Best Hardcover Novel – Spilled Blood by Brian Freeman – two Minnesota towns in an epic battle, and there’s only the daughters paying the price . . . one with her life!
She got out of her car and stood like the last girl on earth in the center of the old main street. She studied her stricken Mustang, which was covered with a film of dust. The flabby rubber on the left rear tire looked like melted ice cream. On either side of her, the remains of a half-dozen decaying buildings loomed behind boarded-up doors and No Trespassing signs. The buildings were interspersed with weedy, overgrown lots, like missing teeth in a rotting smile.
Best Paperback Original – Lake Country by Sean Doolittle – a Minnesota architect falls asleep driving, and there’s only the daughters paying the price . . . one with her life!
He opened his door and got out. It was a clean night, scrubbed fresh by the rain. The cloud cover had pulled apart in spots overhead, showing starry black patches here and there, and the moon looked like a puddle of silver on the water.
Best First Novel – The 500 by Matthew Quirk – for a moment I thought the contest winners might have created a Midwestern juggernaut, but The 500 isn’t set in Indianapolis, it’s in the nation’s capital, and the 500 are “the elite men and women who really run Washington—and the world.” Oh-kaaaay. Sounds powerful.
Best e-Book Original Novel – Blind Faith by C. J. Lyons – this book (not her first) debuted at #2 on the NYT bestsellers list, and her own story—from pediatric Emergency Room doc to best-selling author is a good read, too. In the novel, a woman has watched the killer of her husband and son die by lethal injection, but she seeks closure, so returns to their remote Adirondack mountain home and . . . C.J.’s tagline is “thrillers with heart.”
Nominated in the “Best First Novel” category was the much-better-than-average The Expats, by Chris Pavone, which is among a number of thrillers I’ve read and listened to so far this year. You’ll find brief reviews of all of them in Reading . . .