Mystery Book Awards

The Agatha Awards are named in honor of Agatha Christie, and, as such, are given to books that exemplify her style and genre.

The Agatha Awards honor the "traditional mystery." That is to say, books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie as well as others. For our purposes, the genre is loosely defined as mysteries that:
• contain no explicit sex
• contain no excessive gore or gratuitous violence
• usually feature an amateur detective
• take place in a confined setting and contain characters who know one another

Novels and stories featuring police officers and private detectives may qualify for the awards, but materials generally classified as "hard-boiled" are not appropriate.

Another thing which makes them different from most awards is that there isn’t a panel of judges who chooses the winners. The voting is done by secret ballot by the attendees at the Malice Domestic conference each year. In other words, mystery writers, readers, and lovers – people like you and I.

In case you missed this, here’s a list of the newly announced Agatha winners:

Best Children’s/Young Adult
“The Crossroads,” by Chris Grabenstein (Random House)

Best Short Story
“The Night Things Changed,” by Dana Cameron (Penguin Group)

Best Non-Fiction
“How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries,” by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)

Best First Novel
“Death of a Cozy Writer, by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink)

Best Novel
“The Cruelest Month” by Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Press)

You can find the full list of the nominees on the Malice Domestic site.

Congratulations to all the winners!

XIX Agatha Awards

The nominees for the 19th Agatha Awards have been announced. So, I’m taking this time today to say congratulations to two friends:

For Best Novel, L.C. Hayden for her book Why Casey Had to Die
For Best First Novel, Karen MacInerney for her book Murder on the Rocks

Yea for both of them.

The Agatha Awards are under the umbrella of Malice Domestic, a nonprofit which holds an annual convention to salute traditional mystery books. And what is a traditional mystery book? Malice defines it as “mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence; and usually (but are not limited to) featuring an amateur detective, a confined setting, and characters who know one another.”

If that sounds like the kind of book you like to read, then check out the Malice website for a list of the authors attending the May conference.