Awards Round Up - Nebulas and Stokers

Last month I posted a message about the Nebula Award nominees. Rather belatedly, here is a link to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website, where the winners are listed.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Presented the Nebula Awards® for 2007 at the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown in Austin, Texas on April 26, 2008.

Novel: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
Novella: "Fountain of Age" by Nancy Kress
Novelette: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang
Short Story: "Always" by Karen Joy Fowler
Script: Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro

Stoker Awards
Each year, the Horror Writer's Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement, named in honor of Bram Stoker, author of the seminal horror work, Dracula. Click here for information about the awards and this year's winners announced March 30, 2008.

Novel: The Missing by Sarah Langan
First Novel: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Long Fiction: Afterward, There Will Be A Hallway by Gary Braunbeck
Short Fiction: "The Gentle Brush of Wings " by David Niall Wilson
Fiction Collection: (Tie)Proverbs for Monsters by Michael A. Arnzen and 5 Stories by Peter Straub
Anthology: Five Strokes to Midnight edited by Gary Braunbeck and Hank Schwaeble
Nonfiction: THE CRYPTOPEDIA: A Dictionary of the Weird, Strange & Downright Bizarre by Jonathan Maberry & David F. Kramer
Poetry Collection: (Tie)Being Full of Light, Insubstantial by Linda Addison and Vectors: A Week in the Death of a Planet by Charlee Jacob & Marge Simon
Lifetime Achievement Award: John Carpenter, Robert Weinberg
Richard Laymon President's Award: Mark Worthen, Stephen Dorato, Christopher Fulbright

The Cruellest Month: a Three Pines Mystery by Louise Penny by

Find this book in our catalog.

I have just put this book down and can recommend it as an absorbing fast read. It should appeal to fans of cozy mysteries, who will recognize lots of the elements they have come to love: a small, closed community, somewhat out of time and certainly eccentric; a group of friends and neighbors, apparently well-known to each other, but all with something to hide from their pasts, which gradually comes out under the stress of a murder investigation. The location and the lifestyle is apparently idyllic, yet always there is something evil under the surface like a canker in a rose. The Cruellest Month received a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly, and this is how they described the book: "Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his team investigate another bizarre crime in the tiny Québec village of Three Pines in Penny's expertly plotted third cozy (after 2007's A Fatal Grace). As the townspeople gather in the abandoned and perhaps haunted Hadley house for a séance with a visiting psychic, Madeleine Favreau collapses, apparently dead of fright. No one has a harsh word to say about Madeleine, but Gamache knows there's more to the case than meets the eye. Complicating his inquiry are the repercussions of Gamache having accused his popular superior at the Sûreté du Québec of heinous crimes in a previous case. Fearing there might be a mole on his team, Gamache works not only to solve the murder but to clear his name. Arthur Ellis Award–winner Penny paints a vivid picture of the French-Canadian village, its inhabitants and a determined detective who will strike many Agatha Christie fans as a 21st-century version of Hercule Poirot."

All of these elements are there, and yet I thought that there was a great deal more complexity to the book. I saw similarities to the novels of P.D. James, and even Ruth Rendell. The book delves very deeply into the nature of love, loyalty, and jealousy. Chief Inspector Gamache is a very complicated and engaging hero. More complex and less of a caricature than Poirot, he has issues with his own past, as does James' Commander Adam Dalgleish, and the single-mindedness and secretiveness of Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley. He commands the loyalty of his team just as Inspector Maigret used to. At the same time, like these other detectives before him, he is gentle and sensitive with those who need his care and also supremely moral.

The icing on the top of this layer cake of a book is that at times it is extremely funny. Louise Penny pulls this off, I think, because she is such an acute observer of people. I had a little bit of discomfort with the ending, perhaps because I felt that after everything that went before it was a bit rushed and pat, perhaps because Penny was leaving room for a sequel. This book is part of a series though it can be read alone with no problem. Penny skilfully fills in the background without giving everything away. I just have to go back and read the earlier books to find out what went on in the Hadley house the last time Gamache visited Three Pines!

Edgar Awards announced May 1, 2008

The 62nd Annual Edgar® Awards banquet was held on Thursday May 1, 2008 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

Click here for the official Mystery Writers of America blog from the awards ceremony.

Best Novel winner: DOWN RIVER by John Hart. Find this book in our catalog
Summary from our catalog: "Adam Chase has a violent streak, and not without reason. As a boy in Rowan County, he saw things that no child should see, suffered wounds that cut to the core and scarred him. The trauma left him passionate and misunderstood - a fighter. After being narrowly acquitted of a murder charge, Adam is hounded out of the only home he's ever known, exiled for a sin he did not commit. For five long years he disappears, fading into the faceless gray of New York City. Now he's back and nobody knows why - not his family or the cops, not the enemies he left behind. But Adam has his reasons." "Within hours of his return, he is accosted and beaten, confronted by his and the woman he still holds dear. No one knows what to make of Adam's return, but when bodies start turning up, the small town rises against him, and Adam again finds himself embroiled in the fight of his life - not just to prove his own innocence, but to reclaim the only life he's ever wanted."

Best First Novel winner: IN THE WOODS by Tana French. Find this book in our catalog
Summary from our catalog: "As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home from play. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent wood. When the police arrive, they find only one child, gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours." "Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same wood, he and Detective Cassie Maddox - his partner and closest friend - find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past."

Best Paperback Original winner: winner: QUEENPIN by Megan Abbott. Find this book in our catalog
Summary from our catalog: "A young woman hired to keep the books at a down-at-the-heels nightclub is taken under the wing of the infamous Gloria Denton, a mob luminary who reigned during the Golden Era of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Notoriously cunning and ruthless, Gloria shows her eager young protegee the ropes, ushering her into a glittering demimonde of late-night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money. Suddenly, the world is at her feet - as long as she doesn't take any chances, like falling for the wrong guy. As the roulette wheel turns, both mentor and protegee scramble to stay one step ahead of their bosses and each other."

The Grandmaster Award: Bill Pronzini

Best Fact Crime winner: RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY by Vincent Bugliosi. Find this book in our catalog