With Malice Toward All

Malice Domestic today announced its contenders for the 2010 Agatha Awards in the following categories:

Best Novel:
• Stork Raving Mad, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur)
• Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny(Minotaur)
• The Scent of Rain and Lightning, by Nancy Pickard (Ballantine)
• Drive Time, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Mira)
• Truly, Madly, by Heather Webber (St. Martin’s)

Best First Novel:
• The Long Quiche Goodbye, by Avery Aames (Berkley)
• Murder at the PTA, by Laura Alden (Signet)
• Maid of Murder, by Amanda Flower (Five Star)
• Full Mortality, by Sasscer Hill (Wildside Press)
• Diamonds for the Dead, by Alan Orloff (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction:
• The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum (Penguin Press)
• Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making, by John Curran (Harper)
• Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, by Stephen Doyle and David A. Crowder (For Dummies)
• Have Faith in Your Kitchen, by Katherine Hall Page (Orchises Press)
• Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang (Norton)

Best Short Story:
• “Swing Shift,” by Dana Cameron (from Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris; Berkley)
• “Size Matters,” by Sheila Connolly (from Thin Ice, edited by Mark Ammons, Kat Fast, Barbara Ross, and Leslie Wheeler; Level Best Books)
• “Volunteer of the Year,” by Barb Goffman (from Chesapeake Crimes: They Had It Comin’, edited by Marcia Talley; Wildside Press)
• “So Much in Common,” by Mary Jane Maffini (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2010)
• “The Green Cross,” by Elizabeth Zelvin (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, August 2010)

Best Children’s/Young Adult:
• Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer, by John Grisham (Dutton)
• Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus, by R. L. LaFevers (Houghton Mifflin)
• The Agency: A Spy in the House, by Y. S. Lee (Candlewick)
• Virals, by Kathy Reichs (Razorbill)
• The Other Side of Dark, by Sarah Smith (Atheneum)

Winners will be chosen by attendees at the next Malice Domestic convention, which is scheduled for April 29-May 1 in Bethesda, Maryland. An announcement of those award recipients will be made during a banquet on Saturday, April 30.

In addition, author Sue Grafton is to be given Malice Domestic’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and Mystery Readers Journal editor Janet Rudolph will receive its Poirot Award.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)