Short Thrillers

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

>From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask.

The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” (Booklist).

Before Area X, there was Ambergris. Jeff VanderMeer conceived what would become his first cult classic series of speculative works: the Ambergris trilogy. Now, for the first time ever, the story of the sprawling metropolis of Ambergris is collected into a single volume, including City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch.

Dan 'Spider' Shepherd's career path - soldier, policeman, MI5 officer - has always put a strain on his family. So he is far from happy to learn that MI5 is using teenagers as informants. Parents are being kept in the dark and Shepherd fears that the children are being exploited. As an undercover specialist, Shepherd is tasked with protecting a 15-year-old schoolboy who is being used to gather evidence against violent drug dealers and a right-wing terrorist group. But when the boy's life is threatened, Shepherd has no choice but to step in and take the heat.

A short ghost story from the best-selling author of Abbot's Keep. A photographer reluctantly agrees to take images of an abandoned manor house on the Dorset clifftops only to find the building is not completely empty.

Jack's a retired ex-cop from New York, seeking the simple life in Cherringham. Sarah's a Web designer who's moved back to the village to find herself. But their lives are anything but quiet as the two team up to solve Cherringham's criminal mysteries. This compilation contains episodes 34 - 36. "The Secret of Brimley Manor": Brimley Manor, home to an eccentric museum of oddities from its owner's lifetime of exotic travels also holds dark secrets. When a suspicious fire breaks out, the biggest question is... was it just an accident?

Just two weeks to go before the Cherringham Charity Christmas Concert. Choir rehearsals are in full swing. Then the worst thing happens: Kirsty Kimball, one of the singers, is found dead from a severe allergic reaction to one of the home-made rehearsal cakes. Jack is pulled in to help bolster the depleted choir - and soon he's convinced that Kirsty's death was no accident. Sarah agrees, and the two of them are soon immersed in the jealousies, rivalries, and passions of Cherringham's Rotary Club choir.

As a child, Henry Cadmus lived on Catalina Island, a scenic vacationland off the Southern California coast. But Henry's experiences were far from idyllic. Today, even though Henry has seen firsthand the horrors of war, the ghastly images that haunt his dreams are ones he associates with his childhood... and the island: a snarling pig-man holding a cleaver; a jackal-headed woman on a high balcony, dripping blood; strange occult rituals... and worse. If it was up to Henry, he would avoid the island entirely.

An IT whiz at the Babylon Casino is enlisted to upgrade security for the game of keno and its random-number generator. The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house - unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.

In A Gladiator Dies Only Once, the second collection of his award-winning stories featuring Gordianus, Saylor more than meets his own high standards. Set between the events of his novels RomanBlood and Catilina’s Riddle, these nine stories of previously untold adventures from the early career of Gordianus - when his adopted son, Eco, was still a mute boy and his wife, Bethesda, was but his slave - will delight Saylor’s many fans while illuminating details of the ancient world like no other writer can.

Dramatisations and readings of five of Josephine Tey's classic mystery novels. Scottish novelist and playwright Josephine Tey was one of the greatest Golden Age crime writers and the author of eight mysteries, including six featuring Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant. The most famous of these, The Daughter of Time, was acclaimed the greatest crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association. A full-cast dramatisation of this iconic story is included here, along with adaptations of four of her other much-loved mystery novels.

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

Leah has spent her formative years isolated on a remote island with her family. But their quiet existence, far from the devastated mainland, is cracking. Father, sensing a coming threat, demands that a wall be built. As the stone blockade rises, Father’s paranoia escalates. So does Leah’s dread that the violence the family left behind has found its way to their sanctuary.

This collection includes three novels: I Said Yes, The Mother-In-Law, and The Good Neighbors.

Cherringham - a quiet town in the Cotswolds. Nothing ever happens there, or so it seems - until one morning a woman's body is found in the river. A terrible accident, according to the police. But is this true? Sarah believes there must be more to it. In Jack, a former NYPD homicide detective, she finds a partner who is willing to start investigating with her. They soon find out that things are not as clear as the police want them to be ... This first - of many cases brings Sarah and Jack together in an unlikely partnership.

Two Cherringham locals, roaming a farm with metal detectors, discover an amazing treasure - a silver Roman plate worth millions. They must share the reward with both the farmer and the owner of the land, the formidable Lady Repton, but there will be plenty for everyone. That night, while the village pubs do a roaring trade, archaeologist Professor Peregrine Cartwright offers to keep the plate safe in his massive wall safe. But when the British Museum expert arrives to verify the find next morning, the safe is empty! Police blame a notorious gang of art thieves operating in the county.

Love can propel us to our greatest heights . . . and darkest depths. In this new compendium of Agatha Christie short stories, witness the dark side of love—crimes of passion, games of the heart, and deadly deceits. This pulse-pounding compendium features beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, master of charades Parker Pyne, the enigmatic Harley Quin, and the adventurous Tommy and Tuppence, all at the ready to solve tantalizing mysteries.

A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative number one New York Times best-selling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.

A grand treasure for fans of the grande dame of mystery, The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories brings together nine rare and brilliant Christie tales of murder and detection that span nearly half a century of her storytelling genius. In "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest," Hercule Poirot unravels the psychological conundrums that motivate a killer.... In "The Actress," a great star's shady past becomes the plaything of a blackmailer.... In "The Harlequin Tea Set," Mr. Harley Quin helps a man save his loved ones from the greedy hand of murder.

In a quaint, antiquarian bookshop in the Midlands of England, a woman is captivated by a rare gilt-edged devotional nestled within an exquisite and equally tempting box. Her desire to pilfer it overcomes her scruples, and her guilt and terror at doing something so audacious, so unlike her. With a simple sleight of hand, it's hers.