Edgar Award Winners

The Edgar Awards are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America. The awards honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theater published or produced in the previous year.

Updated April 29, 2024
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The secret history of Las Vegas : a novel
Abani, Chris.
Paper Book
A gritty, riveting, and wholly original murder mystery from PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author and 2015 Edgar Awards winner Chris Abani Before he can retire, Las Vegas detective Salazar is determined to solve a recent spate of murders. When he encounters a pair of conjoined twins...
Queenpin : a novel
Abbott, Megan E.
Paper Book
By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything A young woman hired to keep the books at a down-at-the-heels nightclub is taken under the wing of the infamous Gloria Denton, a mob luminary who reigned during the Golden Era of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano....
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
Anappara, Deepa
Paper Book
"Warning: if you begin reading the book in the morning, don't expect to get anything done for the rest of the day." --New York Times We children are not just stories. We live. Come and see. Nine-year-old Jai watches too many reality cop shows, thinks he...
Scoreboard, baby : a story of college football, crime, and complicity
Armstrong, Ken
Paper Book
The adjectives associated with the University of Washington's 2000 football season--mystical, magical, miraculous--changed when Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry's four-part exposé of the 2000 Huskies hit the newspaper stands: "explosive . . . chilling" (Sports Illustrated), "blistering" (...
In the heat of the night
Ball, John Dudley
Paper Book
It's the 1960s. A hot August night lies heavy over the Carolinas. The corpse - legs sprawled, stomach down on the concrete pavement, arms above the head - brings the patrol car to a halt. The local police pick up a black stranger named Virgil Tibbs, only to discover that their most likely suspect is...
Under the harrow
Berry, Flynn
Paper Book
When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel's familiar house, she finds her brutally murdered. Stunned and adrift, Nora can't return to her former life. An...
The less people know about us : a mystery of betrayal, family secrets, and stolen identity
Betz-Hamilton, Axton
Paper Book
AN EDGAR AWARDS 2020 WINNER AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER In this powerful true crime memoir, an award-winning identity theft expert tells the shocking story of the duplicity and betrayal that inspired her career and nearly destroyed her family. ...
Dry bones in the valley : a novel
Bouman, Tom.
Paper Book
Winner of the 2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prize When an elderly recluse discovers a corpse on his land, Officer Henry Farrell follows the investigation to strange places in the countryside, and into the depths of his own frayed soul. In Wild Thyme,...
Pyromanie
Bruce DeSilva
Paper Book
Helter skelter : the true story of the Manson murders
Bugliosi, Vincent.
Paper Book
A national bestseller--over 7 million copies sold. "[A] social document of rare importance."--The New Republic. Prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, Vincent Bugliosi held a unique insider's position in one of the most baffling and horrifying cases of the twentieth...
Reclaiming history : the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
Bugliosi, Vincent.
Paper Book
At 1:00 p.m. on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead, the victim of a sniper attack during his motorcade through Dallas. That may be the only fact generally agreed upon in the vast literature spawned by the assassination. National polls reveal that an overwhelming...
Flags on the bayou : a novel
Burke, James Lee
Paper Book
EDGAR AWARD WINNER FOR BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR From New York Times-bestselling author James Lee Burke comes a novel set in Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of characters - enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate and Union...
Bones : an Irene Kelly mystery
Burke, Jan.
Paper Book
In this Edgar Allen Poe Award-winning novel, Irene Kelly is on the hunt for the body of a murder victim...with the killer as her guide: "a journey into the heart of darkness" (Los Angeles Times). Only one person knows where Julia Sayre is: her killer. Four years ago, the...
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
Capote, Truman
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The most famous true crime novel of all time "chills the blood and exercises the intelligence" (The New York Review of Books)--and haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb,...
The spy who came in from the cold
Le Carré, John
Paper Book
  In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse--a desk job--Control offers him a unique opportunity for...
An Evil Heart
Castillo, Linda.
Paper Book
2024 SUE GRAFTON MEMORIAL AWARD WINNER Chief of Police Kate Burkholder investigates the brutal death of a young Amish man in An Evil Heart, the latest installment of the bestselling series by Linda Castillo. On a crisp autumn day in Painters Mill,...
When no one is watching : a thriller
Cole, Alyssa
Paper Book
An instant NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLER! "If Rear Window and Get Out got married and had a baby that was a book, it would indeed be When No One Is Watching, which takes place in contemporary Brooklyn and combines a page-turning thriller with shrewd social...
Razorblade tears
Cosby, S. A.
Paper Book
*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads for Summer * New York Times Notable Book * NPR's Best Books of 2021 * Washington Post's Best Thriller and Mystery Books of the Year * TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books...
Columbine
Cullen, David
Paper Book
Ten years in the works, a masterpiece of reportage, this is the definitive account of the Columbine massacre, its aftermath, and its significance, from the acclaimed journalist who followed the story from the outset. "The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the...
Encyclopedia mysteriosa : a comprehensive guide to the art of detection in print, film, radio, and television
DeAndrea, William L.
Paper Book
"A good mystery is the essential element in every compelling plot. Encyclopedia Mysteriosa clues you in to the entire murky realm of detection. This comprehensive reference is an in-depth compendium that draws on 150 years of crime stories from the genesis of the mystery genre with the publication...
Rogue Island
DeSilva, Bruce.
Paper Book
2011 Edgar Award Winner for Best First Novel Liam Mulligan is as old school as a newspaper man gets. His beat is Providence, Rhode Island, and he knows every street and alley. He knows the priests and prostitutes, the cops and street thugs. He knows the mobsters and politicians--who...
On Conan Doyle, or, The whole art of storytelling
Dirda, Michael.
Paper Book
From Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda, a delightful introduction to the creator of Sherlock Holmes A passionate lifelong fan of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars--the most famous...
The rescue artist : a true story of art, thieves, and the hunt for a missing masterpiece
Dolnick, Edward
Paper Book
In the predawn gloom of a February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo. They snatched one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and fled with their $72 million trophy. The thieves made sure the world was watching: the Winter Olympics, in...
Death in Mud Lick : a coal country fight against the drug companies that delivered the opioid epidemic
Eyre, Eric
Paper Book
A New York Times Critics' Top Ten Book of the Year * 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime * A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year From a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter from the smallest newspaper ever to win the prize in the investigative reporting category, an...
Tinderbox : the untold story of the Up Stairs Lounge fire and the rise of gay liberation
Fieseler, Robert W.
Paper Book
Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the...
The girl in the glass
Ford, Jeffrey
Paper Book
The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair -- and only a privileged few have risen above it: the exorbitantly wealthy ... and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant, owes his salvation to master grifter Thomas Schell. Together with Schell's...
Shirley Jackson : a rather haunted life
Franklin, Ruth
Paper Book
Instantly heralded for its "masterful" and "thrilling" portrayal (Boston Globe), Shirley Jackson reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the literary genius behind such classics as "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House. In this "remarkable act of reclamation" (Neil...
Midnight in Peking : how the murder of a young Englishwoman haunted the last days of old China
French, Paul
Paper Book
Winner of the both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and the discovery of Pamela Werner's body sends a shiver...
In the woods
French, Tana
Paper Book
When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened.
If I die tonight : a novel
Gaylin, Alison
Paper Book
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. Reminiscent of the bestsellers of Laura Lippman and Harlan Coben--with a dose of Big Little Lies or Stranger Things--an absorbing, addictive tale of psychological suspense from the author of the highly acclaimed stand-alone novel What...
Long time coming
Goddard, Robert.
Paper Book
Eldritch Swan is a dead man. Or at least that is what his nephew Stephen has always been told, until one day Eldritch walks back into his life after 36 years in an Irish prison. He won't reveal any of the details of his incarceration, insisting only that he is innocent of any crime.
The janissary tree : a novel
Goodwin, Jason
Paper Book
When Jason Goodwin explored the Ottoman Empire in Lords of the Horizons, The New York Times Book Review hailed it as "a work of dazzling beauty...the rare coming together of historical scholarship...with luminous writing." Now he returns to Istanbul, with a delicious mystery - The...
Killers of the Flower Moon : the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI
Grann, David
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, "one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."--New...
Last call : a true story of love, lust, and murder in queer New York
Green, Elon
Paper Book
**WINNER OF THE EDGAR® AWARD FOR BEST FACT CRIME** A "terrific, harrowing, true-crime account of an elusive serial killer who preyed upon gay men in the 1990s." -The New York Times (Editor's Pick) "In this astonishing and powerful work of...
The stranger diaries
Griffiths, Elly
Paper Book
International Bestseller Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel "This lively whodunit keeps you guessing until the end." --People "Utterly bewitching...As unforgettable as it is original." --A.J. Finn ...
The lock artist
Hamilton, Steve
Paper Book
"I was the Miracle Boy, once upon a time. Later on, the Milford Mute. The Golden Boy. The Young Ghost. The Kid. The Boxman. The Lock Artist. That was all me. But you can call me Mike." Marked by tragedy, traumatized at the age of eight, Michael, now eighteen, is...
She rides shotgun
Harper, Jordan
Paper Book
*WINNER OF A 2018 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST DEBUT NOVEL* *WINNER OF AN ALEX AWARD FROM THE ALA* NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY St. Louis Post-Dispatch * Booklist A propulsive, gritty novel about a girl marked for death who must fight and steal to stay alive, learning from the most...
Before the fall
Hawley, Noah
Paper Book
On a foggy summer night, eleven people--ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter--depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are the painter Scott Burroughs and a four...
Charlie Chan : the untold story of the honorable detective and his rendezvous with American history
Huang, Yunte.
Paper Book
On a balmy July night in 1904, a wiry figure sauntered alone through the dim alleys of Honolulu's Chinatown. He strolled up a set of rickety steps and into a smoky gambling den ringing with jeers of card sharks and crapshooters. By the time anyone recognized the infamous bullwhip dangling from his...
Chester B. Himes : a biography
Jackson, Lawrence Patrick
Paper Book
Chester B. Himes has been called "one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition" (Henry Louis Gates Jr.), "the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "a quirky American genius" (Walter Mosely). He was the twentieth century's most prolific...
My sweet girl
Jayatissa, Amanda
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE ITW THRILLER AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL "My Sweet Girl pushes the boundaries of what a thriller can do."--The Washington Post "Fiendish [and] full of twists.... Sri Lankan author Amanda Jayatissa keeps us guessing and worrying until the very...
Five Decembers
Kestrel, James
Paper Book
Winner of the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Novel   "War, imprisonment, torture, romance...The novel has an almost operatic symmetry, and Kestrel turns a beautiful phrase." New York Times   Five Decembers is a gripping thriller, a staggering...
Miracle Creek
Kim, Angie
Paper Book
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel A Time Best Mystery and Thriller Book of All Time The "gripping... page-turner" (Time) hitting all the best of summer reading lists, Miracle Creek is perfect for book clubs and fans of Liane...
Mr. Mercedes : a novel
King, Stephen
Paper Book
Now an AT&T Audience Original Series WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL #1 New York Times bestseller! In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up...
Whipping boy : the forty-year search for my twelve-year-old bully
Kurzweil, Allen.
Paper Book
Winner of the Edgar® Award for Best Fact Crime The true account of one boy's lifelong search for his boarding-school bully. Equal parts childhood memoir and literary thriller, Whipping Boy chronicles prize-winning author Allen Kurzweil's search for his twelve-year-old nemesis,...
Phantom lady : Hollywood producer Joan Harrison, the forgotten woman behind Hitchcock
Lane, Christina
Paper Book
Winner of the Mystery Writers of America's 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Critical/Biographical In 1933, Joan Harrison was a twenty-six-year-old former salesgirl with a dream of escaping both her stodgy London suburb and the dreadful prospect of...
The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America
Larson, Erik.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death. Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an...
Live by night
Lehane, Dennis.
Paper Book
From New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane comes this epic, unflinching tale of the making and unmaking of a gangster in the Prohibition Era of the Roaring Twenties--now a Warner Bros. movie starring Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Zoe Saldana, and Sienna Miller. Meticulously...
Bluebird, bluebird : a novel
Locke, Attica
Paper Book
A "heartbreakingly resonant" thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy-winning Fox TV show Empire (USA Today). "In Bluebird, Bluebird Attica Locke had both mastered the thriller and exceeded it...
Remembering Babylon
Malouf, David
Paper Book
A searing and magnificent picture of Australia at the moment of its foundation, with early settlers staking out their small patch of land and terrified by the harsh and alien continent. Focussing on the hostility between the early British inhabitants and the native Aborigines, Remembering Bablyon...
Tinseltown : murder, morphine, and madness at the dawn of Hollywood
Mann, William J.
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller Edgar Award winner for Best Fact Crime The Day of the Locust meets The Devil in the White City and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true tale of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the creation...
The wicked girls
Marwood, Alex.
Paper Book
"The suspense keeps the pages flying, but what sets this one apart is the palpable sense of onrushing doom." --Stephen King, "The Best Books I Read This Year" The Edgar Award-winning psychological thriller that asks the question: how well can you truly know anyone? ...
Red sparrow : a novel
Matthews, Jason
Paper Book
Now a major motion picture starring Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton! "A great and dangerous spy-game is being played today between Russian intelligence and the CIA. Very few people know about it, but Jason Matthews does, and his thrilling Red Sparrow takes us deep...
The unseeing
Mazzola, Anna
Paper Book
Set in London in 1837, Anna Mazzola's THE UNSEEING is the story of Sarah Gale, a seamstress and mother, sentenced to hang for her role in the murder of Hannah Brown on the eve of her wedding. Perfect for any reader of Sarah Waters or Antonia Hodgson. 'A twisting tale of family...
Rain dogs : a Detective Sean Duffy novel
McKinty, Adrian
Paper Book
Rain Dogs, a stunning installment in the Sean Duffy thriller series, following the Edgar Award-nominated Gun Street Girl, is "another standout in a superior series" (Booklist). It's just the same things over and again for Sean Duffy: riot duty, heartbreak, cases he can...
Bearskin
McLaughlin, James A.
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2019 EDGAR FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL "Bearskin is visceral, raw, and compelling--filled with sights, smells, and sounds truly observed.  It's a powerful debut and an absolute showcase of exceptional prose.  There are very few first novels when I feel compelled to circle...
The destiny of the republic : a tale of madness, medicine and the murder of a president
Millard, Candice.
Paper Book
James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the...
Down the river unto the sea
Mosley, Walter
Paper Book
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel of the Year: bestselling author Walter Mosley "is back with a whole new character to love...As gorgeous a novel as anything he's ever written" (Washington Post).  Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest...
Please see us
Mullen, Caitlin
Paper Book
Winner of the 2021 Edgar Award for Best First Novel In this "beautifully written, thoughtful page-turner" (Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists) from "the next big voice in crime fiction" (Susan Scarf Merrell, author of Shirley...
The sympathizer
Nguyen, Viet Thanh
Paper Book
Now an HBO Limited Series from Executive Producers Park Chan-wook and Robert Downey Jr., Streaming Exclusively on Max Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winner of the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel Winner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence...
Bobby March will live forever
Parks, Alan
Paper Book
WHO IS TO BLAME WHEN NO ONE IS INNOCENT? The papers want blood. The force wants results. The law must be served, whatever the cost. July 1973. The Glasgow drugs trade is booming and Bobby March, the city's own rock-star hero, has just...
The Thomas Berryman number
Patterson, James
Paper Book
Discover James Patterson's stunning debut, an Edgar Award-winning novel of prejudice and murder in the American South. You are about to begin a classic award-winning novel of suspense. When an up-and-coming politician is murdered in a small Southern town,...
The expats : a novel
Pavone, Chris.
Paper Book
The international thriller that Patricia Cornwell says is "bristling with suspense" about an American abroad who finds herself in complex web of intrigue.   Can We Ever Escape Our Secrets?   Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make...
The lineup : the world's greatest crime writers tell the inside story of their greatest detectives
Penzler, Otto.
Paper Book
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...
The Hotel Neversink
Price, Adam O'Fallon
Paper Book
Thirty-one years after workers first broke ground, the magnificent Hotel Neversink in the Catskills finally opens to the public. Then a young boy disappears. This mysterious vanishing--and the ones that follow--will brand the lives of three generations. At the root of it all is Asher...
Resurrection men
Rankin, Ian
Paper Book
The thirteenth Inspector Rebus novel from the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES 'No one in Britain writes better crime novels' Evening Standard 'This is Rankin at his best, and, boy, that's saying something' TIME OUT ...
Girl sleuth : Nancy Drew and the women who created her
Rehak, Melanie.
Paper Book
Aplucky "titian-haired" sleuth solved her first mystery in 1930. Eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women's libbers) to enter the pantheon of American girlhood. As beloved by girls today as...
Bent Road
Roy, Lori.
Paper Book
"A remarkably assured debut novel. Rich and evocative, Lori Roy's voice is a welcome addition to American fiction." -Dennis Lehane For twenty years, Celia Scott has watched her husband, Arthur, hide from the secrets surrounding his sister Eve's death. As a young man, Arthur fled...
Let me die in his footsteps
Roy, Lori.
Paper Book
In the spellbinding and suspenseful Let Me Die in His Footsteps, Edgar Award-winner Lori Roy wrests from a Southern town the secrets of two families touched by an evil that has passed between generations. On a dark Kentucky night in 1952 exactly halfway between her...
A cold day for murder
Stabenow, Dana.
Paper Book
It's December in the Park, and a ranger is missing. It's no great loss to the rest of the Park rats, they figure he's stumbled into a snowbank and will re-emerge come breakup, just in time for the ground to thaw and them to bury him. But when the man sent to look for him also disappears,...
The hour of peril : the secret plot to murder Lincoln before the Civil War
Stashower, Daniel.
Paper Book
"It's history that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller."--Harlan Coben Daniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award-winning author ofThe Beautiful Cigar Girl, uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate...
Teller of tales : the life of Arthur Conan Doyle
Stashower, Daniel.
Paper Book
Winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Biographical Work, this is "an excellent biography of the man who created Sherlock Holmes" (David Walton, The New York Times Book Review)This fresh, compelling biography examines the extraordinary life and strange contrasts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the...
The wicked boy : the mystery of a Victorian child murderer
Summerscale, Kate
Paper Book
Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book!  From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12)...
Vera Wong's unsolicited advice for murderers
Sutanto, Jesse Q.
Paper Book
A USA Today bestseller Edgar Award Winner for Best Original Paperback Audie Award Winner for Mystery Libby Award Winner for Best Mystery A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by...
Fire lover : a true story
Wambaugh, Joseph.
Paper Book
From master crime writer Joseph Wambaugh, the acclaimed author of such classics as The Onion Field and The Choirboys, comes the extraordinary true story of a firefighter who may have been, according to U.S. government profilers, "the most prolific American arsonist of the twentieth...
The last policeman
Winters, Ben H.
Paper Book
As Seen on Today with Hoda & Jenna "A genre-defying blend of crime writing and science fiction." -Alexandra Alter, The New York Times Winner of the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original! What's the point in solving murders if we're...

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