Search

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) holds a unique place in American literature. Famous as a poet, he also penned short stories that are masterpieces of terror and suspense, infused with the horror and dread he knew from his feverish dreams and persistent fears of death. Fortunately for lovers of mystery, Poe was attracted by logic and analysis as well as fantasy. Fascinated by the narrative possibilities of tracking the perpetrator of a crime, he invented the modern detective story.This superb collection of five stories reveals Poe's virtuoso gifts for both crime fiction and the macabre. Two of his most famous tales,'The Mystery of Marie Roget'and'The Purloined Letter,'recount the exploits of C. Auguste Dupin, the first important fictional detective.'William Wilson'is a chilling tale of crime and evil. The two remaining stories,'MS. Found in a Bottle'and'The Oblong Box,'subtly but relentlessly convey a sense of unease, then dread, then outright terror.

Barlow drove too fast, didn't stay in his own lane, abused other drivers on the road, and even drank too much for safe driving. A story of menace, danger - and horror!

Farrel Ivins may be standing on the gallows with his neck in a noose, but he's not worried. He's taken a drug that makes it impossible to contemplate his future, and besides, he hasn't given his'final'speech yet. He knows that when the governor hears about the odd goings-on in Oxford Circus, Lake City, Chicago, and Chinatown Crescent, where the tong of the Lean Grey Rats rules, Farrel is bound to be saved. So begins the most Oriental of Harry Stephen Keeler's webwork mysteries.

Death comes a-calling not once but three times in this murderous collection of cases from the files of Nero Wolfe, the world's greatest detective.First there is the exclusive dinner party where the guests are gourmets, arsenic is the appetizer, and the suspects are five of the most gorgeous gals in New York. Next, a wandering cab pulls up to Wolfe's door, containing a lady driver who doesn't belong... and a comely corpse with a knife between her ribs. And finally, a championships rodeo roars into town, featuring square-jawed cowboys, bright-eyed cowgirls, and a dead millionaire with a fancy lariat for a necktie. Introduction by Margaret Maron “It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.”—The New York Times Book Review A grand master of the form, Rex Stout is one of America's greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. Together, Stout and Wolfe have entertained—and puzzled—millions of mystery fans around the world. Now, with his perambulatory man-about-town, Archie Goodwin, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth is back in the original seventy-three cases of crime and detection written by the inimitable master himself, Rex Stout.

Tecumseh Fox has a sharp eye for solving murders—but this time he's seeing double. Fox has been hired by the headstrong niece of a man charged in the shooting of wealthy financier Ridley Thorpe. The problem is that there are two gorgeous suspects, two powerful motives, two hotheaded suitors, and two murder weapons. And to top it off, Ridley Thorpe, or someone claiming to be him, is not only alive and well but has an airtight alibit for the night of the shooting. Only one thing is certain: Fox doesn't have long to put two and two together before the real killer strikes again.

All three books are written with an enduring view of the dark corners of the American psyche. Cain hammered high art out of the crude matter of betrayal, bloodshed, and perversity.

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story?'Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing and sex,'said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philop Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett's style:'Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it....He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.'Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolutiuon of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the Golden Age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett's 1925 tour de force'The Scorched Face,'in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett's never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman's 1992'The Long Silence After,'a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded.38. Other delectable contributions include'Brush Fire'by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler's'I'll Be Waiting,'where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald's most famous creation, the cryptic Lew Archer, and'The Screen Test of Mike Hammer'by the one and only Micky Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard's'3:10 to Yuma'and John D. MacDonald's'Nor Iron Bars.'Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and oursleves.

This long-awaited volume finally brings to light several cases of the world's most famous consulting detective that were originally suppressed to avoid scandal and embarrassment to the Crown, public figures, or to Holmes himself. Now, the truth is finally revealed regarding Holmes's exploits involving the Titanic, his rematch with Irene Adler, the childhoods of both Holmes and Watson, and such figures as Ida Tarbell, P.G. Wodehouse, and James McNeil Whistler. The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes is a cornucopia of Sherlockiana that will delight fans young and no-so-young.

In “Dick Contino's Blues,” a novella inspired by the real-life entertainer, a serial killer on the loose in West Hollywood gets tangled up with a fake kidnapping; the collection also includes five stories of corrupt cops, goons with guns, and mobsters, all set in the fading glory of 1950s Los Angeles Nobody plays accordion like Dick Contino. His skilled fingers can find beauty in even the schmaltziest borscht belt favorites, and with his matinee-idol looks he could be a real star. Right now, though, he's slumming it as the headliner in a Grade Z teenybopper picture called Daddy-O. He's too good for this movie, and finishing it is going to take him to a very dark place. Daddy-O and Dick Contino are both real, their stories dredged out of the past by James Ellroy, a master of historical crime fiction. In Dick Contino's Blues he takes us to B-List Hollywood in 1957—a time when movies were cheerful and dirty secrets lurked just off camera. Included along with the novella are five short stories, all in the author's inimitable tough-bitten style.

When Kwan Yung, Chinese inventor, gets cheated out of $32,000, it sets off a whirlwind set of circumstances that will affect financier Christopher Thorne, his beautiful daughter, Alicia, and his loyal employee, Philip Erskine -- for better or for worse! Throw in a brain-teaser and you've got the makings for one of the most complex webwork mysteries to escape the mind of Harry Stephen Keeler. You also get a third solution to the Marceau Case, which has baffled Scotland Yard. The action ranges from Chicago to New York to New Orleans in this classic work by Chicago's own Harry Stephen Keeler.

A rash of political deaths alerts a New York cop to an international assassination plotAt a crime scene, Harry Golding has no fear. But put him in front of a few dozen undergraduates, and he begins to sweat. He agrees to give the lecture on criminology for his brother, a New York University professor, and muddles through it, successful until it comes time for questions. A skinny young conspiracy theorist demands to know what the police are doing about the recent death of a presidential candidate. The answer is, they're doing nothing. The man died of a heart attack. Case closed. But when another politician drops dead, seemingly of natural causes, Golding remembers the young student's paranoia. As more politicians die, Harry Golding finds himself in the middle of a terrifying conspiracy that threatens his city, his family, and his life. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author's estate.

One of the most original American writers, Edgar Allan Poe shaped the development of both the detectvie story and the science-fiction story. Some of his poems—'The Raven,''The Bells,''Annabel Lee'—remain among the most popular in American literature. Poe's tales of the macabre still thrill readers of all ages. Here are familiar favorites like'The Purloined Letter,''The Fall of the House of Usher,'and'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,'together with less-known masterpieces like'The Imp of the Perverse,''The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym,'and'Ligeia,'which is now recognized as one of the first science-fiction stories, a total of seventy-three tales in all, plus fifty-three poems and a generous sampling of Poe's essays, criticism and journalistic writings.

Title from PDF title page (viewed on Apr. 30, 2007).

Joseph Fairweather languishes in a mental institution because he has a theory about time and space that's just plain crazy. Across the ocean in an abandoned warehouse by the River Thames, Eadgyth Whit­church lies bound hand and foot, soon to be thrown into the river by the London branch of the Tong of the Lean Grey Rats That Swarm the World, just because she overheard a phone conversation she shouldn't have. Meanwhile, back in the States there's a slab of ancient stone that seems to disappear and reappear according to some laws of nature we know nothing about. What's going on here?

The assistant to the man who built the world's first successful space rocket schemes to claim the invention for himself. A science fiction crime story! Originally published in Amazing Stories, October 1946.

Renowned detective Fleming Stone is back again in this captivating whodunit with some spooky supernatural elements. When a titan of industry is found dead in his lavish apartment, there is a mysterious lack of motive, means and suspects -- until a relative of the victim steps forward with an incredible tale of an encounter with the dead man's ghost, whose appearance coincided with an overwhelming taste and smell of raspberry jam.

Victoria Van Allen (or Vicky Van, as she is known to her friends) is a sophisticated young woman whose cocktail parties and soirees are the talk of the town. When one of her legendary gatherings ends in murder, Vicky's bizarre behavior baffles her friends. This tightly plotted whodunit will keep you guessing until the very end.