Category: Historical Setting
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Edgar Awards 2026: What Mystery Writers Selected as The Best

This year’s winners include an unofficial “problem-solver” in Silicon Valley and a zealous journalist pursuing a fugitive who confessed to killing nine people as a teen. Links to winners, nominees.
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Agatha Award Winners 2026: Celebrating Traditional Mysteries

This year’s winners include an historical mystery where Agatha Christie isn’t the author but a suspect, and Dorothy Sayers’ assistant must prove her innocence. Links to winners, nominees.
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Agatha Christie’s Housekeeper Stars in this Inventive Series

An unconventional housekeeper to Agatha Christie, who served with her in wartime, solves mysteries in and around the novelist’s home in the English countryside in the 1930s. It’s a series worthy of the Christie references.
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Chicago’s First Female PI Will Bicycle Right Into Your Heart

An unconventional young PI fights sexism, homophobia, a surly younger brother and a brutal gang lord in turn-of-the-century Chicago in Rob Osler’s second quozy, or queer cozy, mystery series. It’s a winner.
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Edgar Awards 2025: What Mystery Writers Selected as The Best

This year’s winners include a final outing for PI Maisie Dobbs and the story of an aspiring writer who finds her literary idol murdered the day after she gives him her manuscript.
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Agatha Award Winners 2025: Celebrating Traditional Mysteries

This year’s winners include an historical cozy featuring the intrepid sister of the Wright Brothers and a thriller about a Vietnamese-American artist whose picture-perfect life is starting to unravel.
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Escape to 1920s Egypt with this Debut in the “Lady Traveler” Series

Cut off by her wealthy father, Blix Windway makes a living by traveling to exotic places and giving lectures about her adventures. Her search for fresh material in Cairo leads to the pyramids by moonlight, and murder.
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Agatha Award Winners 2024: Celebrating Traditional Mysteries

If you’re a fan of Agatha Christie, you’ll likely find something to love in this annual awards roundup. Fans chose the winners, which cannot include explicit sex, gore or violence.
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Edgar Award Winners 2024: Few Female Sleuths, Few Surprises

Familiar names and titles dominated the list of award recipients but I think this annual winners’ roundup — described as “the Oscars of mystery awards” — is always worth a look.
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Murder Crossed Her Mind: A Series Keeps Getting Better

I feel no regrets about stopping a series if my interest lags. But this fourth book in the Pentecost & Parker mystery series, featuring a Nero Wolfe-like detective pair in 1940s New York, is every bit as good as the first, second and third.
