Edgar Nominees Announced

Each year, the Mystery Writers of America hold the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, celebrating the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, and film from the previous publishing year. On Friday, the group announced their 2009 nominees.

Best Novel Nominees

  • Missing by Karin Alvtegen (Felony & Mayhem Press)
  • Blue Heaven by C.J. Box (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
  • Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
  • The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
  • The Night Following by Morag Joss (Random House – Delacorte Press)
  • Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
Best First Novel by an American Author
  • The Kind One by Tom Epperson (Five Star, div of Cengage)
  • Sweetsmoke by David Fuller (Hyperion)
  • The Foreigner by Francie Lin (Picador)
  • Calumet City by Charlie Newton (Simon & Schuster - Touchstone)
  • A Cure for Night by Justin Peacock (Random House - Doubleday)

Best Paperback Original

  • The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr (Random House Trade)
  • Money Shot by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime)
  • Enemy Combatant by Ed Gaffney (Random House - Dell)
  • China Lake by Meg Gardiner (New American Library – Obsidian Mysteries)
  • The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli (Random House - Bantam)

Best Critical/Biographical

  • African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Company)
  • Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories by Leonard Cassuto (Columbia University Press)
  • Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction by David Geherin (McFarland & Company)
  • The Rise of True Crime by Jean Murley (Greenwood Publishing – Praeger)
  • Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Sterling Publishing – Metro Books)

There are several other categories, all of which can be viewed at The Edgars website.

The winners will be announced on April 30 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City. James Lee Burke and the awesome Sue Grafton will be Grand Masters of the ceremony.

 

Story Source  The Edgars  |  Image Source  about.com

January 19, 2009 | Filed Under Eyes on the Prize | 31 Comments 

Trailer Park: Transformations

The subject of this week’s Trailer Park is transformation. All books, to some extent, contain stories of a character or characters’ transformation; this creates good drama and keeps us reading. However these three books chronicle major human transformations and provide inspiration that yes, people can change.

In the first trailer, we have the true story of La Wanda Merrero, who was brutally abused by those who were supposed to love and protect her. But La Wanda transcended the trauma of her past in a testament to the strength and fortitude of the human spirit. Oh, and it also has a fan-freaking-tastic title: Alice N Crackland. 

Next up, a novel, Time is a River, by Mary Alice Monroe. In this tale, a woman survives cancer and retreats to the mountains, where she begins to rebuild her life.

Finally, the ultimate act of momentous transformation: change in the White House. In Change Has Come: An Artist Celebrates Our American Spirit, President-elect Obama’s words are recounted with warm illustrations by Kadir Nelson.

January 16, 2009 | Filed Under Trailer Park | 7 Comments 

Book Review: Heaven’s Coast by Mark Doty

After having my little snark socks blown off by his Fire to Fire (my pick for Best Book of ‘08), I vowed to read anything and everything by Mark Doty. His poems are incandescent, probing, challenging lyrical memoirs in verse-form; his words affect me like very few writers ever have, cracking my world open and letting the light in, no matter how warm or welcome, scorching or painful. In short, I treasure the work of Mr. Doty.

It comes as no surprise that Mark Doty is just as adept at prose as he is at poetry. 2007’s Dog Years is a loving paean to his beloved dogs, and how their love and devotion carried him through some of the darkest hours of his life. It is precisely those dark hours that are examined minutely in an earlier work of memoir, 1997’s Heaven’s Coast, which is, I think, one of the finest, bravest books ever written on the subject of grief.

In 1989, Doty’s longtime partner Wally tested HIV positive, while Doty himself tested negative, but “it didn’t matter which of us it was,” he writes. “…His news was mine.” Like all solid unions, the boundaries between the two individuals had, to a point, blurred; they were both affected by this diagnosis and they would see one another through.

“Through”, not incidentally, is the name of the book’s second part. The first part, “Coastal Studies”, explores the immediate impact of Wally’s death (of an AIDS-related viral brain infection in 1994), as well as another crushing blow to the author: the death of his best friend, the poet Lynda Hull, in a car accident. In “Coastal Studies”, Doty dives — is pushed, more accurately — into a sea of grief and sorrow, and, using language and metaphor as only a truly great poet can, he finds meaning and message in nearly everything around him. Heaven’s Coast, as well as being a story of loss, is also a breathtaking homage to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and it is in Provincetown’s rich coastal beauty, its stunning contradictions and embracing nature, that Doty finds the courage to live, to write, and to be transformed. “A coast is not a line really but a borderland, site of a continual conversation between elements which transforms both,” he writes.

It is in the book’s second section, “Through”, that we go back in time to the diagnosis and through the ensuing years leading up to “Coastal Studies”. Doty revisits the terrain of his lover’s decline, friends’ support, doctors’ ineptitude (anything medical professionals could not explain, which was a lot in the early 90s, they wrote off as “viral activity”), and the passionate history shared between two people in love. Doty is able, at least in retrospect, to glean magnificent wisdom from Wally’s slow exit from this world, as well as Lynda’s abrupt one, and this wisdom, these lessons and insights, are — contrary to what one might think — anything but depressing. They are, in a word, an inspiration.

Heaven’s Coast is a love letter to a departed partner, to a deceased friend, to a beloved seaside town, and, perhaps above all else, to the healing, transformative power of language.  Grade: A+

 

Title  Heaven’s Coast: A Memoir

Author  Mark Doty

Publisher  HarperCollins

Year Published  1997

ISBN  0060928050

Snarkbytes  Mark Doty reads “Charlie Howard’s Descent”, which appears in Fire to Fire, as well as 1987’s Turtle, Swan.

 

January 15, 2009 | Filed Under Biography & Memoir | 9 Comments 

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      The Snark is a creature created by Lewis Carroll in his poem "The Hunting of the Snark". To give a proper description of Snarks, one must look no further than Carroll himself, who summed them up in one word: Unimaginable.

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