From this week's Communiqué

Akashic Books Wins an Edgar Award

The winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Short Story is “The Golden Gopher” by Susan Straight, published in Los Angeles Noir by Akashic Books.

Los Angeles Noir
Edited by Denise Hamilton | Akashic Books | 9781933354224 | $15.95 | Trade Paper

Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award Winner: Carol Seajay

Bywater Books publisher Carol Seajay was celebrated “both for [her] individual contributions over the years and for [her] work publishing the e-newsletter Books to Watch Out For.” Bywater Books’ imprint Bloody Brits was also featured (along with Soho Press) by Publishers Weekly in the April 21 article, “The Cozy Gets the Hard-Boil: Edgy British mysteries come to the U.S.”

Click here for the article:  http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6552977.html

Additional praise for Bywater’s Mouths of Babes by Stella Duffy (released March 2008):

“Duffy pulls no punches in unraveling this knot of teen brutality, which serves as a potent reminder of the mindless cruelty found both on the playground and in the adult world.”—Publishers Weekly 

Mouths of Babes
Stella Duffy | Bywater Books | 9781932859539 | $14.95 | Trade Paper

Criticas BEA Edition to Feature A Perfect Season for Dreaming

Criticas will be using the cover of Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s A Perfect Season for Dreaming for its print issue, which Reed Publications will be distributing at both BEA and ALA.

A Perfect Season for Dreaming / Un Tiempo Perfecto Para Soñar
Benjamin Alire Sáenz; Illustrated by Esau Morales | Cinco Puntos Press | 9781933693019 | $17.95 | Trade Cloth

Helen C. Smith Memorial Award Winner

Fragment of the Head of a Queen won the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry. The award is given by Texas Institute of Letters.

Fragment of the Head of a Queen: Poems
Cate Marvin | Sarabande Books | 9781932511512 | $13.95 | Trade Paper

Continued Praise for Murder in the Rue de Paradis

“This new addition to the series is a fun, fast-paced read . . . Black has once again produced a book that will please both mystery fans and lovers of Paris.”—Paris Update, April 16, 2008

“Fans of [the] series will be thrilled to pieces with her latest mystery, Murder in the Rue de Paradis . . . a white-knuckle finish to get to the final page. . . . Welcome back Aimée Leduc; it’s wonderful to see you again in such fine form.”—Eclectica Magazine, April/May 2008

“The Aimée Leduc novels are pure noir, with grim surroundings and threat everywhere. . . . The best mystery series reward readers by gradually revealing more of the main characters’ back stories and letting readers witness changes from one book to the next. . . . Black deftly morsels out bits of answers to these questions in each installment of the series. . . . Paradis is an explosive addition to a powerful series.”—Sacramento News & Review, April 28, 2008

Murder in the Rue de Paradis
Cara Black | Soho Press | 9781569474747 | $24.00 | Trade Cloth

Cop Love for Crime Novel The Sinner

A few tidbits from the San Francisco Police Officers Association Journal recent review:

“Extremely well-written. . . . It deserves to be as well-read here [as it was in Germany]. . . . Petra Hammesfahr is a unique story teller. . . . I’m hoping we are able to read more of her in translation.”—San Francisco Police Officers Association Journal

The Sinner
Petra Hammesfahr; Translated by John Brownjohn | Bitter Lemon Press | 9781904738251 | $14.95 | Trade Paper

Reviews for the Week of May 9, 2008

The New York Times Book Review, May 5, 2008
How the Dead Live | Derek Raymond | Serpent's Tail | 9781852427986 | $14.95 | Trade

“The rescue job Serpent’s Tail is doing for the great noir writer Derek Raymond is like a holy rite. How the Dead Live is from his factory series, crime novels depicting 1980’s London as the 10th circle of hell. . . . ‘It hardly ever smells of lilac,’ Raymond writes it that weird voice of his, cynical and hopeless, but so tender you could cry—or open a vein.”

Publishers Weekly, May 5, 2008
Swansea Terminal | Robert Lewis | Serpent's Tail | 9781852429751 | $14.95 | Trade Paper

“In Lewis’s wryly amusing, darkly contemplative sequel to The Last Llanelli Train, ex-PI Robin Llywelyn is down and out in Swansea. . . . Lewis uses his fallen hero to delve deeply into the contemporary Welsh scene, like a coal miner tracing a vanishing vein of ore.”

Library Journal, April 15, 2008
From Eve to Dawn, A History of Women in the World, Volume I: Origins: From Prehistory to the First Millennium | Marilyn French | The Feminist Press at CUNY | 9781558615656 | $19.95 | Trade Paper

From Eve to Dawn, A History of Women in the World, Volume II: The Masculine Mystique: From Feudalism to the French Revolution | Marilyn French | The Feminist Press at CUNY | 9781558615670 | $19.95 | Trade Paper

“French gives us grand theory at its best, wading through copious amounts of scholarly data on the histories of civilizations and offering up, in readable prose, an important synthesis of what an earlier generation of feminists called ‘herstory.’”

ForeWord Magazine, May/June 2008
The Face of Pancho Villa: A History in Photographs and Words | Friedrich Katz; Photographs by The Casasola Collection | Cinco Puntos Press |9781933693088 | $12.95 | Trade Paper

“In Mexico, the Casasola photography collection is legendary. . . . Author Friedrich Katz is practically legendary in Mexico himself—and with good reason: his clear writing untangles the rather messy Revolutionary strands and his superb scholarship enlivens the people and the times.”

ForeWord Magazine, May/June 2008
The Shadow of the Shadow | Paco Ignacio Taibo II; Translated by William I. Neuman | Cinco Puntos Press | 9781933693002 | $13.95 | Trade Paper

“Taibo is Mexico’s premier crime novelist, with history and politics always participating in the murder and mayhem. The Shadow of the Shadow is no exception. . . . Taibo’s nimble and colorful prose is only slightly damped by translation, and his picture of early twentieth-century Mexico City is beyond compare.”