In Biography Contest, ‘Lost Girls’ Loses to Late Singer Jim Croce

Caitlin Rother’s true-crime exploration of the killer of Poway High teen Chelsea King and Amber Dubois took a back seat at the San Diego Book Awards.

Rother, a La Jolla High School graduate and former Union-Tribune reporter, was a finalist in the biography division of the awards.

But Lost Girls, which delved into the life of sex predator John Gardner, lost to I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story by Ingrid Croce, the pop singer's widow, and Jimmy Rock.

Croce won a second award in the Cookbook and Entertaining category for Photographs and Memories: Recipes from Croce’s Restaurant and Jazz Bar.

The 19th annual San Diego Book and Writing Awards was held Saturday at the AMN Healthcare Building in Carmel Valley. See list of awards.

U-T San Diego noted that The Angry Woman Suite, a mystery by debut novelist Lee Fullbright, won the top prize.

“The Point Loma writer’s story is about a celebrity double-murder in Pennsylvania in the early 1900s and how the killings rippled through three generations of one family,” the U-T said. “Judges gave it the Geisel Award as the best published book of 2012.”