10th anniversary by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Afraid of the dark [large print] by James Grippando

Heartwood [Large print]: a novel by Belva Plain

Love me if you dare [Large print] by Carly Phillips

New York lawyer-turned-novelist Joseph Teller has won the 2009 Nero Award for his novel The Tenth Case (Mira). That announcement came during the annual Black Orchid Weekend, hosted in New York City by the Nero Wolfe fan organization, The Wolfe Pack. The other two crime novels in contention were The Dark Tide, by Andrew Gross (HarperCollins), and The Fault Tree, by Louise Ure (Minotaur Books).

E.L. Doctorow's latest novel Homer & Langley is based on the true story of the Collyer brothers, notorious for their compulsive hoarding in the first half of the 20th century. The two unemployed siblings lived together for thirty years in their New York City home, where they obsessively collected items such as newspapers, books, furniture, chandeliers, and musical instruments, while at the same time setting booby traps in the hallways to protect against intruders. Their amazing story is often cited as an example of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

In the Shadow of Gotham, Stefanie Pintoff's debut, won the first Minotaur Books/MWA Best First Crime Novel award. It's the Twentieth Century and crime detection has begun to take advantage of the new sciences available: fingerprints, profiling. Detective Simon Ziele has moved to Dobson, a small town in New York's Westchester county, a train-ride from New York City, following the tragic death of his fiance in the wreck of the steamship General Slocum in 1904. Ziele had been one of the NYC detectives called to scene to rescue survivors, but he was unable to save Rachel, his fiance.