We’re beginning a special two week long series presenting the 2009 Black Quill Award Nominations presented by the Dark Scribe Magazine, which calls itself “… a free web-based publication that focuses exclusively on the creative forces behind horror, suspense, thrillers, and other dark fiction and non-fiction works.”
The Black Quill Awards “honor those works of dark genre literature — horror, suspense, and thrillers — from both mainstream and small press publishers.”
Unlike other awards, Dark Scribe Magazine hands out two awards in each of the eight categories — one award is the Reader’s Choice which is selected by votes from December 1st to January 24th. The Editor’s Choice is also awarded and may or may not be the same work as the Reader’s Choice.
Today we’ll look at the first award category: Dark Genre Novel of the Year.
Dark Genre Novel of the Year:
This award is given to the author of a “novel-length work of horror, suspense, or thriller from mainstream publisher.”
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Audrey’s DoorAuthor: Langan, Sarah |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year Built on the Upper West Side, the elegant Breviary claims a regal history. But despite 14B’s astonishingly low rental price, the recent tragedy within its walls has frightened away all potential tenants . . . except for Audrey Lucas. No stranger to tragedy at thirty-two — a survivor of a fatherless childhood and a mother’s hopeless dementia — Audrey is obsessively determined to make her own way in a city that often strangles the weak. But is it something otherworldly or Audrey’s own increasing instability that’s to blame for the dark visions that haunt her . . . and for the voice that demands that she build a door? A door it would be true madness to open . . . |
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CastawaysAuthor: Keene, Brian |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year From award-winning author Brian Keene comes his long-awaited tribute to the master of horror, Richard Laymon. They came to the deserted island to compete on a popular reality television show. Each one of them hoped to be the last to leave. Now, they’re just hoping to stay alive, because one of them isn’t who he seems, and the island isn’t as deserted as it appears. The men will be slaughtered. The women will be kept alive as captives. And before it is over, they will turn on each other. Night is falling, the creatures are coming, and rescue is so very far away . . . In Brian Keene’s Castaways . . . Death is the ultimate reality. |
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Dark Places: A NovelAuthor: Flynn, Gillian |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived — and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her. The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details — proof they hope may free Ben — Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club . . . and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members — including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started — on the run from a killer. |
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Drood: A NovelAuthor: Simmons, Dan |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens — at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world — hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever. Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London — mere research . . . or something more terrifying? Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens’s life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens’s friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), Drood: A Novel explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author’s last years and may provide the key to Dickens’s final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, Drood is Dan Simmons at his powerful best. |
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The Little StrangerAuthor: Waters, Sarah |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year From the multi-award-winning and bestselling author of The Night Watch and Fingersmith comes an astonishing novel about love, loss, and the sometimes unbearable weight of the past. In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to see a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the once grand house is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its garden choked with weeds. All around, the world is changing, and the family is struggling to adjust to a society with new values and rules. Roddie Ayres, who returned from World War II physically and emotionally wounded, is desperate to keep the house and what remains of the estate together for the sake of his mother and his sister, Caroline. Mrs. Ayres is doing her best to hold on to the gracious habits of a gentler era and Caroline seems cheerfully prepared to continue doing the work a team of servants once handled, even if it means having little chance for a life of her own beyond Hundreds. But as Dr. Faraday becomes increasingly entwined in the Ayreses’ lives, signs of a more disturbing nature start to emerge, both within the family and in Hundreds Hall itself. And Faraday begins to wonder if they are all threatened by something more sinister than a dying way of life, something that could subsume them completely. Both a nuanced evocation of 1940s England and the most chill-inducing novel of psychological suspense in years, The Little Stranger confirms Sarah Waters as one of the finest and most exciting novelists writing today. |
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The UnseenAuthor: Sokoloff, Alexandra |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year A terrifying novel of suspense based on the Rhine parapsychology experiments at Duke University. After experiencing a precognitive dream that ends her engagement and changes her life forever, a young psychology professor from California decides to get a fresh start by taking a job at Duke University in North Carolina. She soon becomes obsessed with the files from the world-famous Rhine parapsychology lab experiments, which attempted to prove ESP really exists. Along with a handsome professor, she uncovers troubling cases, including one about a house supposedly haunted by a poltergeist, investigated by another research team in 1965. Unaware that the entire original team ended up insane or dead, the two professors and two exceptionally gifted Duke students move into the abandoned mansion to replicate the investigation, with horrifying results. The Unseen is Alexandra Sokoloff’s most thrilling novel to date: a story of deception, attraction, and the unknown. |
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The 2009 Black Quill Award Nominations Series:
Part 1 — Dark Genre Novel of the Year
Part 2 — Best Small Press Chill
Part 3 — Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection
Part 4 — Best Dark Genre Anthology
Part 5 — Best Dark Genre Book Of Non-Fiction
Part 6 — Best Dark Scribble
Part 7 — Best Cover Art and Design
Part 8 — Best Dark Genre Book Trailer
Part 9 — The 2009 Black Quill Award Winners
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