In fact, he’s probably having one right now. But that won’t stop him from solving the mystery in Creepy Crawly Crime, his fantastic first graphic novel!
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The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline (The Enola Holmes Mysteries #5)
Author: Springer, Nancy
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 176pp.
Pub. Date: May 2009
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group/Philomel Books
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Nominated for the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile
Enola may have met her match with . . . Florence Nightingale?
For Enola, who has been longing for her absent mother, it’s difficult to make personal connections.
Other than her occasional run-ins with her brother Sherlock, Enola doesn’t have many people in her life, except her landlady, Mrs. Tupper. While she’s nearly deaf and can’t cook to save her life, Mrs. Tupper is endearing — really the closest thing Enola has to family these days.
So imagine her horror when Enola comes home to find Mrs. Tupper kidnapped! Who would take her, and why? And what does Florence Nightingale have to do with it?
There must be more to the kind, homely Mrs. Tupper than meets the eye. Enola will put absolutely everything at risk to find Mrs. Tupper.
And whoever took her had better watch out — because this time, it’s personal.
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The 2010 Edgar Award Nominations Series:
Part 1 — Best Novel
Part 2 — Best First Novel By An American Author
Part 3 — Best Short Story
Part 4 — Best Paperback Original
Part 5 — Best Critical/Biographical
Part 6 — Best Juvenile
by Greg "The Undead Rat" on March 10, 2010
This is the fifth installment of the 2010 Edgar Award Nominations.
You can view the entire list of Edgar Award Nomination on the Mystery Writers of American website.
Best Critical/Biographical
Click the mouse on the book covers to order these books from the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library.
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Talking About Detective Fiction
Author: James, P. D.
Format: Hardcover
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 208pp.
Pub. Date: December 2009
Publisher: Random House/Alfred A. Knopf
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical
eBook is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection.
In a perfect marriage of author and subject, P. D. James — one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction at work today — gives us a personal, lively, illuminating exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it.
P. D. James examines the genre from top to bottom, beginning with the mysteries at the hearts of such novels as Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and bringing us into the present with such writers as Colin Dexter and Henning Mankell.
Along the way she writes about Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie (“arch-breaker of rules”), Josephine Tey, Dashiell Hammett, and Peter Lovesey, among many others. She traces their lives into and out of their fiction, clarifies their individual styles, and gives us indelible portraits of the characters they’ve created, from Sherlock Holmes to Sara Paretsky’s sexually liberated female investigator, V. I. Warshawski.
She compares British and American Golden Age mystery writing. She discusses detective fiction as social history, the stylistic components of the genre, her own process of writing, how critics have reacted over the years, and what she sees as a renewal of detective fiction — and of the detective hero — in recent years.
There is perhaps no one who could write about this enduring genre of storytelling with equal authority and flair: it is essential reading for every lover of detective fiction.
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The Lineup: The World’s Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives
Editor: Penzler, Otto
Format: Hardcover
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 406pp.
Pub. Date: November 2009
Publisher: Hachette Book Group/Little, Brown and Company
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical
A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger.
But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from?
What was the real-life location that inspired Michael Connelly to make Harry Bosch a Vietnam vet tunnel rat? Why is Jack Reacher a drifter? How did a brief encounter in Botswana inspire Alexander McCall Smith to create Precious Ramotswe?
In The Lineup, some of the top mystery writers in the world tell about the genesis of their most beloved characters — or, in some cases, let their creations do the talking.
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Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King
Author: Rogak, Lisa
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 320pp.
Pub. Date: January 2009
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical
A fascinating look at the life of the author who created such modern classics as Carrie, IT, and The Shining.
One of the most prolific and popular authors in the world today, Stephen King has become part of pop culture history. But who is the man behind those tales of horror, grief, and the supernatural? Where do these ideas come from? And what drives him to keep writing at a breakneck pace after a thirty year career?
In this unauthorized biography, Lisa Rogak reveals the troubled background and lifelong fears that inspire one of the twentieth century’s most influential authors.
King’s origins were inauspicious at best. His impoverished childhood in rural Maine and early marriage hardly spelled out the likelihood of a blossoming literary career. But his unflagging work ethic and a ceaseless flow of ideas put him on the path to success.
It came in a flash, and the side effects of sudden stardom and seemingly unlimited wealth soon threatened to destroy his work and, worse, his life. But he survived and has since continued to write at a level of originality few authors could ever hope to match.
Despite his dark and disturbing work, Stephen King has become revered by critics and his countless fans as an all-American voice more akin to Mark Twain than H. P. Lovecraft. Haunted Heart chronicles his story, revealing the character of a man who has created some of the most memorable — and frightening — stories found in literature today.
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The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith
Author: Schenkar, Joan
Format: Hardcover
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 704pp.
Pub. Date: December 2009
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of 20th Century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite “hero-criminal,” talented Tom Ripley.
In this revolutionary biography, Joan Schenkar paints a riveting portrait, from Highsmith’s birth in Texas to Hitchcock’s filming of her first novel, Strangers On a Train, to her long, strange, self-exile in Europe.
We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list.
The Talented Miss Highsmith is the first literary biography with access to Highsmith’s whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. It’s a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.
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The Stephen King Illustrated Companion: Manuscripts, Correspondence, Drawings, and Memorabilia from the Master of Modern Horror
Author: Vincent, Bev
Format: Hardcover
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 179pp.
Pub. Date: October 2009
Publisher: Fall River Press
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical
An interactive approach to Stephen King’s greatest works, The Stephen King Illustrated Companion features a wealth of unseen memorabilia from the author’s desk and insightful text that reads between the lines to uncover King’s own compelling biography.
Supplemented with rare and previously unpublished ephemera from King’s archives, such as hand-edited manuscript drafts, revealing letters between King and his editor, and personal mementos from his career, this unique companion volume tangibly illuminates the writer’s works and life in a way never done before.
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The 2010 Edgar Award Nominations Series:
Part 1 — Best Novel
Part 2 — Best First Novel By An American Author
Part 3 — Best Short Story
Part 4 — Best Paperback Original
Part 5 — Best Best Critical/Biographical
Part 6 — Best Juvenile
