2025 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Mystery/Thriller Category

The 45th annual L.A. Times Book Prize Winner in the Mystery/Thriller Category. Congratulations!

See the full list of winners in 12 categories here. 

Winner: Mystery/Thriller Category

Danielle Trussoni for The Puzzle Box (Random House)

2024 Finalists in the Mystery/Thriller Category

LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZES

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Winners were just announced. The literary awards continue to champion new voices and celebrate the highest quality of writing from authors at all stages of their careers.

2019 Book Prizes Winners

• Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Namwali Serpell, “The Old Drift: A Novel,” Hogarth
• Biography: George Packer, “Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century,” Knopf
• Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose: Emily Bernard, “Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine,” Knopf
• Current Interest: Emily Bazelon, “Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration,” Random House
• Fiction: Ben Lerner, “The Topeka School: A Novel,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux
• Graphic Novel/Comics: Eleanor Davis, “The Hard Tomorrow,” Drawn & Quarterly
• History: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, “They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South,” Yale University Press
• Mystery/Thriller: Steph Cha, “Your House Will Pay: A Novel,” Ecco
• Poetry: Ilya Kaminsky, “Deaf Republic: Poems,” Graywolf Press
• Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction: Marlon James, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” (The Dark Star Trilogy Book 1), Riverhead
• Science & Technology: Maria Popova, “Figuring,” Knopf
• Young Adult Literature: Malla Nunn, “When the Ground is Hard,” G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

The Book Prizes recognized outstanding literary works in 12 categories, including the new Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction. Walter Mosley was honored with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, and WriteGirl received the Innovator’s Award for its contributions to the community, promoting literacy and creativity to empower girls.

The Book Prizes awards ceremony is traditionally part of the Festival of Books weekend, but the springtime events were cancelled in light of public health concerns related to the coronavirus. The Festival of Books was rescheduled to Oct. 3-4 at USC. Festival of Books news and updates are available on the event website, Facebook page and Twitter feed (#bookfest).

Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Mystery/Thriller Finalists

The finalists were announced yesterday for the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. There are 11 categories, but the one of most import to the readers of this blog is Best Mystery/Thriller.

Best Mystery/Thriller

Dodgers by Bill Beverly (Crown)
His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Skyhorse)
The Girls by Emma Cline (Random House)
The North Water by Ian McGuire (Henry Holt)
Darktown by Thomas Mullen (37 Ink/Atria Books)

The awards will be presented at the University of Southern California’s Bovard Auditorium on Friday, April 21. That event is the kick-off to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the USC campus April 22 to 23.

The other categories and nominees

HT: J. Kingston Pierce at TheRapSheet

Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

More Awards: The Los Angeles Times announced the Book Prizes at a ceremony last Friday. Below find three of the prizes of special interest to mystery readers. Of course, all the prizes recognize some great writers... To see the entire list, go HERE. Congratulations to all!

Mystery / Thriller Winner

Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (William Morrow)

2010 Innovator’s Award

The Innovator’s Award recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Powell’s Books, Portland, Oregon

To see all the Awards, go HERE

Los Angeles Times Book Prizes: 2010

The L.A. Times  Book Prizes were awarded last night at the Los Angeles Times Building. One of my favorite books published in 2009, Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast (Soho Press) won the award for Mystery/Thriller. This category was judged by Sarah Weinman, Oline Cogdill, and Dick Adler.  Here's their citation:

"Stuart Neville’s stunning debut novel delivers an inspired, gritty view of violence’s aftermath and the toll it takes on each person involved – especially on one haunted, redemption-seeking ex-IRA hitman. Along the way, Neville condenses the fear and hate that has troubled Northern Ireland, still under the thumb of decades of domestic terrorism, for decades." 

Exactly!!!  Can't wait for Neville's next novel.

The Finalists wrote great books, too, but only one could win.

• Megan Abbott, Bury Me Deep (Simon & Schuster)
• David Ellis, The Hidden Man (Putnam)
• Attica Locke, Black Water Rising (HarperCollins)
• Val McDermid, A Darker Domain (HarperCollins)
• Stuart Neville, The Ghosts of Belfast (SOHO Press)

 For the complete list of the 2010 LA Times Book Prizes, go HERE.

And, in case you didn't know, this weekend is the Los Angeles Festival of Books in association with UCLA. Lots of mystery panels and talks... it's a carnival of books, book people, fans, you name it.