The Agatha Award Nominees

(for works published in 2019)

MAF members should be pleased to see several nominees who are friends with our group! The winners have an Agatha Teapot next to ther book on the list!

*NOTE: If you are a Lisle resident card holder, please see staff to get books that do not have links, as interlibrary loans.

Best Contemporary Novel

  Fatal Cajun Festival by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane Books)
  The Long Call by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur) 
  Fair Game by Annette Dashofy (Henery Press) 
  The Missing Ones by Edwin Hill (Kensington)
  A Better Man by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
  The Murder List by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge) 

Best First Mystery Novel

  A Dream of Death by Connie Berry (Crooked Lane Books)
  One Night Gone by Tara Laskowski 
(Graydon House, a division of Harlequin) 
  Murder Once Removed by S. C. Perkins (Minotaur)
  When It’s Time for Leaving by Ang Pompano (Encircle Publications)
 Staging is Murder by Grace Topping (Henery Press)

Best Historical Mystery

  Love and Death Among the Cheetahs by Rhys Bowen (Penquin)
  Murder Knocks Twice by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur)
  The Pearl Dagger by L. A. Chandlar (Kensington)
  Charity’s Burden by Edith Maxwell (Midnight Ink) 
  The Naming Game by Gabriel Valjan (Winter Goose Publishing)

Best Nonfiction

  Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story by Laird R. Blackwell (McFarland)
  Blonde Rattlesnake: Burmah Adams, Tom White, and the 1933 Crime Spree that Terrified Los Angeles by Julia Bricklin (Lyons Press)
  Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep (Knopf)
  The Mutual Admiration Society: 
How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women by Mo Moulton (Basic Books) 
  The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt)

Best Children/Young Adult

  Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers by Shauna Holyoak (Disney Hyperion)
  Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen McManus (Delacorte Press)
  The Last Crystal by Frances Schoonmaker (Auctus Press) 
  Top Marks for Murder (A Most Unladylike Mystery)
by Robin Stevens (Puffin)
  Jada Sly, Artist and Spy by Sherri Winston (Little Brown Books for Young Readers)

Best Short Story 

"Grist for the Mill" by Kaye George in A Murder of Crows (Darkhouse Books)

"Alex’s Choice" by Barb Goffman in Crime Travel (Wildside Press)

"The Blue Ribbon" by Cynthia Kuhn in Malice Domestic 14: Mystery Most Edible (Wildside Press)

"The Last Word" by Shawn Reilly Simmons, Malice Domestic 14: 
Mystery Most Edible (Wildside Press)

"Better Days" by Art Taylor in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine