SCBA Shortlist

Various shortlists for the Southern California Booksellers Association’s annual prizes have been announced, and on the mystery side it’s quite a packed field:

Jan Burke, BLOODLINES (Simon & Schuster)
Denise Hamilton, SAVAGE GARDEN (Scribner)
Susan Kandel, NOT A GIRL DETECTIVE (William Morrow)
Harley Jane Kozak, DATING IS MURDER (Doubleday)
T. Jefferson Parker, CALIFORNIA GIRL (William Morrow)

The winner will be announced at a ceremony to be held at the SCBA’s annual conference on October 15. Congrats to all the nominees, and damned if I can pick a winner here…

I’m also pleased to see Yxta Maya Murray’s THE QUEEN JADE up for the fiction category, because that was a book that I liked a whole lot and that no one else seemed to. An intelligent adventure novel by a female writer is not the easiest book in the world to find, and this certainly fit the bill.