The Year’s Best Crime Writing: The 2019 Edgar Awards

Pulitzers, Bookers, Nobels – bah! For crime fiction fans it’s all about the Edgars. Last night the winners in several categories of crime and thriller books were announced at the Mystery Writers of America’s annual Edgar Awards ceremony: here’s a full list of these titles in our catalog, including non-fiction, books for children and teens, and the Mary Higgins Clark Awards for less violent novels with strong heroines.

As for the felonious Best In Show, we give you the nominees for the category of Best Novel:

Awards that recognize fiction’s impact on society and culture

This past week two interesting, perhaps lesser-known book awards were given: The 83^rd Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and the inaugural Aspen Words Literary Prize.

The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognize fiction, nonfiction and poetry books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity. The 2018 recipients are:

Fiction: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Anisfield-Wolf juror Joyce Carol Oates called this combination road novel and ghost story “a beautifully rendered, heartbreaking, savage and tender novel.”

Hey, our pick for the Dublin Literary Award made the shortlist!

Do you follow the International Dublin Literary Awards? Here’s why you should:

1. Public libraries around the world nominate books for the award, and you love public libraries.
2. A healthy mix of U.S. and international novels make both the longlist and the shortlist, and you’ve been looking for suggestions for some of the best international fiction.
3. It’s one of the richest literary prizes, with 100,000 euros (approximately $112,000) going to the winner, and you like it when great writing is rewarded.
4. One of this year’s 10 finalists was nominated by your own library (that’s us! Seattle Public Library!).

Movie Mondays: Free Screenings of Award-nominated Films

Now that the 2013/2014 award season has wrapped up, it’s time to catch up on all of the winning and nominated films! To alleviate the long hold lists for several of these titles, the Northgate Branch is showing some of this year’s notable and popular films on Sundays through May. Each free film screening starts at 1:30 in the Northgate Branch meeting room. I suggest you arrive early in order to get a seat, as well as a free bag of popcorn!

Crime: Macavity Macavity… Award-winning mysteries.

Most crime readers are aware that there are mystery awards – the Edgars, right? – but not everyone knows just how many awards there are. There are the Agatha Awards for best domestic mystery; the Shamus Awards for detective novels; Britain’s Dagger Awards, and many, many more. And for a quarter of a century, the Mystery Readers International’s Macavity Awards (named after a certain mystery cat); think of it as the Golden Globes of crime.