The second novel in the Daniel Jacobus series, Danse Macabre , is a finalist this year — with Craig Lancaster’s The Summer Son and Jacob Paul’s Sarah/Sara — for the Utah Book Award. It would be surprising if a work of genre fiction were to beat out the more contemplative, literary works, but in Danse Macabre Elias has created a solid mystery novel and brought his knowledge of the classical music world to liven up a known formula.

Read our review of the novel in the October 2011 edition of 15 Bytes.