The Macavity Award for Best Novel has been awarded since 1987.
1987
A Taste for Death by P. D. James
A Taste for Death by P. D. JamesCall Number: Fiction J28d v.7 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780394555836
Publication Date: 1986-10-12
Adam Dalgliesh and his two young assistants search for clues in the deaths of two men found in the vestry of a London church--one rich and elegant, the other an alcoholic tramp.
1988
Marriage is Murder by Nancy Pickard
Marriage Is Murder (Jenny Cain #4) by Pickard, NancyCall Number: FIC PICKA NAN C4 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781416586869
Publication Date: 2007-11-14
While dealing with their own pre-nuptial jitters, Jenny Cain and police detective Geof Bushfield try to solve three cases in which the husbands of battered wives were shot dead, no guns were found, and none of the wives confessed.
1989
A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman
A Thief of Time by Tony HillermanCall Number: Fiction H652L v.8
ISBN: 9780060159382
Publication Date: 1988-06-01
A noted anthropologist arrives at an Anasazi Indian ruin to dig for clay pots and is terrified by what looms out of the darkness. Weeks later she is reported missing. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn unearths a bizarre and mystifying series of murders.
1990
A Little Class on Murder by Carolyn Hart
1991
If Ever I Return Pretty Peggy-O by Sharyn McCrumb
If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy O (Ballad novel #1) by McCrumb, SharynCall Number: FIC MCRUM SHA B1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780345369062
Publication Date: 1991-08-13
The first novel of the acclaimed "Ballard" series. When 1960's folk singer Peggy Muryan moves to a small Tennessee town seeking solitude, terror follows her--and so does trouble for the town's sheriff.
1992
I. O. U. by Nancy Pickard
I. O. U. (Jenny Cain #7) by Pickard, NancyCall Number: FIC PICKA NAN C7 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781416583721
Publication Date: 2007-10-19
After lying for years in a coma in a psychiatric hospital, Jenny's mother dies. At her funeral someone whispers a mysterious message in Jenny's ear. Jenny tries to discover the events in her family's past that led to her mother's mental collapse, but she is stonewalled by an old boy network.
1993
Bootlegger's Daughter by Margaret Maron
Bootlegger's Daughter (Deborah Knott mystery #1) by Maron, MargaretCall Number: FIC MARON MAR K1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780998474014
Publication Date: 2017-11-30
Deborah Knott, an attorney attempting to infiltrate the old boy network of tobacco country by running for district judge, is distracted from the race, and almost eliminated, when she finds new evidence to an old small-town murder.
1994
The Sculptress by Minette Walters
1995
She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb
1996
Under the Beetle's Cellar by Mary Willis Walker
Under the Beetle's Cellar by Mary Willis WalkerCall Number: Fiction W183u (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780385468596
Publication Date: 1995-08-01
Kidnapped by a cult of religious fanatics, an Austin school bus driver and eleven of his young charges have been held underground at the group's highly fortified compound for forty-six days. While a team of federal negotiators begins to lose all hope of rescuing the hostages, crime reporter Molly Cates sets outto discover everything she can about the cult's iron-willed leader, Samuel Mordecai.
1997
Bloodhounds by Peter Lovesey
1998
Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie
1999
Blood Work by Michael Connelly
Blood Work by Michael ConnellyCall Number: Fiction C7523c (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780316153997
Publication Date: 1998-03-02
When Graciella Rivers steps onto his boat, ex-FBI agent Terrell McCaleb has no idea he's about to come out of retirement. He's recuperating from a heart transplant and avoiding anything stressful. But when Graciella tells him the way her sister, Gloria, was murdered, Terry realizes he has no choice. Now the man with the new heart vows to take down a predator without a soul. For Gloria's killer shatters every rule that McCaleb ever learned in his years with the Bureau-as McCaleb gets no more second chances at life...and just one shot at the truth.
2000
The Flower Master by Sujata Massey
2001
A Place of Execution by Val McDermid
A Place of Execution by McDermid, ValCall Number: FIC MDERM VAL PL (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780312644536
Publication Date: 2009-10-27
On a freezing day in December 1963, Alison Carter vanishes from her rural village, an insular community that distrusts the outside world. For the young George Bennett, a newly promoted inspector, it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case--a suspected murder with no body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he'd have found in the anonymity of the inner city, and an outcome that reverberates through the years. Decades later Bennett finally tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote, but just when the book is poised for publication, he unaccountably tries to pull the plug. He has new information that he refuses to divulge, new information which threatens the very foundations of his existence. Catherine is forced to reinvestigate the past, with results that turn the world upside down.
2002
Folly by Laurie R. King
Folly (Folly Island #1) by King, Laurie R.Call Number: FIC KING LAUR F1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780553381511
Publication Date: 2002-05-28
Rae Newborn has some difficulties with her sanity, but as she begins to rebuild her mysterious great-uncle's house, his story starts to wrap around hers
2003
Winter and Night by S. J. Rozan
2004
The House Sitter by Peter Lovesey
The House Sitter (Detective Peter Diamond mystery #8) by Lovesey, PeterCall Number: FIC LOVES PET D8 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781569473610
Publication Date: 2004-06-01
When a woman is found strangled to death on a popular beach in Sussex, the police have a hard time identifying her. It takes twelve days to discover she was a top psychological profiler for the National Crime Faculty. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is called in because the victim lived in Bath. He must coordinate his efforts with those of Henrietta Mallin, the original senior investigating officer, as well as try to cooperate with the cocky young officer charged with investigating the bizarre murder that the victim had been working on. Oddly, the National Crime Faculty tries to thwart his efforts.
2005
The Killing of the Tinkers by Ken Bruen
The Killing of the Tinkers (Jack Taylor #2) by Bruen, KenCall Number: FIC BRUEN KEN T2 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780312339289
Publication Date: 2005-03-01
In the new novel Green Hell, Bruen's dark angel of a protagonist has again hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, the Guards, is ancient history. But Jack isn't about to embark on a self-improvement plan. Instead, he has taken up a vigilante case against a respected professor of literature at the University of Galway who has a violent habit his friends in high places are only too happy to ignore. And when Jack rescues a preppy American student on a Rhodes Scholarship from a couple of kid thugs, he also unexpectedly gains a new sidekick, who abandons his thesis on Beckett to write a biography of Galway's most magnetic rogue.
2006
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael ConnellyCall Number: Fiction C7523h v.1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780316734936
Publication Date: 2005-10-01
Representing some unsavory characters in his work as a defense lawyer, Mickey Haller takes on his first high-paying and possibly innocent client in years, but finds the case complicated by events that suggest a particularly evil perpetrator.
The Lincoln Lawyer [CD] by Michael Connelly; Adam Grupper (Read by)Call Number: CD Fiction CO H1 (Adult Audiobook CD)
ISBN: 9781600242472
Publication Date: 2007-11-13
2007
The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard
The Virgin of Small Plains by Pickard, NancyCall Number: FIC PICKA NAN V (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780345471000
Publication Date: 2007-05-29
Seventeen years after the discovery of a female murder victim near Small Plains, Kansas, the girl's grave has become the source of strange miracles and legends, until the return of prodigal son Mitch Newquist threatens to bring old secrets to light.
2008
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
What the Dead Know by Laura LippmanISBN: 9780061128851
Publication Date: 2007-03-13
Thirty years ago two sisters disappeared from a shopping mall. Their bodies were never found and those familiar with the case have always been tortured by these questions: How do you kidnap two girls? Who—or what—could have lured the two sisters away from a busy mall on a Saturday afternoon without leaving behind a single clue or witness? Now a clearly disoriented woman involved in a rush-hour hit-and-run claims to be the younger of the long-gone Bethany sisters. But her involuntary admission and subsequent attempt to stonewall investigators only deepens the mystery. Where has she been? Why has she waited so long to come forward? Could her abductor truly be a beloved Baltimore cop? There isn't a shred of evidence to support her story, and every lead she gives the police seems to be another dead end—a dying, incoherent man, a razed house, a missing grave, and a family that disintegrated long ago, torn apart not only by the crime but by the fissures the tragedy revealed in what appeared to be the perfect household. In a story that moves back and forth across the decades, there is only one person who dares to be skeptical of a woman who wants to claim the identity of one Bethany sister without revealing the fate of the other. Will he be able to discover the truth?
2009
Where Memories Lie by Deborah Crombie
Where Memories Lie by Crombie, DeborahCall Number: FIC CROMB DEB D12 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780061986635
Publication Date: 2010-06-29
When her friend Erika explains that a piece of jewelry that had been stolen from her years earlier may be tied to her husband's suspicious death, Detective Inspector Gemma James investigates the piece's appearance at a prestigious London auction house.
2010
Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman
2011
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Gamache #6) by Louise PennyCall Number: Fiction P416g v.6 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780312377045
Publication Date: 2010-09-28
It is Winter Carnival in Quebec City, bitterly cold and surpassingly beautiful. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has come not to join the revels but to recover from an investigation gone hauntingly wrong. But violent death is inescapable, even in the apparent sanctuary of the Literary and Historical Society— where an obsessive historian's quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly 400 years be so dreadful that someone would kill to protect it? Although he is supposed to be on leave, Gamache cannot walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French. Meanwhile, he is receiving disquieting letters from the village of Three Pines, where beloved Bistro owner Olivier was recently convicted of murder. "It doesn't make sense," Olivier's partner writes every day. "He didn't do it, you know." As past and present collide in this astonishing novel, Gamache must relive the terrible event of his own past before he can bury his dead.
2012
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran
Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead by Sara GranCall Number: Fiction G748c (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780547428499
Publication Date: 2011-06-02
Augmenting her brilliant deductive skills with dream analysis, marijuana, and the written work of a mysterious French detective, private investigator Claire DeWitt reluctantly returns to post-Katrina New Orleans to solve the disappearance of an unpopular prosecutor.
2013
The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Gamache #8) by Louise PennyCall Number: Fiction P416g v.8
ISBN: 9780312655464
Publication Date: 2012-08-28
No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is so profound it is known as "the beautiful mystery." But when the renowned choir director is murdered, the lock on the monastery's massive wooden door is drawn back to admit Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sûreté du Québec. There they discover disquiet beneath the silence, discord in the apparent harmony. One of the brothers, in this life of prayer and contemplation, has been contemplating murder. As the peace of the monastery crumbles, Gamache is forced to confront some of his own demons, as well as those roaming the remote corridors. Before finding the killer, before restoring peace, the Chief must first consider the divine, the human, and the cracks in between.
The Beautiful Mystery [CD] (Chief Inspector Gamache #8) by Louise Penny; Ralph Cosham (Read by)Call Number: CD Fiction PE (Adult CD Audiobooks)
ISBN: 9781427226099
Publication Date: 2012-08-28
2014
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Ordinary Grace by William Kent KruegerCall Number: Fiction K94o (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781451645828
Publication Date: 2013-03-26
Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.
2015
The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood
The Killer Next Door by Marwood, AlexCall Number: FIC MARWO ALE K (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780143126690
Publication Date: 2014-10-28
veryone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn't, they wouldn't be renting rooms in a dodgy old building for cash-no credit check, no lease. It's the kind of place you end up when you you've run out of other options. The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don't know is that one of them is a killer. He's already chosen his next victim, and he'll do anything to protect his secret
2016
The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney
The Long and Faraway Gone by Berney, LouCall Number: FIC BERNE LOU L (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780062292438
Publication Date: 2015-02-10
Frank Guidry's luck has finally run out. A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans' mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it's his turn--he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Within hours of JFK's murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is turning up dead, and Guidry suspects he's next: he was in Dallas on an errand for the boss less than two weeks before the president was shot. With few good options, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas, to see an old associate--a dangerous man who hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish. Guidry knows that the first rule of running is "don't stop," but when he sees a beautiful housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car, two little daughters and a dog in the back seat, he sees the perfect disguise to cover his tracks from the hit men on his tail.
2017
A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny
A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Gamache #12) by Louise PennyCall Number: Fiction P416g v.12 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781250022134
Publication Date: 2016-08-30
When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the SuÌ‚reteÌ du QueÌbec to places even he is afraid to go. But must. And there he finds four young cadets in the SuÌ‚reteÌ academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map. Everywhere Gamache turns, he sees Amelia Choquet, one of the cadets. Tattooed and pierced. Guarded and angry. Amelia is more likely to be found on the other side of a police line-up. And yet she is in the academy. A proteÌgeÌe of the murdered professor. The focus of the investigation soon turns to Gamache himself and his mysterious relationship with Amelia, and his possible involvement in the crime. The frantic search for answers takes the investigators back to Three Pines and a stained glass window with its own horrific secrets. For both Amelia Choquet and Armand Gamache, the time has come for a great reckoning.
2018
Magpie Murders by Anthony Howard
Magpie Murders by Anthony HorowitzCall Number: Fiction H815Lm (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780062645227
Publication Date: 2017-06-06
When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job. Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.
2019
November Road by Lou Berney
November Road by Lou BerneyCall Number: Fiction B526n (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780062663849
Publication Date: 2018-10-09
Frank Guidry's luck has finally run out. A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans' mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it's his turn--he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Within hours of JFK's murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is turning up dead, and Guidry suspects he's next: he was in Dallas on an errand for the boss less than two weeks before the president was shot. With few good options, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas, to see an old associate--a dangerous man who hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish. Guidry knows that the first rule of running is "don't stop," but when he sees a beautiful housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car, two little daughters and a dog in the back seat, he sees the perfect disguise to cover his tracks from the hit men on his tail. Posing as an insurance man, Guidry offers to help Charlotte reach her destination, California. If she accompanies him to Vegas, he can help her get a new car. For her, it's more than a car-- it's an escape. She's on the run too, from a stifling existence in small-town Oklahoma and a kindly husband who's a hopeless drunk. It's an American story: two strangers meet to share the open road west, a dream, a hope--and find each other on the way.
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Before She Was Helen [E-Book] by 
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All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Gamache novel #16) by 
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When She Was Good (Cyrus Haven #2) by 
Razorblade Tears by 
The Dark Hours (Harry Bosch #23) by 
1979 (Allie Burns #1) by 
We Begin at the End by 
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Harlem Shuffle by 
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A World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Gamache #18) by 
Back to the Garden by 
Two Nights in Lisbon by 
A Heart Full of Headstones (Inspector Rebus #24) by 
Killers of a Certain Age by 
Secret Identity by 
Marriage Is Murder (Jenny Cain #4) by 
If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy O (Ballad novel #1) by 
I. O. U. (Jenny Cain #7) by 
Bootlegger's Daughter (Deborah Knott mystery #1) by 
A Place of Execution by 
Folly (Folly Island #1) by 
The House Sitter (Detective Peter Diamond mystery #8) by 
The Killing of the Tinkers (Jack Taylor #2) by 
The Lincoln Lawyer [CD] by 
The Lincoln Lawyer [E-Book] by 
The Virgin of Small Plains by 
Where Memories Lie by 
The Beautiful Mystery [CD] (Chief Inspector Gamache #8) by 
The Killer Next Door by 
The Long and Faraway Gone by 
A Great Reckoning [Streaming Audio] (Chief Inspector Gamache #12) by 
Magpie Murders [Streaming Audio] by 