Time Detectives

The Greatest Mysteries of All Time, Volume 5 is an exciting addition to this series, featuring the finest short-story mystery fiction by the most acclaimed writers, past and present. This unique collection of master writers, including such notables as Isaac Asimov, Ogden Nash, and Mickey Spillane, edited by multi-award-winning mystery connoisseur Otto Penzler, is a delightful mixture of mystery and suspense.

A hate group operating in Oakland County, Michigan, has claimed responsibility for a six-month-long string of arson fires and robberies at mosques, temples, and Black churches around Detroit, eluding police and federal agencies. The most recent fire, at a mosque in Dearborn, kills a respected imam. His children—suspicious of law enforcement’s treatment of Muslims and afraid of reprisal—hire Charlie Mack and her team of investigators to find their father’s murderers.

When a search party trawling Salem Island find a girl’s body curled on the damp earth, the hunt for missing waitress Emma Jacobis grinds to a devastating halt. The day before, Emma had come to Detective Charlie Winters convinced someone was watching her. In her trembling hand, she held a sketch of herself sleeping peacefully with the stuffed rabbit she’d had since she was a child. On the back, scrawled in black ink: You will be mine.

When Gloria Carmichael’s body is found broken and bleeding on the sidewalk just days after knocking on Detective Charlie Winters’ door begging for help to locate her father’s will, Charlie’s instinct is confirmed: Her latest case is about more than just a simple family feud. The Carmichaels are famous in Salem Island for their large family and charitable work, but, moments before she died, beautiful, trustworthy eldest daughter Gloria called Charlie to say she had uncovered a terrible secret that would break the mystery of her father’s death wide open.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) re-introduced the world to the famous consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, who Arthur Conan Doyle seemingly killed off in 1894 in his story "The Final Problem." Based on British legend, this novella has Holmes and his colleague Dr. Watson trying to solve a supernatural killing in the wilds of Devonshire.

There is a persistent and incorrect idea, reinforced by countless film misrepresentations, that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were always staid and dull British chaps of middle years (or older), with Holmes a spry, cranky, and impatient eccentric, and Watson a white-haired and portly Boobus Brittanicus, a la Nigel Bruce. Students of the true and Canonical Sherlock Holmes know this to be a falsehood. When we first meet them on January 1, 1881, Holmes is still 26 years old (although he will turn 27 in just a few days), and Watson, already a wounded war veteran, is only 28.

Mr Bowling is getting away with murder. On each occasion he buys a newspaper to see whether anyone suspects him. But there is a war on, and the clues he leaves are going unnoticed. Which is a shame, because Mr Bowling is not a conventional serial killer: he wants to get caught so that his torment can end. How many more newspapers must he buy before the police finally catch up with him?

The horribly crushed body that crashed onto the Manhattan pavement has at least two names, several passports, and an address book full of important friends - among them, a millionaire roué; his exotic, deadly mistress; and his coolly beautiful wife - all of whom seem to have forgotten him very abruptly when he became a corpse. No one is talking, so it is up to Captain Corrigan, the man with the eye patch and a way with crime, to solve a violent puzzle of lust, greed, high espionage - and the worst kind of murder.

Merlin the wizard is a good-looking, but very well-disguised woman. She's also ambitious and becomes Arthur's mentor, falling in love with him. It's reciprocated, and they elope, leaving the wizard's cave to Tertia, Unita, and Marlene (Merlin's apprentices and her sister). They start a detective agency, however bored with the lack of fifth century crime, they start up the Temporal Detective Agency and use Merlin's time portal to move from Camelot to the 21st century, where the cases are better.

Thrust into a world 116 years in the past, Adrienne Phillips must decipher the enigmatic words of her dying grandmother. "Butterfly; Go to Henri. The woman in pink." With the help of a can-can dancer and a castaway caught in the past, Adrienne attempts to solve the riddle. The answer lies in a well-known painting by Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge: The Dance.

An elderly woman is burnt to death in the remote hamlet of Silver Bay. A young woman dies of an overdose on a notorious Holyhead estate. A drugs war is about to explode. Somebody knows but no one is talking. Kelly Morgan has a social conscience and a pile of regrets. She wants to help but knows she'll never manage it alone. Her boss, Amanda Gold, cannot allow anything - not her divorce nor her daughter nor her affair with the boss - to cloud her thinking.

In the year 1908, Holmes believed himself to be in retirement. Watson was once again in private practice and unwed. Mrs. Hudson had gone to Sussex to act as Holmes's housekeeper. But the fates had agreed that Martha Hudson and John Watson should be together. Or had they? When Dr. Watson proposes to Martha Hudson, it sets off a series of events that only Sherlock Holmes can deal with. Watson has already had three wives—all have died under unfortunate circumstances. Colm Campbell, Martha Hudson's nephew, thinks there is more here than meets the eye.

Already ragged and on-edge due to the unrest in the area, Captain of the guard Kieran MacLeod feels obligated to keep the troubling woman from the future who appeared in the castle safe—not only from the bandits attacking but also from her own reckless behavior. He isn't used to dealing with someone so strong or independent, and Sarah refuses to listen to him or his warnings, which leads to heated arguments and even hotter attraction.

On the night Donovan Turner is thrown out of a car on a highway in the middle of nowhere, he can barely remember his own name, let alone the past 24 hours. Where is he? Where is his girlfriend, Bee? In an attempt to flag down the next passing car, he startles the driver, causing a fatal accident. With sirens in the distance and the lingering feeling that he's running from something - or someone - Donovan grabs the dead driver's briefcase and flees.

Kiera awakens to find herself imprisoned. Experiencing horrific nightmares and visions, she slowly realizes that she has been subjected to a series of sinister tests and operations. Now addicted to blood, and in pain, Kiera knows that if she is to survive, she will need to escape from her caged cell. More questions arise: Who is the secretive werewolf visiting her at night - and can she trust him? Where are her friends, and why hasn't Potter come to her rescue, as he promised?

In search of Kayla and on the run, Kiera and her friends make a race against time across the Cumbria Mountains. With vampires predicting their every move, the trust among Kiera and her friends starts to waver. From the desolate monastery set high in the mountains, to the mysterious lake and the caves beneath the fountain, Kiera must discover the connection between the vampires and her mother, Isidor, and Kayla - all while trying to resolve her feelings for Potter and Luke.

DC Paul Winter has gone undercover in an attempt to infiltrate the inner circle of the city's premier drug lord Bazza McKenzie.

Jeremy Ringer enjoys the important things in life: surf and sand - beach and bartending - practicing Taoism. Until a death in the family sends him across the state, and he realizes that the simple things are not enough. Ollie Mendosa is only interested in one thing - the new police app he's developing. That is until he meets one of the crime victims, the beach-loving Jeremy Ringer. Ollie’s protective nature is brought out in full force, and he can't resist the temptation of a summer fling.

In the year 1903 - the exact moment is now lost to history - Sherlock Holmes proclaimed to the world he was quitting England's Capital to go into retirement on a small, wind-swept farm in the Sussex South Downs. His shocked comrade-in-arms Dr. John H. Watson was later to write, "The decision took me utterly by surprise. I thought I had become an institution around Holmes, like his Stradivarius, or the old, oily black clay pipe and his index books."

Bazza Mackenzie, Pompey’s top criminal, is now beyond reach of DI Joe Faraday. Hungry for power and profile, Bazza decides to stand for Portsmouth North in the general election. And his campaign is taking the city by storm. But politics is an expensive business and so Bazza turns to ex-cop Paul Winter to call in a multi-million pound drug debt. Winter, though, is facing a nightmare of his own and knows his time with Bazza has to end.