The winners of this year’s Anthony Awards, given annually to outstanding mystery books, were announced Saturday at the Bouchercon convention in San Diego, Mystery Fanfare reports.
Kellye Garrett won the prize for best novel for Like a Sister, about a millennial woman investigating the suspicious death of her younger sibling. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Come for the not-so-bad whodunit, stay for the whip-smart, heart-hurt, very entertaining heroine.”
The best first novel award went to Nita Prose for her bestseller The Maid, while Jess Lourey took home the best paperback/audiobook/e-book original prize for The Quarry Girls.
Nancy Springer won the best children’s/young adult award for Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade, the eighth installment in her series about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister. The best humorous book prize went to Catriona McPherson for Scot in a Trap.
Wanda M. Morris’ Anywhere You Run won the award for best historical mystery, while Martin Edwards prevailed in the critical/nonfiction category for The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators.
The best anthology prize went to Crime Hits Home, edited by S.J. Rozan, and the best short story prize was awarded to Barb Goffman for “Beauty and the Beyotch.”
The Anthony Awards were established in 1986. Previous winners have included Thomas Harris for The Silence of the Lambs, Dennis Lehane for Mystic River, and Attica Locke for Bluebird, Bluebird.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
