The main award for audiobooks is the Audie, awarded by the Audio Publishers' Association.

A complete list and audio samples of this year's nominees and winners can be found at www.theaudies.com.

The Audiobook of the Year, was an audio original never published in print form.

"The Chopin Manuscript" was a serialized project from Audible.com and only available as an audible download. Fifteen mystery and thriller writers participated by writing separate chapters which were available to subscribers weekly, all read by Alfred Molina. As Audible has recently been purchased by Amazon, the book may be available in CD at some future time.

This year's Edgar for Best Mystery went to Salisbury native, John Hart, for "Deep River," reviewed in this column in late 2007.

The Edgar for Best First Novel was awarded to "In the Woods," by Tana French, which also won an AudioFile Earphones Award. A young girl is found murdered at an archaeological dig site at Knocknaree, just outside of Dublin. Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox are assigned to the case, but an unexpected complication is the fact that Ryan and two friends had been abducted and brutalized in the same patch of woods 20 years earlier, a fact he withholds from his supervisors. Nor can Ryan himself remember any details of his ordeal, or what happened to the other two children. A complex combination of police procedural and psychological novel is brilliantly read by Steven Crossly.

The Nebula Award, for Science Fiction Novel of the Year, was presented to "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," by Michael Chabon (This title was also a nominee for an Edgar, and the Audie for Literary Fiction). Meyer Landsman, a police detective in an alternative world where Jews were settled in Alaska after World War II, is investigating a hotel murder. But the murder itself is nearly meaningless when Alaska itself is on the verge of returning to U.S. control and leaving its Jewish residents again without a nation. The book is poignant and funny, and brought to life by Peter Reigert. Lots of Yiddish words and phrases, most clear from the context, add flavor.

Still to come are a number of smaller mystery and scifi awards, the Rita romance awards in August, the National Book Awards in November, and more.

Contact Janet Martin at janslib@yahoo.com.