Annal:2006 Agatha Award for Best First Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Agatha Award in the year 2006. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2006 Agatha–1st Novel winner
- Score: 10.56
Young veterinarian Rachel Goddard’s world begins to crumble when a client’s child screams, “Mommy! I want Mommy!” Instantly Rachel is hurled back in time to a day in her own childhood when her baby sister Michelle uttered the same cry while thunder crashed and rain poured down on them. The unearthed memory feels like a fragment from a nightmare, and Rachel undertakes to discover the reason for the anguish it stirs in her. The heartbreaking truth she uncovers will shatter her world and force her to make an unthinkable choice.
Honora Finkelstein, Susan Smily
- 2006 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.56
The Chef Who Died Sautéing is the first mystery in a series featuring Ariel Quigley, a young English professor who is also an Army veteran, a poet, and a psychic detective who reads Tarot cards and talks to ghosts. Ariel has just moved in with her friend Bernice Wise, a psychotherapist with a large Colonial house in Alexandria, Virginia, college-age twins—and a resident ghost from the pre-Civil War era. Ariel not only begins experiencing ghostly apparitions, but a murder at a famous restaurant nearby throws Ariel into a search for a killer.
Consigned to Death: A Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery
- 2007 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- 2006 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 12.57
Josie Prescott’s friends thought she was nuts when she left her high-paying New York auction house job to live on the beautiful New Hampshire coast. Truth is, Josie wondered herself—nevermind that her peripheral involvement in a high profile price-fixing scandal made the idea of a new start enticing.
And things are looking up—that is, until she gets mixed up in murder, and the eligible but emotionally distant local police chief pegs her as a suspect. Josie suddenly has a lot to lose, and no desire to leave her new life—and the possibility of a little romance—behind. So she sets out to find the killer. After all, Josie is grateful for her second chance…even with a killer on the loose.
Feint of Art: An Annie Kincaid Mystery
- 2006 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.56
The first in a new mystery series starring art-forger-Gone-good Annie Kincaid.
Annie breaks the news to her curator ex-boyfriend Ernst: his museum’s new $15 million Caravaggio is a fake. Then the janitor is killed, Ernst disappears, and a dealer makes off with several Old Master drawings. If she breaks the case using her old connections, Annie can finally pay the rent. But doing so could also draw her back into the underworld of forgers she swore she’d left behind.
Murder on the Rocks: A Gray Whale Inn Mystery
- 2006 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.56
Trading Texas heat for Maine’s tangy salt air, Natalie Barnes risked it all to buy the Gray Whale Inn, a quaint bed and breakfast on Cranberry Island. She adores whipping up her signature blueberry coffee cake and killer cranberry scones for her guests. But when her guests start turning up dead, the police and most of the townspeople think Natalie has added murder to the mix.
Now, Natalie must get cooking to solve the mystery and find the true killer before she loses the Gray Whale Inn. Or her life…
