Carolyn Larson - Special to The Garden Island

What do Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Mccavity, Rita, Ruthven, Shamus and Stonewall all have in common? You guessed it: they’re all book awards. 

Along with the Nobel and the National, how’s a body to keep them all straight? Well, we’ve got the buzz on awards for you. There are author prizes for a body of work and book prizes for a literary work; and depending on where in the calendar year the award ceremonies are held, you will find award-winning adult titles on this list for publications in 2008 and 2007. 

From the packed fields for novels of mystery or romance to the waning western and waxing fantasy genre, there are prizes a-plenty. The list is long so we shall divide this list in two parts starting this week with mystery, horror, romance and GBLT (gay-bisexual-lesbian-transgender).

Happy Reading!

MYSTERY

The Cruelest Month: A Three Pines Mystery

By Louise Penny

2008 Agatha Award

for Best Novel

In this expertly plotted cozy (third in the series) Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his team investigate another bizarre crime in the tiny Québec village of Three Pines. Named after the nom de travail of Canada’s official hangman Arthur awards are designed to launch the writing careers of new Canadian crime writers. The Agatha Awards, chosen by the annual Malice Domestic Convention attendees are literary awards for “traditional mysteries” written via the same method as Agatha Christie (i.e. closed setting, no sex or violence, amateur detective). The 2008 Agatha Award for Best First Mystery went to Prime Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan.

Blood From Stone

By Frances Fyfield

2008 Duncan Lawrie

Dagger Award

A genuinely original and imaginative writer gives us an ingenious, complex and elegantly told tale that will chill the blood and shiver your timbers.  The Dagger Award is given annually by the British Crime Writers Association to the best crime novel of the year.

Blue Heaven

By C.J. Box

2009 Edgar Award

for Best Novel

The author of the Joe Pickett crime novels writes his first stand alone thriller set in Idaho with good cops, bad cops, & missing money. Relentless, edge of your seat story. Named after Edgar Allan Poe, the Mystery Writers of America awards the “Edgars” annually to honor outstanding contributions to mystery, crime and suspense writing. The 2009 Edgar winner for Best First Novel by an American Author went to The Foreigner by Francie Lin.  2008 winners include Down River by John Hart and In the Woods by Tana French.

Soul Patch

By Reed Farrel Coleman

2008 Shamus Award for

Best P.I. Novel

This gritty fourth Moe Prager Mystery features an ex-cop tracking down answers to the 1970s murder of a major-league drug dealer after recently acquiring a covertly recorded tape of a snitch revealing new clues.  The third in the series, The James Deans, won Shamus, Barry and Anthony awards.  The Shamus Awardsis bestowed by the Private Eye Writers of America to recognize outstanding achievement in novels featuring a private eye character that is an investigator, but does not work for a government or police agency. Like the Edgars there is also a Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel (which in 2008 went to Bad City, Bad Blood by Sean Chercover).

What the Dead Know

By Laura Lippman

2008 Anthony Award for Best Novel, 2008 Mccavity Awards for Best Mystery

Edgar, Shamus and Agatha-winner Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan mystery series (No Good Deeds, etc.), shows she’s an A-list thriller writer with this outstanding stand-alone. A driver who flees a car accident on a Maryland highway breathes new life into a 30-year-old mystery-the disappearance of the young Bethany sisters at a shopping mall-after she later tells the police she’s one of the missing girls. Characters are well defined and varied, each with a different perspective on the nature of grief. Macavity Awards are bestowed by the members of Mystery Readers International and named for the mystery cat from T. S. Eliot’s Old Possom’s Book of Practical Cats. Anthony Awards are selected by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, and named after one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America. In The Woods by Tana French won the 2008 Anthony Award for Best First Mystery Novel.

HORROR

The Terror

By Dan Simmons

2008 International Horror

Guild Award

Hugo-winner Simmons (for Olympos) brings the horrific trials and tribulations of arctic exploration vividly to life in this beautifully written historical, which injects a note of supernatural horror into the 1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for the Northwest Passage. The International Horror Guild Award recognizes the achievements of those who create in the field of Horror and Dark Fantasy..

The Missing

By Sarah Langan

2008 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel, 2008 Black Quill Editor’s Choice Award

In her second novel (after The Keeper), Langan delivers a powerhouse creepfest as a fourth-grade class is exposed to a deadly virus that transforms the infected into ravenous, flesh-eating monsters invested with a sinister intelligence. Tension. Chicken skin.  Each year since 1987 the Horror Writer’s Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement which are named for the author of the seminal horror work, Dracula. Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box brought in both the 2008 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel and the 2008 Black Quill People’s Choice Award.

We Disappear

By Scott Heim

2009 Black Quill Editor’s Choice award for dark genre novel of the year.

Strange and luminous, this fascinating psychological thriller tackles questions of identity, illness and trauma set on a relentlessly bleak Kansas prairie, where for years children have been disappearing. Stephen King took the Black Quill Readers’ Choice honors in the same category for Duma Key.

The Dracula Dossier

By James Reese

2009 Lord Ruthven Award

A suspense novel in the form of the “lost” journal of the author of Dracula. The author perfectly pastiches the journal format. Initially his story reads as dry and boringly as most private diaries but with a man’s malignant conversion (to a vampire), the novel turns into a rip-roaring penny dreadful that compels reading to the end. Each year, the Lord Ruthven Assembly presents the Lord Ruthven Award that recognizes a deserving work in vampire fiction or scholarship. The assembly consists of scholars and writers who maintain active interest in the presence of vampires in literature, myth, and folklore.  The group derives its name from the title character of John Polidori’s 1819 work “The Vampyre.”. The 2008 Lord Ruthven Award for Fiction went to The Un-Dead by Joel H. Emerson.

ROMANCE

The preeminent literary awards for romantic fiction are the RITAs, awarded by the Romance Writers of America to recognize outstanding published romance novels. The award is named after the RWA’s first president, Rita Clay Estrada, and is given in several categories. A few are listed below:

Lessons of Desire

By Madeline Hunter

2008 RITA Award for Best

Historical Romance

The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever

By Julia Quinn

2008 RITA Award for Best

Regency Historical Romance

Dead Girls are Easy

By Terri Garey

2008 RITA Award for Best

First Book

Snowbound

By Janice Johnson

2008 RITA Award for Best

Contemporary Series Romance

Treasure

By Helen Brenna

2008 RITA Award for Best Contemporary Series Romance Suspense / Adventure

Catch of the Day

By Kristan Higgins

2008 RITA Award for Best Contemporary Single Title Romance

A Touch of Grace

By Linda Goodnight

2008 RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance

Silent in the Grave

By Deanna Raybourn

2008 RITA Award for Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements

Lover Revealed

By J. R. Ward

2008 RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance

Ice Blue

By Anne Stuart

2008 RITA Award for Best

Romantic Suspense

GBLT

Light Fell

By Evan Fallenberg

2009 Stonewall Book Award for Literature

Twenty years have passed since Joseph left his family and his religious Israeli community when he fell in love with a man, the brilliant rabbi Rosenzweig. Now, for his fiftieth birthday, Joseph is preparing to have his five sons spend the Sabbath with him in his Tel Aviv penthouse. The Stonewall Prize for Fiction is the first and most enduring award for GLBT books, sponsored by the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table. The 2008 Stonewall Award went to Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery.

• Carolyn Larson is head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library. Her weekly column brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library. Book annotations are culled from online publishers’ descriptions and published reviews.