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:

Spring into Suspense with these Thrilling Tales!

This Spring, Thrilling Tales – our regular lunch hour Story Time for Grown Ups – will transport you from the psychoanalyst’s couch to the funeral parlor, from suburbia to death row, from the swamp to a magical realm where dragons fly overhead. Join us, won’t you? Admission is free, and brown bag lunches are welcome! All readings begin at 12:05 in the Central Library’s Microsoft Auditorium, and are finished well before 1 p.m.

Monday, March 11: The Other Side of the Wall, by Stanley Ellin. Someone had better call the police: Dr. Schwimmer and his patient Albert are about to have a major breakthrough. Also, The Great Silence by Ted Chiang. The humans look to the stars for non-human intelligence, but we parrots are right here. Talk to us!

Monday, March 25: Homicide House, by Day Keene. He married her for her money, but

Thrilling Tales is Off to the Races!

This summer, Thrilling Tales (the Library’s Story Time for Grown Ups) takes listeners off to the races with a pair of horse racing tales,  and then out into the rose garden with Shirley Jackson to dig into dark underside suburbia, before heading to the seashore to grapple with aliens from another world, and from the briny deep! Come join us this August and September for live readings suspenseful and strange, either at noon (bring along some lunch), or at 7 p.m. with Thrilling Tales After Dark! All story times are under an hour, and are absolutely free. Here’s what’s coming up:

Le Guin, Allende, Bradbury & More, This Spring at Thrilling Tales!

This Spring Thrilling Tales, the library’s popular story time for grown ups, is branching out with new monthly evening events in addition to our regular lunch hour gatherings. Now in its 15th year, the program celebrates the joy of story with live readings of compelling, intriguing, wondrous and suspenseful stories. Here’s what’s coming up in the months ahead.

Page to Screen: My Cousin Rachel.

It was my idea, after all. Lately as we’ve seen readers and filmgoers gobbling up great twisty psychological suspense such as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, I kept thinking they should make a fresh version Daphne Du Maurier’s classic tale of the devious anti-heroine known as My Cousin Rachel. Sixty-five years after its original publication, the book stands up extremely well, and makes a terrific suggestion for fans of gothic film and fiction including such modern descendants as Kate Morton, Sarah Waters, Lauren Forrey, Eleanor Wasserberg, Catronia Ward, John Harwood. I mean, it pretty much has it all – lush historical trappings, an irresistible villainess, passion, poison –  and it is desperately overdue for a fresh version. Check out the trailer for this 1952 potboiler starring Olivia deHavilland and “bright new star” Richard Burton (“Was she woman, or witch!? Madonna or murderess!? … She gives men the promise of ecstasy, and a life of torment!”)

Hugely fun on a rainy Saturday afternoon, but we’re definitely ready for something a bit more contemporary. I can’t wait to see the new film with Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin, which looks gorgeous and treacherous, as it should:

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