Annal:1994 Edgar Allan Poe Award® for Best Young Adult

The Name of the Game Was Murder

Joan Lowery Nixon

• 1994 Edgar-Young Adult winner
• Score: 10.44

Novelist Augustus Trevor has written a manuscript that reveals the darkest secrets of his guests. Whoever can solve Trevor’s clues can have his story removed from the book. But when Trevor is bludgeoned to death, the survivors (along with the reader) are challenged to find both the manuscript and the murderer.

Class Trip

Bebe Faas Rice

• 1994 Edgar-Young Adult nominee
• Score: 6.44

The author of Babysitter’s Nightmare offers a tale of suspense on a class outing. After a storm destroys their canoes, Angie Parker and her classmates discover they’re stranded on isolated Shadow Island. One by one, the kids meet horrible deaths. And soon, only the murderer and the final victim will be left on the island.

Help Wanted

Richie Tankersley Cusick

• 1994 Edgar-Young Adult nominee
• Score: 6.44

Cusick’s latest thriller brings to life what every teenager both wants and dreads—the part-time job. When Robin Bailey takes a job as a tutor for Mr. Swanson’s shy daughter, the unreasonable demands soon begin to outweigh the compensation. Eventually Robin’s job becomes her worst nightmare.

Silent Witness: A Jennie McGrady Mystery

Patricia H. Rushford

• 1994 Edgar-Young Adult nominee
• Score: 6.44

Jennie McGrady thinks her vacation is doomed when a bomb threat delays her flight to the dolphin research lab in Florida. But then she meets Sarah, a girl who desperately needs her help to solve a two-year-old murder, and Jennie’s detective instincts tell something is very wrong.

Sarah Stanford has lived in silence since her father’s death. Now she’s beginning to remember what happened the night of his murder—but what if the wrong person finds out she’s a witness?

Scott Chambers is a young, hot-headed environmentalist who teams up with Jennie in the Florida Keys. Unfortunately, Jennie soon finds out he has more than just a passing interest in the case.

Danger lurks just below the surface…

Strange Objects

Gary Crew

• 1994 Edgar-Young Adult nominee
• Score: 6.44

After discovering valuable relics from a seventeenth-century shipwreck, a sixteen-year-old Australian disappears under mysterious circumstances.