The Century Project: Fiction, 1900-1999, Pt. 3: The 1920s

--by Hanje Richards

The Century Project: Part 3, Fiction from the 1920s

The Copper Queen Library is the oldest library in Arizona. I often tell visitors this fact, and it got me thinking… We have intentionally kept a lot of old books here in our lovely old building. We have a lot of books that were published in the early years of the 1900s, as well as mid century and all the way to the end of the century still on our shelves.

Here are some of the books from our collection published in the 1920s that have become classics.

Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton) –The story, set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s, was warmly received when it was first published, and as recently as this year, New York Magazine critic Sam Anderson named it "the single greatest New York novel." The Age of Innocence centers on an upper-class couple's impending marriage and the introduction of a woman plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s New York society, it never devolves into outright condemnation: Not to be overlooked is Wharton's attention to detailing the charms and customs of the upper caste. The novel is lauded for its accurate portrayal of how the 19th-century East Coast American upper class lived, and this, combined with the social tragedy, earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize in 1921 – the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque) – Written in 1928, this novel tells the story of Paul Bäumer, a soldier who – urged on by his school teacher – joins the German army shortly after the start of World War I. Bäumer arrives at the Western Front with his friends and schoolmates. There they meet Stanislaus Katczinsky, an older soldier, nicknamed Kat, who becomes Paul's mentor. While fighting at the front, Bäumer and his comrades have to engage in frequent battles and endure the dangerous and often squalid conditions of warfare. The author was himself a German veteran of World War I, and his novel describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of those soldiers upon returning home from the front.

Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis) - First published in 1922, this novel is largely a satire of American culture, society, and behavior, critiquing the vacuity of middle-class American life and its pressure on individuals toward conformity. Babbitt is professionally successful as a realtor but lives with only the vaguest awareness of the lives and deaths of his contemporaries. Much of his energy in the beginning is spent on climbing the social ladder through booster functions, real estate sales, and making good with various dignitaries. Lewis paints humorous scenes of Babbitt foolishly bartering for liquor (illegal at the time because of Prohibition), hosting dinner parties, and taking clients to view property. All of this is juxtaposed against backdrops of Babbitt's incessant materialism and his growing discontent.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Thornton Wilder) – This is the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru and the events that lead up to their presence the bridge. A friar who has witnessed the tragic accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928.

Death Comes for the Archbishop (Willa Cather) - The primary character in this 1927 novel is Bishop Jean Marie Latour, who travels with his friend and vicar Joseph Vaillant from Sandusky, Ohio to New Mexico to take charge of the newly established Diocese of New Mexico, which has only just become a territory of the United States. The names given to the main proponents reflect their characters. Vaillant, valiant, is fearless in his promulgation of the faith, whereas Latour, the tower, is more intellectual and reserved than his comrade. At the time of their departure, Cincinnati is the end of the railway line west, so Vaillant and Latour must travel by riverboat to the Gulf of Mexico, and thence overland to New Mexico, a journey which takes an entire year. Vaillant spends the rest of his life establishing the Roman Catholic Church in New Mexico, where he dies in old age.

The Enormous Room (e.e. cummings) – This 1922 autobiographical novel by the poet and novelist e. e. cummings tells the story of his temporary imprisonment in France during World War I. cummings served as an ambulance driver during the War. In late August 1917, his friend and colleague, William Slater Brown (known in the book only as B.), was arrested by French authorities as a result of anti-war sentiments B. had expressed in some letters. When questioned, cummings stood by his friend and was also arrested.

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) – First published in 1925, the novel takes place following World War I and is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from Spring to Autumn of 1922. It is widely regarded as a paragon of the Great American Novel and as a literary classic. Post-war American society enjoyed prosperity during the "Roaring '20s" as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers, including at least one in Nick Carraway’s circle. Carraway, having graduated from Yale and fought in World War I, has returned home to begin a career. He is restless and has decided to move to New York to learn the bond business. The novel opens early in the summer of 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, where Nick has rented a house. Next to his place is mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby's mansion…

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (D.H. Lawrence) - The first edition of this novel was printed in Florence, Italy in 1928; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an aristocratic woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of (at the time) unprintable words. The story is said to have originated from events in Lawrence's own unhappy domestic life, and he took inspiration for the settings of the book from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, where he grew up. Lawrence at one time considered calling the novel Tenderness and made significant alterations to the text and story in the process of its composition. It has been published in three different versions.

Look Homeward, Angel (Thomas Wolfe) – Published in 1929, this is Wolfe's first novel, and it is considered highly autobiographical. The character of Eugene Gant is generally believed to be a depiction of Wolfe himself. The novel covers the span of time from Gant's birth to age 19. The setting is the town of Altamont, Catawba, a fictionalization of his home town, Asheville, North Carolina. Wolfe is often characterized as a romantic due to the power of his emotionally charged, sprawling style. Look Homeward, Angel is written in a "stream of consciousness" narrative reminiscent of Joyce.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie) - This 1926 work of detective fiction is one of Agatha Christie's best known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. The book is set in the fictional village of King's Abbott in England. It is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot's assistant (a role filled by Captain Hastings in several other Poirot novels). The story begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow who is rumored to have murdered her husband. Her death is initially believed to be an accident until Roger Ackroyd, a widower who had been expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars, reveals that she admitted to killing her husband and then committed suicide. Shortly after this, Ackroyd himself is found murdered...

Passage to India (E. M. Forster) – This novel is set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian Independence Movement in the 1920s. Published in 1926, the story revolves around four characters: Dr. Aziz; his British friend, Mr. Cyril Fielding; Mrs. Moore; and Ms. Adela Quested. During a trip to the Marabar Caves, Adela accuses Aziz of attempting to assault her. Aziz' trial, and its run-up and aftermath, bring out all the racial tensions and prejudices between indigenous Indians and the British colonists who rule India.

Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse) - Combining autobiographical and psychoanalytic elements, the novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the steppes. The story, published in German in 1927 and in English in 1929, in large part reflects a profound crisis in Hesse's spiritual world, memorably portraying the protagonist's split between his humanity and his wolf-like aggression and homelessness. The novel became an international success, although Hesse would later claim that the book was largely misunderstood. The book is presented as a manuscript by its protagonist, a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. To it, the acquaintance adds a short preface of his own and then has the manuscript published. The title of this "real" book-in-the-book is Harry Haller's Records (For Madmen Only).

The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway) – This 1926 tale is about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work," and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his "most important novel."

To The Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf) - A landmark 1927 novel of high modernism, the text, centering on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully manipulates temporal and psychological elements. It follows and extends the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, where the plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls the power of childhood emotions and highlights the impermanence of adult relationships. Among the book's many tropes and themes are loss, subjectivity, and the problem of perception.

The Trial (Franz Kafka) - One of Kafka's best-known works, this 1925 novel tells the story of senior bank clerk Josef K., who is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime on his thirtieth birthday. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting and do not take him away, leaving him at home to await instructions from the Committee of Affairs. On the last day of K.'s thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has already guessed his fate. They lead him to a quarry where he is expected to kill himself, but he cannot. The two men then execute him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!"

Ulysses (James Joyce) - One of the most important works of Modernist literature, this 1922 novel has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement..." Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day – June 16, 1904. The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinized into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and Joyce's novel (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus).

Winnie-the-Pooh (A.A. Milne) - Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first “Winnie” stories appeared in 1926 in Winnie-the-Pooh, followed by The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a teddy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin Milne, who was the basis for the character Christopher Robin. Christopher's toys also lent their names to most of the other characters. Christopher Milne had named his toy bear after Winnie, a Canadian black bear which he often saw at London Zoo, and "Pooh," a swan they had met while on holiday.

Women in Love (D.H. Lawrence) - Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen are two sisters living in the Midlands of England in the 1910s. Ursula is a teacher, Gudrun an artist. They meet two men who live nearby, school inspector Rupert Birkin and coal-mine heir Gerald Crich. The four become friends. Ursula and Birkin become involved, and Gudrun eventually begins a love affair with Gerald. All four are deeply concerned with questions of society, politics, and the relationship between men and women. At a party at Gerald's estate, Gerald's sister Diana drowns. Gudrun becomes the teacher and mentor of his youngest sister. Soon, Gerald's coal-mine-owning father dies as well, after a long illness. As with most of Lawrence's works, Women in Love, published in 1920, caused controversy over its sexual subject matter. One early reviewer said of it, "I do not claim to be a literary critic, but I know dirt when I smell it, and here is dirt in heaps – festering, putrid heaps which smell to high Heaven."

A New Way to Download Audiobooks

You probably know that you can download audiobooks from the library through our Online Catalog (just search "downloadable audiobooks" and you'll see a list of 3,450+ titles!), and lots of you have probably already used the service.

We wanted to let you know that you'll see a few changes the next time you download an audiobook, because last week, we received notice that our previous vendor, NetLibrary, had been purchased by EBSCO. This is actually good news -- because we already use other EBSCO services, and their search screens are familiar -- but it does mean a few changes for listeners used to using NetLibrary.

Here's what's changed:

When you find a book you want to download from the Online Catalog and click on its link, you'll be connected to the new EBSCO site, not the old NetLibrary site. The EBSCO site will ask you: 1) to create an account (you can choose any username & password); and, 2) to download the EBSCO Download Manager (DM) in order to check out a book.

If you've been using NetLibrary, you already have their Download Manager installed, but it won't work with the EBSCO platform. Not to worry, though -- it should only take a few minutes to install EBSCO's new DM and start listening to your first EBSCO audiobook.

In a few cases, you might have to update your computer's .Net framework software before you can install the new DM. If so, EBSCO lets you know -- and they even provide a link!

Once the EBSCO Download Manager's in place, you're ready to start downloading and listening to your audiobook -- on your PC, on your Windows Media Player-enabled portable device, or on your iPhone or iPod. By the way, once you're signed into the EBSCO Audiobooks database, you can continue browsing for titles and download up to 10 at a time for three weeks -- FREE! How cool is that?

EBSCO also promises additional apps coming soon for listening to audiobooks on iPads and Android-enabled devices.

For more information, or for help using EBSCO Audiobooks, please call the library at 432-4232.

The Century Project: Fiction, 1900-1999, Pt. 2: The 1910s

--by Hanje Richards

The Century Project: Part 2, Fiction from the 1910s

The Copper Queen Library is the oldest continuously-operating public library in Arizona. I often tell visitors this fact, and it got me thinking… We have intentionally kept a lot of old books here in our lovely old building. We have a lot of books that were published in the early years of the 1900s, as well as mid-century books and titles all the way to the end of the century still on our shelves.

Our blogs and displays often focus on the new and contemporary, but what about all the history that is contained in the books on our shelves as well as in this wonderful 100+ year old building?

To create the lists of book featured in the Century Project, I used a list called Most Influential Fiction of the 20th Century, selected by librarians and published in the November 15, 1998 issue of Library Journal, as well as 100 Most Influential Books of the Century and Books That Didn’t Quite Make It, both compiled by the Boston Public Library.I compared these lists with titles on the shelves of The Copper Queen Library and look forward to sharing what I discovered. Here is Part 2, which features some of the books in our collection that were published between 1910-1919 and have become classics.


Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton) – This novel is set in a fictional New England town of Starkfield, where an unnamed narrator tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with dreams and desires that end in an ironic turn of events. The narrator tells the story based on an account from observations at Frome's house when he had to stay there during a winter storm.

The Good Soldier (Ford Maddox Ford) – Handsome, wealthy, and a veteran of service in India, Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal “good soldier” and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues. But for Ford, he also represents the corruption at society’s core. Beneath Ashburnham’s charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal. Throughout the nine years of his friendship with an equally privileged American, John Dowell, Ashburnham has been having an affair with Dowell’s wife, Florence. Unlike Dowell, Ashburnham’s own wife, Leonora, is well aware of it...

My Antonia (Willa Cather) – First published 1918, this novel, the final book of her "prairie trilogy" (the companion volumes being O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark) is considered one Cather’s greatest novels. The narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the Shimerdas, when he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia's life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, through that lens.

O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) – Here, Cather tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants in the farm country near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century. The main character, Alexandra Bergson, inherits the family farmland when her father dies, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when other immigrant families are giving up and leaving the prairie. The novel is also concerned with two romantic relationships, one between Alexandra and family friend Carl Linstrum and another between Alexandra's brother Emil and the married Marie Shabata. The book is number 83 on the American Library Association's list of “most frequently banned or challenged books.”

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce) – This semi-autobiographical novel was first serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915 and published first in book format during 1916. The story describes the formative years of the life of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology, Daedalus. Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally goes abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. The work is an early example of some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later be represented in a more developed manner by Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. The novel, which has had a "huge influence on novelists across the world," was ranked by Modern Library as "the third greatest English-language novel of the 20th century."

Remembrance of Things Past (Marcel Proust) – This novel in seven volumes is Proust’s most prominent work. It is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The complete story contains nearly 1.5 million words and is one of the longest novels in world literature. The novel has had great influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. Proust explores the themes of time, space, and memory, but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic, and thematic possibilities.

Tarzan of the Apes (Edgar Rice Burroughs) – First published in All-Story Magazine in October 1912 and as a book in 1914, this is the first in a series of books about the title character, Tarzan. So popular was the character that Burroughs continued the series into the 1940s with two dozen sequels. The novel tells the story of John Clayton, born in the western coastal jungles of equatorial Africa to a marooned couple from England. Adopted as an infant by the she-ape Kala after his parents die (his father is killed by the savage king ape Kerchak), Clayton is named "Tarzan" ("White Skin" in the ape language) and raised in ignorance of his human heritage.

Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson) – This short story cycle is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard from childhood to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man. Based loosely on the author's childhood memories of Clyde, Ohio, the book consists of twenty-two stories, each sharing a specific character's past and present struggle to overcome the loneliness and isolation that seems to permeate the town. Stylistically, because of its emphasis on the psychological insights of characters over plot, and plain-spoken prose, Winesburg, Ohio is known as one of the earliest Modern fictional works.

The Century Project: Fiction, 1900-1999, Pt. 1: The 1900s

--by Hanje Richards

The Century Project: Part 1, Fiction from the 1900s


The Copper Queen Library is the oldest continuously-operating public library in Arizona. I often tell visitors this fact, and it got me thinking… We have intentionally kept a lot of old books here in our lovely old building. We have a lot of books that were published in the early years of the 1900s, as well as mid-century books and titles all the way to the end of the century still on our shelves.

Our blogs and displays often focus on the new and contemporary, but what about all the history that is contained in the books on our shelves as well as in this wonderful 100+ year old building?

To create the lists of book featured in the Century Project, I used a list called Most Influential Fiction of the 20th Century, selected by librarians and published in the November 15, 1998 issue of Library Journal, as well as 100 Most Influential Books of the Century and Books That Didn’t Quite Make It, both compiled by the Boston Public Library.

I compared these lists with titles on the shelves of The Copper Queen Library and look forward to sharing what I discovered. Here is Part 1, which features some of the books in our collection that were published between 1900-1909 and have become classics.

The Ambassadors (Henry James) – Written in 1903, this novel was originally published as a serial in the North American Review (NAR). This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James' final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiancée's supposedly wayward son; he is to bring the young man back to the family business, but he encounters unexpected complications. The third-person narrative is told exclusively from Strether's point of view.

The Call of the Wild (Jack London) – Published in 1903, this novel tells the story of a previously-domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, in which sled dogs were bought at generous prices. The Call of the Wild is London's most-read book, and it is generally considered his best, the masterpiece of his so-called "early period." Because the protagonist is a dog, it is sometimes classified as a juvenile novel, suitable for children, but it is dark in tone and contains numerous scenes of cruelty and violence.


The Golden Bowl (Henry James) - This 1904 novel set in England is a complex, intense study of marriage and adultery, completing what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career. It explores the tangle of interrelationships among a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on the consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail but also with powerful insight. The title is a quotation from Ecclesiastes 12:6, "…or the golden bowl be broken, …then shall the dust return to the earth as it was."

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle) - The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialized in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound. Sherlock Holmes is the famed 221B Baker Street detective with a keen eye, acute intelligence and logical mind. He is observation and intuition personified, and although he takes a back seat to Watson for much of this particular adventure, we always feel his presence. In the end, it takes all of his legendary crime-solving powers to identify the ingenious killer, save the life of the next intended victim, and solve the Baskerville mystery.

The Jungle (Upton Sinclair) - The Jungle was written about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century. Although Sinclair originally intended to focus on industrial labor and working conditions, food safety became the most pressing issue. Sinclair's account of workers' falling into rendering tanks and being ground, along with animal parts, into "Durham's Pure Leaf Lard" gripped public attention. The morbidity of the working conditions, as well as the exploitation of children and women alike that Sinclair exposed, showed the corruption taking place inside the meat packing factories. Foreign sales of American meat fell by one-half. This novel is considered a classic and is an important example of the muckraking tradition of journalism.

A Room With A View (E. M. Forster) – This is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster about a young woman in the repressed culture of Edwardian England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. The main themes include repressed sexuality, freedom from institutional religion, growing up, and true love. It is written in the third person omniscient voice, though particular passages are often seen "through the eyes" of a specific character. Forster's most romantic and optimistic book, he utilizes many of his trademark techniques, including contrasts between "dynamic" and "static" characters. "Dynamic" characters are those whose ideas and inner-self develop or change in the plot, whereas "static" characters remain constant. Forster differentiates between conservative and radical thinking, illustrated in part by his contrasts between Medieval and Renaissance characters, wherein Lucy personifies the young and impressionable generation emerging during the time that women's suffrage would gain strong ground.

Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser) – This novel tells the story of a country girl who moves to the big city where she starts realizing her own American Dream by first becoming a mistress to men that she perceives as superior and, later, as a famous actress. It has been called the "greatest of all American urban novels.” Sister Carrie went against social norms of the time with its supposed immorality, as Dreiser presented his characters without judging them. Dreiser fought against censorship of Sister Carrie, a main issue being that Carrie engaged in affairs and other “illicit sexual relationships” without suffering any consequences. This flouted the norm of the time that should characters practice such sinful behavior, they must be punished in some way throughout the course of the plot in order to teach a lesson.

The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame) – This story is a classic of children's literature, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphized animal characters in a pastoral version of England. It is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie. In 1908, Grahame retired from his position as secretary of the Bank of England, moved back to Cookham, Berkshire (where he had been brought up), and spent his time by the River Thames doing much as the animal characters in his book do — namely, as one of the most famous phrases from the book says, "simply messing about in boats" — and wrote down the bed-time stories he had been telling his son Alistair.

Wonderful World of Oz (L. Frank Baum) - A children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow, OZ has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of both the 1902 stage play and the 1939 film version. The story chronicles the adventures of a girl named Dorothy in the Land of Oz. Historians, economists, and literary scholars have examined and developed possible political interpretations of The Wonderful World of Oz, but the majority of the reading public simply takes the story at face value.

ITW Announces 2011 Thriller Awards

During a gala banquet and celebration held on Saturday, July 9, at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, the International Thriller Writers announced the winners of the 2011 Thriller Awards. They are:

Best Hard Cover Novel: BAD BLOOD: A VIRGIL FLOWERS NOVEL, John Sandford - When 19-year-old Bob Tripp hits farmer Jacob Flood in the head with a T-ball bat at the outset of Sandford's exciting fourth thriller to feature Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers (after Rough Country), Tripp's subsequent attempt to make murder look like an accident fails. The morning after Tripp's arrest, he's found hanging in his cell. Warren County sheriff Lee Coakley seeks Flowers's help to investigate what role, if any, deputy Jim Crocker, the officer on duty at the jail at the time, played in Tripp's death. A link to the earlier murder of a young woman leads Flowers and Coakley to members of a small church with strange ways. As the pair become aware of the magnitude of the unspeakable crimes behind the deaths, they search desperately for a lever to pry open what turns out to be Flowers's biggest, if perhaps most unlikely, case to date.

Best Paperback Original Novel: THE COLD ROOM, J.T. Ellison - Fusing gritty cop drama with dark psychological thriller, Ellison distinguishes herself with exceptional character development, consistently breakneck pacing and a sense of authenticity throughout. Her fourth Taylor Jackson thriller finds a serial killer murdering young women in both the United States and Europe. Such an international crime brings New Scotland Yard Detective/profiler James Memphis Highsmythe into the investigation, causing an unexpected hitch in homicide detective Jackson's romantic involvement with fiance FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin. But personal feelings or no, the trio must pool their resources to find the serial killer known as the Conductor in the United States and Il Macellaio across the Atlantic, before he can strike again.

Best First Novel: STILL MISSING, Chevy Stevens - On the day she was abducted, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old realtor, had three goals — sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever-patient boyfriend. The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she's about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all. Interwoven with the story of the year Annie spent as the captive of a psychopath in a remote mountain cabin, which unfolds through sessions with her psychiatrist, is a second narrative recounting events following her escape —her struggle to piece her shattered life back together and the ongoing police investigation into the identity of her captor. Still Missing is that rare debut find — a shocking, visceral, brutal and beautifully crafted debut novel.

Best Short Story: "THE GODS FOR VENGEANCE CRY," Richard Helms - Published in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in November 2010, this is a new Pat Gallegher story. In this one, Gallegher travels to a flyspeck town in North Carolina called Prosperity to search for the parents of a woman who was killed in New Orleans. There, he teams up with Judd Wheeler, the protagonist from Helms' new novel, Six Mile Creek, to delve into the woman's troubled past in her hometown, and whether it may be linked to her tragic death.

Also receiving special recognition during the ThrillerFest VI Awards Banquet:

R.L. Stine, Thriller Master, in recognition of his legendary career and outstanding contributions to the thriller genre

Joe McGinniss, True Thriller Award

Karin Slaughter, Silver Bullet Award