Agony Hill by Sarah Stewart Taylor (Minotaur Books) has won the Nero Award, sponsored by the Wolfe Pack: the Official Nero Wolfe Literary Society, and honoring "the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories."
"The Troubling Mr. Truelove" by Pete Barnstrom (to be published in the July 2026 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine) has won the Black Orchid Novella Award, sponsored by the Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine to celebrate the novella format popularized by Rex Stout.
Black Orchid Novella honorable mentions were Paul A. Barra's "Beauty and Buford," Craig H. Bowlsby's "Last Train to Medicine Hat," Libby Cudmore's "Piano Man," Tom Larsen's "The Sheriff of Alabama Street," Josh Pachter's "Melancholia," and Daniel Peyton's "A Noir Satyr: Follow That MacGuffin."