Edgar Award Winners 
 
Honoring the best mystery fiction sponsored
by the Mystery Writers of America.      
Best Novel 
 2025
 
The In Crowd
by Charlotte Vassell

When two bodies, linked to two different cold cases, are found, Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp, along with his associates, investigates these parallel missing persons cases, finding himself ensnared in the unexpected political machinations of a duke-in-waiting. This is the second book in the Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp series.
2024
 
Flags on the Bayou
by James Lee Burke

Accused of murder, an enslaved woman goes on the run with an abolitionist schoolteacher in the fall of 1863, dodging constables and slave catchers, in the new novel by the New York Times best-selling author.
2023
 
Notes on an Execution
by Danya Kukafka

Told through the women in his life--his mother, his sister-in-law, and the detective who brought him to justice--this gripping and atmospheric work of literary suspense deconstructs the story of a serial killer on death row as he awaits his execution in twelve hours
2022
 
Five Decembers
by James Kestrel

As the Japanese fleet heads undetected towards Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Honolulu police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to a homicide case that will take him across the pacific and change his life forever.
 2021
 
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
by Deepa Anappara

In an award-winning debut based on true events, a 9-year- 
old reality-television enthusiast in India uses crime-show approaches to investigate the disappearance of a classmate, before additional abductions shatter life in his sprawling city home.
 2020
 
The Stranger Diaries
by Elly Griffiths

A first stand-alone mystery by the author of the Ruth Galloway series finds a high school English teacher chronicling her suspicions about the murder of a colleague before discovering a sinister message in her own diary. 
2019
 
Down the River Unto the Sea
by Walter Mosley

Framed by corrupt enemies within the NYPD and forced to serve a decade in prison, private detective Joe King Oliver receives a confession from a woman who helped set him up,  a situation that compels him to investigate his own case at  the same time he assists a black radical journalist who has been wrongly accused of murdering two corrupt cops. 
Best First Novel 
2025

Holy City

by Henry Wise

A deputy sheriff in rural Southern Virginia must weigh his personal guilt and his public duty when an innocent man is arrested in the brutal murder of an old friend and an unpredictable female detective is hired to assist him.
2024
 
The Peacock and the Sparrow
by I. S. Berry

Stationed in Bahrain for his final tour, world-weary CIA spy Shane Collins is ready to return home until he meets a beautiful and enigmatic artist. Before he can win her love, he is caught in the crosshairs of a revolution and must use his skills to navigate a bloody uprising.
2023
 
Don't Know Tough
by Eli Cranor

Trent Powers relocates his family from Anaheim to Arkansas to take over as head coach of the Denton Pirates, a high school football team powered by a volatile but talented running back named Billy Lowe. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his unstable mother's abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, and it's not long before he crosses a line. Instead of punishing him, though, Trent takes Billy into his home, hoping to protect his star player as the Pirates begin their playoff run. But when Billy's stepfather is found murdered, nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the town apart. 
 
2022
 
Deer Season
by Erin Flanagan

Over a weekend a teenage girl goes missing. Hal, a mentally challenged farmhand, returns from a hunting trip with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma Costagan and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of.
2021
 
Please See Us
by Caitlin Mullen

Two young women become unlikely friends during one fateful summer in Atlantic City as mysterious disappearances hit dangerously close to home.
2020 
 
Miracle Creek
by Angie Kim

A dramatic murder trial in the aftermath of an experimental medical treatment and a fatal explosion upends a rural Virginia community where personal secrets and private ambitions complicate efforts to uncover what happened. 
2019
 
Bearskin 
by James A. McLaughlin

Hiding out from the Mexican drug cartels he betrayed in Arizona, Rice More, while protecting a remote forest preserve in Virginian Appalachia, exposes a bear-poaching scheme that revelas his location to the criminals he was running from in the first place. 
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