Discuss Edgar Award nominees on April 17
The Mystery Writers of America’s 78th Annual Edgar® Awards Ceremony is just a couple of weeks away On Wednesday, April 17, 2024 from 3:00 to 4:15 pm, let’s discuss the Edgar winners and nominees we’ve read!
Named for Edgar Allan Poe, the Edgars honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theater published or produced in the previous year.
Some recent Edgar winners and nominees for you to consider:
Murder by Degrees, by Ritu Mukerji: a 2024 Edgar nominee for Best First Novel, Mukerji is also a practicing physician. The book is set in 1875 Philadelphia, where a female physician becomes an amateur sleuth in the wake of a suspicious “suicide.”
The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua: a 2024 Edgar nominee for Best First Novel, this story takes us back in time to 1944, and the murder of a presidential candidate at Berkeley’s Claremont Hotel. Kirkus Reviews calls The Golden Gate “an old-fashioned detective novel… satisfyingly twisty, highly educational, and lots of fun.”
Jackal, by Erin E. Adams: Nominated in 2023 for Best First Novel by an American Author, Jackal brings Liz, a Black woman, back to her Pennsylvania hometown for the wedding of her white best friend. On the day of the wedding, the bride’s daughter disappears—and it turns out she’s not the first girl in Johnstown to go missing.
Smile Beach Murder, by Alicia Bessette: this launch of the Outer Banks Bookshop mystery series was a nominee for Edgar’s 2023 Lillian Jackson Braun Memorial Award. Former reporter turned bookshop clerk Callie Padget is back in her hometown, and trying to uncover the secrets behind murders—including that of her own mother.
The Woman in the Library, by Sulari Gentill: nominated in 2023 for Edgar’s Mary Higgins Clark Award, this much-lauded book transports us to the ornate reading room of the Boston Public Library, where the tranquility is suddenly disturbed by a woman’s terrified scream.
Check out some Edgar honorees, and report back to us: do you think any of them are winners?
Menlo Park’s Mystery Readers Group meets online on the third Wednesday of each month. Register via Zoom. Rather than reading the same book, we all share different books we’ve read surrounding a particular theme (award-worthy reads, for instance).
