Annal:2007 Macavity Award for Best Nonfiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Macavity Award in the year 2007. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- Macavity Award for Best Nonfiction
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
- Mystery/Suspense books
- Mystery/Suspense authors.
Mystery Muses: 100 Classics That Inspire Today's Mystery Writers
- 2007 Anthony-Critical winner
- 2007 Macavity-Nonfiction winner
- 2006 Agatha–Nonfiction nominee
- Score: 26.57
We asked 100 published writers: “Did a mystery set you on your path to being a writer? Is there a classic mystery that remains important to you today?” This book is the result.
The writers we contacted represent the entire spectrum of the mystery genre, from cozy to hardboiled, from acclaimed veterans to some of the field’s most intriguing newcomers. Young or old, each of these writers reminds us of a basic truism: great writers are great readers first. Their essays reveal the extent to which the discovery of these seminal texts was not just literary inspiration but a life-altering event.
We found it especially endearing to see how often contributors referred not just to a book’s text but to its literal form as well: a particular copy of a particular edition. We are reminded that the power of the printed word derives in part from the fact that it is printed and bound, fixed in both time and place.
In these essays, we’re also reminded of the power of the genre itself. For many writers, their classics represent more than just a bar against which to measure their own work,…
The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder
- 2007 Anthony-Critical nominee
- 2007 Edgar-Fact Crime nominee
- 2007 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
- 2006 Agatha–Nonfiction nominee
- Score: 24.57
A gruesome murder, a stunned city, and Edgar Allan Poe come to life with vivid detail in this shocking true story by award-winning author Daniel Stashower.
On July 28, 1841, the battered body of a young woman was found floating in the Hudson River. It was soon discovered to be the lovely Mary Rogers, a twenty-year-old cigar salesgirl who had gone missing three days earlier. By nightfall, news of the girl’s death had spread and sent Manhattan into a spasm of horror and outrage.
In the months that followed, the gruesome details of the murder pushed American journalism into previously unimagined realms of lurid sensationalism. But despite media pressures, New York City’s unregulated and disjointed police force proved unable to mount an effective investigation, and the crime remained unsolved.
A year after Mary Rogers was murdered, as public interest in the case began to wane, a struggling writer named Edgar Allan Poe decided to take on the case. At the time of the murder, thirty-one-year-old Poe had recently published his groundbreaking detective story “The Murders in…
Don't Murder Your Mystery: 24 Fiction-Writing Techniques to Save Your Manuscript from Turning Up D.O.A.
- 2006 Agatha–Nonfiction winner
- 2007 Anthony-Critical nominee
- 2007 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
- Score: 22.56
A career editor demonstrates why most fiction manuscripts are rapidly rejected. Loaded with positive examples from 140 mystery authors, this well-researched volume shows numerous ways that all writers can dramatically improve their craft and put forth the fresh new voice publishers demand.
Even multi-published pros Margaret Maron, P.J. Parrish, Phil Hardwick, and Kathryn Wall admit to learning new techniques from Don't Murder Your Mystery.
