In this fluid society, human and mindship avatars mingle in corridors and in function rooms, and physical and virtual realities overlap, the appareance of environments easily modified and adapted to interlocutors or current mood. A transport ship discharged from military service after a traumatic injury, The Shadow's Child now ekes out a precarious living as a brewer of mind-altering drugs for the comfort of space-travellers. Meanwhile, abrasive and eccentric scholar Long Chau wants to find a corpse for a scientific study. When Long Chau walks into her office, The Shadow's Child expects an unpleasant but easy assignment. When the corpse turns out to have been murdered, Long Chau feels compelled to investigate, dragging The Shadow's Child with her. As they dig deep into the victim's past, The Shadow's Child realises that the investigation points to Long Chau's own murky past--and, ultimately, to the dark and unbearable void that lies between the stars...

    Estleman, John Lescroart, Robert Goldsborough, and more.   If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin have been widely flattered almost from the moment Rex Stout first wrote about them in 1934. The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe collects two dozen literary tributes to one of crime fiction’s best-loved private detectives and his Man Friday. Included are: A 1947 pastiche by award-winning crime writer Thomas Narcejac Rollicking new stories written especially for this collection by Michael Bracken and Robert Lopresti Stories by bestselling authors including Lawrence Block and Loren D. Estleman Chapters from Robert Goldsborough’s authorized continuation of the Wolfe series; Marion Mainwaring’s 1955 tour de force Murder in Pastiche; and John Lescroart’s Rasputin’s Revenge, which reimagines a young Wolfe as the son of Sherlock Holmes Also featuring a reminiscence from Rex Stout’s daughter, this is a treasury of witty and suspenseful crime writing for every fan of the portly private detective.

    Well, something resembling a real offer. Her old friend Austin Frost has written a play for Broadway and cast the glamorous Harriet Weldon as the lead. Not wishing to leave his old friend Josh behind, he has invited her to be Harriet’s understudy. The role of understudy is a difficult one—and it becomes even more so when Harriet turns up dead and the police name Josh their prime suspect.With the NYPD breathing down her neck, Josh must find the people responsible while ensuring that the show will go on.

    His work bears special resonance for writers and readers, and yet his paintings never tell a story so much as they invite viewers to find for themselves the untold stories within."So says Lawrence Block, who has invited seventeen outstanding writers to join him in an unprecedented anthology of brand-new stories: In Sunlight or In Shadow. The results are remarkable and range across all genres, wedding literary excellence to storytelling savvy.Contributors include Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Craig Ferguson, Nicholas Christopher, Jill D. Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Justin Scott, Kris Nelscott, Warren Moore, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, and Lawrence Block himself. Even Gail Levin, Hopper’s biographer and compiler of his catalogue raisonée, appears with her own first work of fiction, providing a true account of art theft on a grand scale and told in the voice of the country preacher who perpetrated the crime.In a beautifully produced anthology as befits such a collection of acclaimed authors, each story is illustrated with a quality full-color reproduction of the painting that inspired it.

    Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Featuring brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.From the introduction by Susie Bright:Every town has its noir-ville. It’s easy to find in Santa Cruz. We live in what’s called “paradise,” where you can wake up in a pool of blood with the first pink rays of the sunrise peeking out over our mountain range. The dewy mist lifts from the bay. Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful—we were made that way, like Venus rising off the foam with a brick in her hand. We can’t help it if you fall for it every time . . .“If I lived in a place like this,” visitors often say, “I’d wake up with a smile every day.”Oh, we do, thank you for that. There’s no beauty like a merciless beauty—and like every crepuscular predator, it thrives at dawn and dusk. You’re just the innocent we’ve been waiting for, with your big paper cone of sugar-shark cotton, whipped out of pure nothing. We have just the ride for you, the longest tunnel ever. Santa Cruz is everything you ever dreamed, and everything you ever screamed, in one long drop you’ll never forget.

    Fred Carver, an Orlando cop until a gunman's bullet shattered his kneecap, acquires a cane and a new career, private investigating. From beach resorts and luxury condos, to the swamps and smuggler's coves of the Everglades, Carver looks for a man who police think committed suicide. Mysterious coincidences follow, Carver's life is threatened and he falls for his client, Edwina Talbot. Deception and confusion make the case into a maze, until bitter betrayal provided an explosive vehicle for a surprising climax.

    He's on the brink of being fired from his middle-management newspaper job. His fiancée has up and left him. Now, after the sudden death of his father, he's back in his hometown of Miami, slowly drinking himself into oblivion. But when a co-worker he barely knows asks Pete to locate a missing daughter, Pete finds himself dragged into a tale of murder, drugs, double-crosses and memories bursting from the black heart of the Miami underworld - and, shockingly, his father's past. Making it up as he goes and stumbling as often as he succeeds, Pete's surreptitious quest becomes the wake-up call he's never wanted but has always needed - but one with deadly consequences. Welcome to Silent City, a story of redemption, broken friendships, lost loves and one man's efforts to make peace with a long-buried past to save the lives of the few friends he has left.

    Noire: The Collected Stories features eight short stories from renowned authors Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer, Duane Swierczynski and Andrew Vachss, many of which revisit the characters and cases in the game, providing a new spin to tell the tales of emotionally torn protagonists, depraved schemers and ill-fated victims.

    Here then, from the well-thumbed pages of 'Black Mask' and 'Dime Detective Magazine', are eight of his finest stories including 'The Man Who Liked Dogs', 'The Lady in the Lake' and 'Bay City Blues'. Sharper than a hoodlum's switchblade, more exciting than an unexpected red-head and stronger than a double shot of whisky, they are packed full of the punchy poetry and laconic wit that makes Chandler the undisputed master of his genre.'Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony BurgessBest-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction. His books include The Big Sleep, The Little Sister, Farewell, My Lovely, The Long Good-bye, The Lady in the Lake, Playback, Killer in the Rain, The High Window and Trouble is My Business.

    

    There is no writer more capable of picking out those seeds and exposing all their secret tastes and poisons than Oates herself―as brilliantly demonstrated in these six stories.The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper’s Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In “The Long-Legged Girl,” an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgewood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband’s latest conquest? In “The Sign of the Beast,” when a former Sunday school teacher’s corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder―but is he really responsible? Another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love, Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in “Night-Gaunts,” a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft.Reveling in the uncanny and richly in conversation with other creative minds, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense stands at the crossroads of sex, violence, and longing―and asks us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves.The woman in the window --The long-legged girl --Sign of the beast --The experimental subject --Walking wounded --Night-gaunts

    He was sabotaging the Wrightsville production of The Death of Don Juan, turning it into a farce. When the curtain rose on the second act, Benedict was dead. There were plenty of suspects--it seemed Foster Benedict had upstaged everyone in town. Ellery Queen's job was a little like a casting director's--there was plenty of talent, but no one was right for the part of killer! * The Death of Don Juan * (Argosy, 5/62 reprinted in EQMM, 8/64) The Wrightsville Heirs * (Better Living, 1/56 reprinted in EQMM, 11/57) The Case Against Carroll * (Argosy, 8/58 reprinted in Suspense 04/59 and in EQMM, 9/60) E = Murder * (This Week, 8/14/60 reprinted in EQMM, 5/61) Diamonds in Paradise (EQMM, 9/54)

    Occult detectives. Ghost hunters. Monster fighters. Humans who unravel uncanny crimes and solve psychic puzzles; sleuths with supernatural powers of their own who provide services far beyond those normal gumshoes, shamuses, and Sherlocks can. When vampires, werewolves, and things that go "bump" in the night are part of your world, criminals can be as inhuman as the crimes they commit, and magic can seep into the mundane - those who solve the mysteries, bring justice, or even save the world itself, might utter spells, wield wands as well as firearms, or simply use their powers of deduction. Some of the best tales of the last decade from top authors of the 21st century's most popular genres take you down mean streets and into strange crime scenes in this fantastic compilation.Contents (alphabetical by author):“Cryptic Coloration” by Elizabeth Bear“The Key” by Ilsa J. Blick“Mortal Bait” Richard Bowes“Star of David” by Patricia Briggs“Love Hurts” by Jim Butcher“Swing Shift” by Dana Cameron“The Necromancer’s Apprentice” by Lillian Stewart Carl“Sherlock Holmes and the Diving Bell” by Simon Clark“The Adakian Eagle” by Bradley Denton“Hecate’s Golden Eye” by P.N. Elrod“The Case of Death and Honey” by Neil Gaiman“The Nightside, Needless to Say” by Simon R. Green“Deal Breaker” by Justin Gustainis“Death by Dahlia” by Charlaine Harris“See Me” by Tanya Huff“Signatures of the Dead” by Faith Hunter“The Maltese Unicorn” by Caitlín R. Kiernan“The Case of the Stalking Shadow” by Joe R. Lansdale“Like a Part of the Family” by Jonathan Maberry“The Beast of Glamis” by William Meikle“Fox Tails” by Richard Parks“Imposters” by Sarah Monette“Defining Shadows” by Carrie Vaughn

    Sayers reveals a gruesome, grotesque but absolutely bewitching side rarely shown in Lord Peter's full-length adventures.Lord Peter views the body in 12 tantalizing and bizarre ways in this outstanding collection. He deals with such marvels as the man with copper fingers, Uncle Meleager's missing will, the cat in the bag, the footsteps that ran, the stolen stomach, the man without a face...and with such clues as cyanide, jewels, a roast chicken and a classic crossword puzzle.

    He solves cases with the able assistance of his close friend and confidant. And, one day, he will become the arch enemy of Sherlock Holmes.Meet Professor James Moriarty - consulting criminal.In these three original tales - collected for the first time - Andy Weir brings to life a Moriarty worthy of the Great Detective himself.1. The Adventure of the Dishonor Among Thieves2. The Adventure of the Unscrupulous Assassin3. The Adventure of the Sealed Room