Award Winners 2009
- Breath and Bone
Berg, Carol
Caught between the maneuverings of the enigmatic Osriel, bastard prince of Evanore, and apocalypse priestess Sila Diaglou, Valen must determine which perceived villain is less evil.
2009 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Fiction - Blue Heaven
Box, C. J.
Siblings Annie and William Taylor witness a gruesome murder in the woods outside the town of Kootenai Bay, nicknamed Blue Heaven for its abundance of retired LAPD officers. Annie and William make a run for it after they're spotted by the killers, a group of crooked LAPD cops who retired to Idaho eight years earlier after pulling a heist in California that left a man dead. Rancher Jess Rawlins becomes the children's only hope of survival after they take refuge in his barn.
2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Larsson, Stieg
Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. He is offered a chance to resurrect his name by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching an unsolved four-decade-old disappearance. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues.
2009 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery - The Bishop's Man
MacIntyre, Linden
Father Duncan MacAskill has spent most of his priesthood as the "Exorcist" - an enforcer employed by his bishop to discipline wayward priests and suppress potential scandal. He knows all the devious ways that lonely priests persuade themselves that their needs trump their vows, but he's about to be sorely tested himself.
2009 Giller Prize - Wolf Hall
Mantel, Hilary
Henry VIII's challenge to the church's power with his desire to divorce his queen and marry Anne Boleyn set off a tidal wave of religious, political and societal turmoil that reverberated throughout 16th-century Europe. The story is told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, the lowborn man who became one of Henry's closest advisers.
2009 Man Booker Prize - Netherland
O'Neill, Joseph
After 9/11, Hans--a banker originally from the Netherlands--finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country.
2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction - The Mistress of Nothing
Pullinger, Kate
A maid takes to her mistress's new Egyptian lifestyle too well, grasping more than she should until she is reminded of her true position in life.
2009 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction - The Edge of Impropriety
Rosenthal, Pam
The ribald private life of novelist Countess Marina Wyatt is the stuff of public scandal- and it doesn't hurt the sale of her romances either. But she's totally unprepared for her consuming new affair with Jasper James Hedges, noted art appraiser and her former lover's uncle.
2009 RITA Award for Best Historical Romance - Anathem
Stephenson, Neal
Arbre, is a planet where scientists, philosophers and mathematicians-a religious order unto themselves-have been cloistered behind concent (convent) walls. Their role is to nurture all knowledge while safeguarding it from the vagaries of the outside world. Among the monastic scholars is 19-year-old Raz, collected into the concent at age eight. When extraterrestrial catastrophe looms, Raz and his teenage companions are summoned to save the world.
2009 Locus Award for SF Novel - Olive Kitteridge
Strout, Elizabeth
Designed as a collection of short stories, this novel takes Olive from young adulthood to her senior years.
2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction