Winners were announced yesterday for the 2026 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television, and sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America.
Best Novel: The Big Empty by Robert Crais (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Best First Novel by an American Author: Dead Money by Jakob Kerr (Bantam Books)
Best Paperback Original: The Backwater by Vikki Wakefield (Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks)
Best Fact Crime: Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Press)
Best Critical/Biographical: Edgar Allan Poe: A Life by Richard Kopley (University of Virginia Press)
Best Short Story: "Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush" by Dave Zeltserman, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September-October 2025 (Must Read Books Publishing)
Best Juvenile: Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson (Scholastic Press)
Best Young Adult: Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers)
Best Television Episode Teleplay: "Pilot," Paradise, written by Dan Fogelman (Hulu)
Other Awards
Robert L. Fish Memorial Award: "How It Happened" by Billie Kay Fern, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July-August 2025 (Must Read Books Publishing)
The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award: All This Could Be Yours by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Minotaur Books)
The G.P. Putnam's Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award: Gone in the Night by Joanna Schaffhausen (Minotaur Books)
The Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award: A Senior Citizen's Guide to Life on the Run by Gwen Florio (Severn House)
Special Awards (announced in January)
Grand Master: Donna Andrews and Lee Child
Raven Award: Book Passage, Corte Madera, Calif.
Ellery Queen Award: John Scognamiglio, Kensington Books