The Strand Magazine has announced its nominees for the 2009 Strand Magazine Critics Awards. The awards will be presented in the categories of Best Novel and Best First Novel at an invitation-only cocktail party, hosted by The Strand on July 7, 2010, in New York City.

Best Novel

Nine dragons : a novel by Michael Connelly

The mystic arts of erasing all signs of death : a novel by Charlie Huston

Life sentences by Laura Lippman

The renegades : a novel by T. Jefferson Parker

The little stranger by Sarah Waters