Cartoon of the Day: Rearranging My Bookshelves

Short Mystery Fiction Society 2026 Derringer Award Winners

SMFS Official Announcement: 2026 Derringer Award Winners

Photo by Art Taylor

The Short Mystery Fiction Society is a community of writers, readers, editors, publishers, and others dedicated to the promotion and celebration of mystery and crime short stories. Since 1998, the SMFS has awarded the annual Derringers to outstanding published stories and people who have greatly advanced or supported the form. 

The 2026 Derringer Award Winners

Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer

David Dean

David Dean is an Army veteran, a retired Chief of Police, and an accomplished novelist, in addition to being one of the most popular and prolific short story writers working in the crime genre today. His stories have appeared regularly in ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE, as well as a number of anthologies, including BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES, since 1990. He has won a Derringer Award and an impressive four EQMM Readers Awards. His stories have also been nominated for the Shamus and Barry Awards and been finalists for an Edgar and multiple Derringer Awards.

Best Flash Story

(Up to 1,000 words)

"The Man Under the Bridge" by Bern Sy Moss (Spillwords, 6/1/2025)

Best Short Story

(1,001 to 4,000 words)

"Blind Pig" by Michael Bracken (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2025)

Best Long Story

(4,001 to 8,000 words)

"Whatever Kills the Pain" by C.W. Blackwell (Whatever Kills the Pain, Rock and a Hard Place Press)

Best Novelette

(8,001 to 20,000 words)

"The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe" by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld, January 2025) (audio version)

Best Anthology (tie)

Hollywood Kills: An Anthology edited by Adam Meyer & Alan Orloff (Level Best Books - Level Short)

On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology edited by Curtis Ippolito (Rock and a Hard Place Press)

HT: Kevin Tipple

KENTUCKY DERBY MYSTERIES

Kentucky Derby Day! There will be people cheering, betting on the horses, women in big hats, and Bourbon tipplers all around as they celebrate. I've dusted off last year's list of Kentucky Derby mysteries and added a few more titles. You can also read horse-racing mysteries to celebrate the Derby --  or you can watch the movie The Kentucky Derby (1922). It's full of grit and crime. Have a piece of Derby Pie (recipes on DyingforChocolate.com), filled with chocolate, bourbon, and nuts. Or make some Mint Julep Truffles or Kentucky Derby Bourbon Truffles.

Kentucky Derby Mysteries

King of the Roses by V.S. Anderson
The Silver Falcon by Evelyn Anthony
The False Favorite by Josh Boldt

Triple Crown by Jon Breen
Murder at Derby Time by Matt Clark

Death in Lilac Time by Frances Crane  
Triple Cross by Kit Ehrman
Intercept by Mary Jane Forbes
Bonecrack by Dick Francis
Triple Crown by Felix Francis

Silent Partner by Karen Jones
Death by Derby by Abigail Keam
Snip by Doc Macomber

Kentucky Heat by Fern Michaels
Murder at the Kentucky Derby by Charles Parmer
Dark Horse by Bill Shoemaker (Triple Crown)
The Accurst Tower by John Winslow

Kentucky Derby Short Stories

"The Gift" by Dick Francis is set at the Kentucky Derby. It is in the collection Field of Thirteen. "The Gift" first appeared as "A Day of Wine and Roses" in Sports Illustrated, 1973.

Derby Rotten Scoundrels: by authors from the Sisters in Crime chapter, Derby Rotten Scoundrels (formerly the Ohio River Valley Chapter), a collection of stories which explores a world of danger and deceit against the backdrop of fast horses, beautiful women, and great bourbon; edited by Jeffrey Marks

Low Down and Derby: by authors from the Sisters in Crime chapter, Derby Rotten Scoundrels, a collection of fast paced mystery stories set around the Kentucky Derby, by fifteen authors from the Ohio River Valley Chapter of Sisters in Crime; edited by Abigail Jones.

Murder at the Races, a collection of Short Stories including "A Derby Horse," edited by Peter Haining.
Mystery with a Splash of Bourbon, edited by Susan Bell and Elaine Munsch

Children's Mysteries

The Mystery at the Kentucky Derby by Carole Marsh

Non-Fiction

Great Horse Racing Mysteries: Tales from the Track by John McEvoy
Dancer's Image: The Forgotten Story of the 1968 Kentucky Derby (and 5 other non-fiction books about Thoroughbread racing and equine law) by Milton Toby

The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told: A True Tale of Three Gamblers, the Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel by Mark Paul

And there once was a thorough-bred named Mystery Novel. He did not win the Kentucky Derby.

Movies
The Kentucky Derby (1922)

Authors who Write Horse Mysteries 
(not necesssarily about the Kentucky Derby)

Gabriella Herkert, Scasser Hill, Jo Banister, Ben Petersen, Sasscer Hill, Kit Ehrman, Jody Jaffe, Bruce Alexander, Fern Michaels, Jody Jaffe, Carolyn Banks, Michele Scott, Dick Francis, Laura Crum, J.R. Lindermuth, William Murray, Mary Monica Pulver, Rita Mae Brown, Janet Dawson, Maggie Estep, Dick Francis, John Francome, Alyson Hagy, Michael Kilian, Peter Klein, Lynda La Plante, Holly Menino, John McEvoy, Jassy Mackenzie, Robert Nicholas Reeves,J. R. Rain, Bill Shoemaker, Laura Young, Lyndon Stacey, JD Carpenter, Lisa Wysocky, Sally Wright, James Ziskin, Leigh Hearon, Gabriella Herkert, Michele Scott, Annette Dashofy, D.C. Alexander 

Other Horse Mystery Short Stories
Murder at the Racetrack, edited by Otto Penzler
Field of Thirteen by Dick Francis  

May Day is Lei Day in Hawai‘i: Guest Post by Tori Eldridge

Growing up in Honolulu, the first of May meant flowers, music, and hula. My friends and I would raid the neighborhood for flowering trees. Plumeria was always the easiest to find, mostly white with yellow centers, sometimes red and pink. But my favorite place to raid was the fence on the ninth fairway of the Wai‘alae golf course, along which I also lived.

 

The best part about growing up on a golf course was playing tackle football on the fairways after school and swimming in the ditches after a big storm. Never mind that we had a swimming pool, it was way more fun to splash around with the tiny frogs and grass. No idea why! The other big fun was to ride skim boards across the clipped grass after a rain. Needless to say, my golfing parents and the country club security guards took a dim view of this.

 

But on the last day of April, I headed to the house on the ninth fairway, whose fence was covered by thick stephanotis vines. Those little white flowers had a powerful scent. When the vines were in full bloom, the fragrance traveled all the way to the green. They were so thick, no one in the house could see picking until my paper grocery sack was full.

 

Back home, I strung the stephanotis into a rope-style lei using a kui (piercing) technique, threading my needle through the stems so the faces of the white star-like blossoms all faced out. It was as thick as a double carnation lei with a sweet scent that was even stronger than ginger or the tiny green pakalana flowers I love.

 

The next day, I would wear my lei to school, as most of the kids and teachers did. And since I was a dancer, I would wear more lei with my costume for the annual May Day pageant. I danced in some sort of May Day performance from pre-school all the way to twelfth grade.

 

Different types of dance merited different types of lei. We braided haku lei with leaves and flowers to wear on our heads and often around our wrists and ankles when we danced to a chant. We twisted pikake (Hawaiian jasmine) with maile or tī vines, wili style, for hula and sometimes let the ends hang down the front of our holokū (missionary-style dresses with yokes and a train).

 

So many flowers. So many beautiful colors and scents.

 

I thought of these lei when I wrote the memorial scene near the beginning of my new Ranger Makalani Pahukula mystery, Hawai‘i Rage.

 

A shocking death on a North Kohala ranch had brought the Hiapo family and other paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) friends up the mountain on horseback to say their final farewell. My protagonist, Makalani Pahukula, rides up in a UTV with her cousin Brian, as he points out the family members in their tan palaka (checkered) shirts and lei.

 

The somber occasion is made beautiful by the horses, the family, and the flower lei they wear.

 

A procession of horses climbed beside them, each bearing a rider bedecked in colorful flower lei and paniolo attire. Only a dark-gray Appaloosa with a blanket of white on her rump walked alone with a thick rope of tiny green pakalana flowers on the saddle where her rider would have sat.

 

Makalani nudged Brian with her knee. “You didn’t want to ride with everyone else?”

 

“Not enough horses at the ranch. Rosie and some of the part-time ranch hands don’t have their own. With all the paniolo and immediate family riding in the procession, I volunteered to drive and bring you.”

 

“It was gracious of the family to invite me.”

 

“You’re ‘ohana.”

 

“Only by marriage.”

 

“Same thing to Rosie. She insisted you come.”

 

Brian’s wife rode a chestnut gelding the same color as her shoulder-length hair. A pink rose haku lei encircled the woven straw pāpale on her head. A matching rosebud lei rested against the fitted bodice of her tan-and-white-checkered palaka blouse. Instead of jeans, she wore wide gaucho-leg pants and matching cowboy boots. The outfit showed off her Hawaiian and Mexican roots.

 

“How much vaquero blood does she have?”

 

“Only one sixteenth, but it shows stronger with her Hawaiian than the haole or Japanese.”

 

“I don’t see the Japanese.”

 

“It’s less than a quarter, but combined with my Chinese and Korean, that makes Vinnie three kinds of Asian.” Brian widened his eyes. “Imagine what his great-great-grandparents would think of that.”

 

Makalani understood what he meant. The Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese had a tumultuous history to say the least. And yet, the combination blended beautifully with the Hawaiian, haole, and traces of Mexican in Brian and Rosie’s eight-year-old son. He rode behind his mother on a buckskin mare with a black mane, tail, and legs, broken up by three white feet.

 

“Vinnie sits his horse well.”

 

Brian rolled his eyes. “Too well for his own good.” But he said it with pride.

 

***

Tori Eldridge is the author of Hawai‘i Rage, Kaua‘i Storm, and the acclaimed Lily Wong ninja thriller series. Born in Honolulu—of Hawaiian, Chinese, and Norwegian descent—Tori graduated from Punahou School with classmate Barack Obama before performing as an actress, singer, and dancer on Broadway, television, and film, and earning a fifth-degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts. Her literary works have garnered Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Award nominations and the 2021 Crimson Scribe for Best Book of the Year. Tori lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, where she helps care for her precious mo‘opuna (grandchildren). Learn more about Tori and her books at ToriEldridge.com.

 

 

MAY DAY MYSTERIES, MORRIS DANCING, AND MORE!

"What potent blood hath modest May."- Ralph W. Emerson

Here's my updated list of May Day Mysteries. I love May Day with its Morris Dancing and the Maypole, dating back to pagan Celtic times. And, although May may seem idyllic with its flowers and showers, it can actually be quite murderous! Later this month, I will have an updated list of Cinco de Mayo Mysteries, Kentucky Derby Daby, Mother's Day Mysteries, Memorial Day Mysteries, and others that take place in May.

I've expanded my updated list of May Day Crime Fiction to include a few new May Day mysteries. Let me know if I've forgotten any titles. Be sure and check out Morris Dancing Mysteries at the end of the list.

May Day Mysteries

The May Day Mystery by Mabel Esther Allan
No Nest for the Wicket by Donna Andrews

The Neighborhood by Susan Bernhardt

The Art of Betrayal by Connie Berry
The May Weeks Murders by Douglas G. Browne
The Case of the Tangled Maypole by Anna Castle
The Antique Store Detective and the May Day Murder by Clare Chase

The May Day Mystery by Octavus Roy Cohen

Murder in the Green by Lesley Cookman
May Queen Killers by Lorna Dounaeva  
Five Days in May by Paul Eiseman
The Nutting Girl by Fred DeVecca
30 Days in May by Wayne Hancock
The Wicker Man by Robin Hardy, Anthony Shaffer

Five Days in May by Christopher Hartpence
A Terrible Enemy by Jo Hiesand
May Day Murder by Jennifer David Hesse

May Day by Josie Jaffrey

Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel 
The Moonlit Door by Deryn Lake  
May Day Murder by Daisy Landish

May Day by Jess Lourey
May Might Mean Murder by Bill McGrath 
A Hearse on May-Day by Gladys Mitchell  
May Day in Magadan by Anthony Olcott 

Creeping Venom by Sheila Pim

Death in the Morning by Sheila Radley

MayDay by Amy M. Reade

The May Day Murders by Rosie Reed

The Merry Month of May by Elvi Rhodes
A Hot Day in May by Julian Jay Savarin
Merry Month of Murder by Nicholas Slade

A May Day Mystery by Sandra Sookoo

May Day Murder by Julie Wassmer
The May Day Murders by Scott Wittenburg

Morris dancing is one of the Great English Mysteries, like cricket and warm beer. 

--Rosemary Edghill, mystery writer, in Book of Moons


Morris Dancing Mysteries

The Case of the Missing Morris Dancer: A Cozy Mystery Set in Wales by Cathy Ace

As the Pig Turns; Agatha Raisin and the Case of the Curious Curate; Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton
Murder of a Straw Man by Robyn Beecroft
Blind to the Bones by Stephen Booth
Thieves by Hannah Dennison
False Step by Jo Hiesand

Dumb as Morris Dancing by Scott Hunt

The Moonlit Door by Deryn Lake

The Shortest Day by Jane Langton
Stone Cold Sober by Rebecca Marks

Death of a Fool (Off with his Head) by Ngaio Marsh
Dead Men's Morris by Gladys Mitchell 
The Death-Cap Dancers by Gladys Mitchell
The Lazareth Pit by Elizabeth Patterson
All of a Winter's Night by Phil Rickman

***
May Day also has a more Activist meaning. For more information and a great list, check out Molly Odintz's Radical Noir: 26 Activist Crime Novels on CrimeReads.

Mystery Writers of America 2026 Edgar Allan Poe Award Winners

Mystery Writers of America 2026 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction and television published or produced in 2025. 
 
BEST NOVEL
The Big Empty by Robert Crais (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
 
BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
Dead Money by Jakob Kerr (Penguin Random House – Bantam Books)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
 
The Backwater by Vikki Wakefield (Sourcebooks – Poisoned Pen Press)
 
BEST FACT CRIME
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Random House – 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,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine – September-October 2025 by Dave Zeltserman (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 (Macmillan Publishers – Farrar, Straus and Giroux BFYR)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY
“Pilot” – Paradise, Written by Dan Fogelman (Hulu)

* * * * * *
 
OTHER AWARDS
 
ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD – Endowed by the family of Robert L. Fish.
“How It Happened,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July-August 2025 by Billie Kay Fern (Must Read Books Publishing)
 
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD – Presented on behalf of Simon & Schuster. 
All This Could Be Yours by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Macmillan Publishers – Minotaur Books)
 
THE G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS SUE GRAFTON MEMORIAL AWARD – Presented on behalf of G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Gone in the Night by Joanna Schaffhausen (Macmillan Publishers – Minotaur Books)
 
THE LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN MEMORIAL AWARD – Endowed by the estate of Lilian Jackson Braun.
A Senior Citizen’s Guide to Life on the Run by Gwen Florio (Severn House)
 
SPECIAL AWARDS -- PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED ON JANUARY 13, 2026

GRAND MASTER
Donna Andrews
Lee Child
 
RAVEN AWARD
Book Passage, Corte Madera CA
 
ELLERY QUEEN AWARD
John Scognamiglio, Kensington Books