Crime and cookery - award-winning books available @ your library

You may remember that it was only a week ago that we highlighted Canadian crime / mystery writers Louise Penny and Alan Bradley (see blog post here). Well, they've done it again, each winning one of this year's Agatha Awards (awards for mystery / crime novels that contain no graphic sex or violence). Congratulations to our Canadian authors!

The Edgar awards were also announced recently announced, and some of the winners are avaiable for you to borrow right away:

John Hart - The Lost Child
“Hart once again produces a novel that is elegant, haunting, and memorable. His characters are given an emotional depth that genre characters seldom have, and the graceful, evocative prose lifts his stories right out of their genre and into the realm of capital-L literature. A must-read for every variety of fiction reader.” –Booklist (starred review)

Otto Penzler (ed.) - The Lineup
"A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger. But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from?
What was the real-life location that inspired Michael Connelly to make Harry Bosch a Vietnam vet tunnel rat? Why is Jack Reacher a drifter?... In THE LINEUP, some of the top mystery writers in the world tell about the genesis of their most beloved characters--or, in some cases, let their creations do the talking. " (publisher description)

...and for true crime fans
Dave Cullen - Columbine
"A remarkable book. It is painstakingly reported, well-organized and compellingly written . . . For any reader who wants to understand the complicated nature of evil, this book is a masterpiece." (The Seattle Times )



Also honoured as a grand master is Dorothy Gilman, a wonderful writer who deserves a wider audience. Gilman is most famous for her novels about Mrs. Pollifax, a grandmother who becomes a CIA agent.

Lastly, two sets of awards were announced for cookbooks, The International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards, and the James Barber Foundation Awards.  One book named in both sets of awards is Ad Hoc at Home, by Thomas Keller.

"Thomas Keller shares family-style recipes that you can make any or every day. In the book every home cook has been waiting for, the revered Thomas Keller turns his imagination to the American comfort foods closest to his heart flaky biscuits, chicken pot pies, New England clam bakes, and cherry pies so delicious and redolent of childhood that they give Proust's madeleines a run for their money. Keller, whose restaurants The French Laundry in Yountville, California, and Per Se in New York have revolutionized American haute cuisine, is equally adept at turning out simpler fare." (from publisher)

Prizes, prizes - Crozier wins for Swift Current Memoir, Eggers wins LA Times Book Prize

Former Swift Current resident, Lorna Crozier has won the BC Book Prize for non-fiction for her account of growing up in Swift Current. Fans and friends of Crozier were enchanted as she read from the memoir, Small Beneath the Sky, this winter at the Lyric Theatre.  If she comes by again, get your tickets early!

Sticking with our theme of West Coast literary prizes, we have this year's big winner at the LA Times Book Prizes, Dave Eggers.  Eggers' new non-fiction title Zeitoun captured the prizes for both innovation and current interest.  “Zeitoun is a riveting, intimate, wide-scanning, disturbing, inspiring nonfiction account of a New Orleans married couple named Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun who were dragged through their own special branch of Kafkaesque (for once the adjective is unavoidable) hell after Hurricane Katrina. . ..” —James Wolcott, Vanity Fair

 A new category added this year was for graphic novel, and the winner, David Mazzucchelli has been receiving accolades across North America for his all grown up graphic novel Asterios Polyp.  “Mazzucchelli's funny, harrowing and thought-provoking graphic novel is a remarkable portrait of an architect who is forced to build a new life for himself.” – San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of the Year