Annal:1999 Agatha Award for Best First Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Agatha Award in the year 1999. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Murder, With Peacocks: A Meg Langslow Mystery
- 2000 Anthony-1st Novel winner
- 2000 Barry-1st Novel winner
- 1999 Agatha–1st Novel winner
- 2000 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 36.5
Donna Andrews introduces a cast of quirky characters who will pull her heroine in different directions as she plans three successive summer weddings.
When Meg Langslow is roped into being a bridesmaid for the nuptials of her mother, her brother’s fiancee, and her own best friend, she is apprehensive. Getting the brides to chose their outfits and those of their bridesmaids (and not change their minds three days later), trying to capture the principals long enough to work out details, and even finding peacocks to strut around the garden during the ceremony—these…
Circles of Confusion: A Claire Montrose Mystery
- 2000 Anthony-1st Novel nominee
- 1999 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 12.5
Why did dear departed Aunt Cady have an exquisite old painting buried beneath World War II paraphernalia? And how can a painting so dramatically shift Claire’s perspective on everything from her uninspired love life to her ho-hum job in the Oregon state custom license plate division?
MSTBF8
(must be fate)
A sophisticated art expert tells Claire the painting isn’t valuable. Why, then, is she being followed, her hotel room getting ransacked, and her life being thrown in a state of havoc that reaches back to her quiet home in Portland? The closer…
- 2000 Anthony-1st Novel nominee
- 2000 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- 1999 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 18.5
Families: Can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em…
The beleaguered daughter of eccentric Hollywood stars, mystery writer Tracy Eaton is no stranger to wacky people, especially within her family. So when her sister-in-law’s wedding becomes a three-ring circus, Tracy is nonplussed, even when the bride is kidnapped.
Her snoot, bickering in-laws refuse to call the police and insist on paying the ransom, but Tracy knows that if justice is gong to prevail, it will definitely need her help. Because…the groom is riding around in a bulletproof limo; sweet, lovable…
- 1999 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.49
Pat Montella is summoned from her dreary office job in suburban Pennsylvania by an unusual request from a stranger: Ninety-one-year-old Magnolia Shelby wants to bequeath to Pat in her will her house and acreage in rural Virginia, and the only condition is that Pat visit during the first week of May to learn what this is all about.
What she finds is Bell Run, a Civil-War-era estate and battle ground inhabited by the enigmatic Miss Maggie, a retired history teacher with a passion for the Civil War. And that’s not all, for just as Pat begins to get the lay of the…
Sing It to Her Bones: A Hannah Ives Mystery
- 1999 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.49
Launching a compelling new series, Talley introduces Hannah Ives, who is recovering from breast cancer at the home of her sister-in-law on Chesapeake Bay. She stumbles onto the decomposed body of a girl who disappeared from a high school dance almost ten years earlier. When Hannah starts asking questions, she discovers a town determined to make sure the past remains untouched.
