Annal:1999 Edgar Allan Poe Award® for Best Young Adult

The Killer's Cousin

Nancy Werlin

• 1999 Edgar-Young Adult winner
• Score: 10.49

Recently acquitted of murder, 17-year-old David has moved to Massachusetts to complete his senior year of high school. His aunt and uncle have offered him shelter—escape from the media’s incessant questions and from the uncertain glances of his neighbors and ex-friends.

His attic apartment doesn’t feel much like a shelter, though. He sees ghostly shadows at night, his aunt is strangely cold, and his 11-year-old cousin Lily is downright hostile. And as Lily’s behavior becomes more and more threatening, David can’t help but wonder what ugly secrets lurk within the walls of Lily’s home.

There’s one thing David knows with certainty. The more he learns about his cousin Lily, the harder it is to avoid thinking about his own past.

Finn

Katharine Jay Bacon

• 1999 Edgar-Young Adult nominee
• Score: 6.49

Though fifteen-year-old Finn’s badly burned hand and broken leg are healing, the traumatic effects of the small-plane crash that killed his parents and sister have left him unable to speak. Psychiatrists have told Finn that to regain the power of speech he must relive each step of the tragedy. Now living with his grandmother on her Vermont farm where he has vacationed all his life and which he loves, he cannot make himself face the horrors of the fatal accident.

Renewing his friendship with Julia, nearly fourteen, helps. A nearby neighbor, she comes each day to train Gran’s new filly. Together, they discover animal—half wolf, half dog—living wild in a dense pine forest on the farm, and it slowly begins to trust Finn after he rescues it from a trap. The routine of their lives is jolted when Finn and Julia discover that drug dealers are using an abandoned dry well in the forest as a, drop for their supplies. Then one day, when Julia is away for a week, Finn finds a packet of cocaine carelessly dropped by a local pusher. Should he try it to gain escape from the torment of his memories?…

For Mike

Shelley Sykes

• 1999 Edgar-Young Adult nominee
• Score: 6.49

Missing: Mike Thayer, 17

When Jeff’s best friend Mike disappears in the fall of their senior year, Jeff starts to doubt everything he’s ever known about their small town, and the familiar people in it. What happened to Mike? Jeff has got to find him. Then Jeff starts to have vivid dreams where he hears Mike say, “Come get me.” Their friend Kirby is in the dreams, too, but Jeff’s afraid to tell him. For with every dream, Jeff feels the power of his bond to Mike, and he also sees that Mike may have had another life, one that Jeff knew nothing about.

PaperQuake: A Puzzle

Kathryn Reiss

• 1999 Edgar-Young Adult nominee
• Score: 6.49

While helping her sisters clean up a building that their parents are renovating, an aftershock of a recent earthquake dislodges a decades-old letter written to Baby V—and Violet is certain that somehow it has been written to her. As more and more mysterious writings from the past tumble into Violet’s hands, she and her sisters begin to delve into historical documents and newspaper articles from the 1900s—including the accounts of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—in an attempt to unravel the mystery. But as the present earthquakes increase in frequency, the girls realize that their time is running out….

The Maze

Will Hobbs

• 1999 Edgar-Young Adult nominee
• Score: 6.49

Just fourteen, Rick Walder is alone, on the run, and desperate. Stowing away in the back of a truck, he suddenly finds himself at a dead end, out in the middle of nowhere. The Maze. In this surreal landscape of stark redrock spires and deep sandstone canyons, Rick stumbles into the remote camp of Lon Perigrino, a bird biologist who is releasing fledgling California condors back into the wild. Intrigued by the endangered condors and the strange bearded man dedicated to saving them, Rick decides to stay on. When two men with a vicious dog drive up in a battered old Humvee, Rick discovers that Lon and his birds are in grave danger. Will he be able to save them?

In a heart-stopping adventure infused with the spirit of the Icarus myth and a boy’s dreams of flight, Will Hobbs brings readers a unique tale of identity, personal growth, and friendship.