There's no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues. But that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...? No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself...

    Each Christmas Eve thereafter, fans rejoiced when Johnson sent out a new short story featuring an episode in Walt’s life that doesn’t appear in the novels; over the years, many have asked why they can’t buy the stories in book form.Wait for Signs collects those beloved stories—and one entirely new story, “Petunia, Bandit Queen of the Bighorns”—for the very first time in a single volume, regular trade hardcover. With glimpses of Walt’s past from the incident in “Ministerial Aide,” when the sheriff is mistaken for a deity, to the hilarious “Messenger,” where the majority of the action takes place in a Port-A-Potty, Wait for Signs is a necessary addition to any Longmire fan’s shelf and a wonderful way to introduce new readers to the fictional world of Absaroka County, Wyoming.

    In this follow-up collection, the editors once again tackle the question: “How short can a story be and truly be a story?” Determined to find the best flashes from America in the twenty-first century, James Thomas and Robert Shapard searched everywhere for stories that were not merely good but memorable. Moving, and certainly unforgettable, this collection includes stories from the best and most popular fiction writers of our time, including Ron Carlson, Robert Coover, Steve Almond, Amy Hempel, A. M. Homes, Grace Paley, and Paul Theroux. In addition, Rick Moody properly defines armoire, Lydia Davis delves into a world of cats, and Dave Eggers explores narrow escapes. Over and over, these stories prove that often less is more.

    Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others. Featuring a well-known list of contributors--including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike--the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk from Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells Yellow Pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island's parole board. The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs--and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them--reveal the American spirit at its best.

    He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

    Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.

    We meet the Greek gods on Olympus and Norse gods in Valhalla. We follow the drama of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus. We hear the tales of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Cupid and Psyche, and mighty King Midas. We discover the origins of the names of the constellations. And we recognize reference points for countless works of art, literature, and cultural inquiry--from Freud's Oedipus complex to Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. Praised throughout the world for its authority and lucidity, Mythology is Edith Hamilton's masterpiece--the standard by which all other books on mythology are measured.

    While there is action here, there's also political hassle, the rich and often troubling history of a department not unfamiliar with corruption, and the day to day life of people charged with preserving order in America's largest city. Conlon's book is, in part, a memoir as he progresses from being a rookie cop working the beat at troubled housing projects to assignments in the narcotics division to eventually becoming a detective. But it's also the story of his family history within the enormous NYPD as well as the evolving role of the police force within the city.Conlon relates the controversies surrounding the somewhat familiar shooting of Amadou Diallou and the abuse, at the hands of New York cops, of Abner Louima. But being a cop himself, Conlon lends insight and nuance to these issues that could not possibly be found in the newspapers. And as an outstanding writer, he draws the reader into that world. In the book's most remarkable passage, Conlon tells of the grim but necessary work done at the Fresh Kills landfill, sifting through the rubble and remains left in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 (a section originally published in The New Yorker).In many ways, Blue Blood comes to resemble the world of New York City law enforcement that Conlon describes: both are expansive, sprawling, multi-dimensional, and endlessly fascinating. And Conlon's writing is perfectly matched to his subject, always lively, keenly observant, and possessing a streetwise energy.

    Mitter, AKA Feluda. The plots involve murder, mystery and adventure, most of the times in exotic locations, narrated in a racy, humorous style by the detective's cousin-cum-assistant Topeshranjan Mitter AKA Topshe, and in most cases, accompanied by the funny Lalmohan Ganguly AKA Jatayu, who himself was a famous crime writer. All of this makes for enormously entertaining fare - and it is no wonder that each Feluda book has been a best-seller. All the stories are now available together in this two volume omnibus. For the first time ever, the stories are arranged in chronological order of composition, and one can note Feluda's development from an unknown amateur detective to a famous investigator. This first volume contains some of the best Feluda stories ever written.

    These gripping tales of mystery, suspense and clever puzzles are wonderfully entertaining and in them you will meet The Crime Doctor, Professor Augustus S.F.X.Van Dusen - The Thinking Machine, Max Carrados - the incredible blind detective, the repulsive but brilliant Skin o' My Teeth, and the natty, ingenious French sleuth Eugene Valmont. On the other side of the law, there are gentleman crooks Raffles and Simon Carn - the Prince of Swindlers. The stories include: ''The Purloined Letter' by Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Stolen Cigar Case' by Bret Harte, 'The Swedish Match' by Anton Chekhov, 'Nine Points of the Law' by E.W. Hornung, 'The Ghost at Massingham Mansions' by Ernest Bramah and 'The Great Pearl Mystery' by Baroness Orczy.

    Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip 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.

    Warshawski, "the detective mystery fans have been waiting for" (Time), makes return appearances in a collection of stories that bring new meaning to "ties that bind."  Decked out in her silk shirts and no-nonsense Attitude, V.I. is out to make a living--by the skin of her teeth.In "Grace Notes," V.I. has barely finished her morning coffee when she sees an ad in the paper asking for information about her own mother, long dead.  The paper leads V.I. to her newfound Italian cousin Vico, who's looking for music composed by their great-grandmother.  What's the score?  Clearly it's something to kill for... "The Pietro Andromache" finds V.I.'s friend Dr. Lotty Herschel with motive and means to dispatch her professional rival and steal his priceless statue.  Lotty didn't do it--but does she know who did?  V.I. soon cuts to the art of the case--and it's not a pretty picture at all!Summoned by an old high school friend to a race "At the Old Swimming Hole," V.I. ends up swimming with the sharks--the FBI and a ruthless gambling kingpin--in a pool of blood.... And it's only "Skin Deep" when a relaxing facial transformation transforms a client into a stiff.  V.I.'s pal Sal needs help.  Her beautician sister Evangeline is prime suspect--and V.I. has only eighteen hours to crack the case before it's headline news..."  Three-Dot Po" proves there's nothing like a dog.  Especially a dog on the trail of her mistress's killer, with V.I. in tow...In "Strung Out," love means nothing and V.I.'s quick to learn the score as her old friend's tennis-champion daughter is under suspicion for strangling her father with a racket string.  And there's more, nine stories in all, in this masterful collection of short fiction starring V.I. Warshawski, "the most engaging woman in detective fiction since Dorothy Sayers's Harriet Vane" (Newsweek).

    Offering the finest examples from all reaches of the genre, this collection charts the mystery's eminent history from the turn-of-the-century puzzles of Futrelle, to the seminal pulp fiction of Hammett and Chandler, to the mystery story's rise to legitimacy in the popular mind, a trend that has benefited masterly writers like Westlake, Hunter, and Grafton. Nowhere else can readers find a more thorough, more engaging, more essential distillation of American crime fiction. Penzler, the Best American Mystery Stories series editor, and Hillerman winnowed this select group out of a thousand stories, drawing on sources as diverse as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Esquire, Collier's and The New Yorker. Giants of the genre abound -- Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, and others -- but the editors also unearthed gems by luminaries rarely found in suspense anthologies: William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Harlan Ellison, James Thurber, and Joyce Carol Oates. Mystery buffs and newcomers alike will delight in the thrilling stories and top-notch writing of a hundred years' worth of the finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.

    Eliot himself wished to preserve than this volume, published two years before his death in 1965.Poet, dramatist, critic, and editor, T. S. Eliot was one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition of Collected Poems 1909-1962 includes his verse from Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) to Four Quartets (1943), and includes such literary landmarks as 'The Waste Land' and 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'.

    In a wry send-up of the classic “locked room” puzzle, an Egyptian sage ponders the mystery of a locked tomb. In another tale, a Roman slave’s investigation of a theft leads him to people in very high places. Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin has been resurrected for a new adventure, as have historical figures, from William Shakespeare—hot on the trail of Christopher Marlowe's murderer—to Samuel Johnson, with Boswell playing his Dr. Watson! (And speaking of Watson… the wizard of Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes himself, appears in an original story written by the son of Arthur Conan Doyle!) These 23 tales comprise a mixed bag of delicious crime capers designed to tickle the fancy of any dedicated mystery buff.Contents: The locked tomb mystery / Elizabeth Peters — The thief versus King Rhampsinitus / Herodotus — Socrates solves a murder / Brèni James — Mightier than the sword / John Maddox Roberts — The treasury thefts / Wallace Nichols — A Byzantine mystery / Mary Reed and Eric Mayer — He came with the rain / Robert van Gulik — The High King’s sword / Peter Tremayne — The price of light / Ellis Peters — The confession of Brother Athelstan / Paul Harding — The witch’s tale / Margaret Frazer — Father Hugh and the deadly scythe / Mary Monica Pulver — Leonardo da Vinci, detective / Theodore Mathieson — A sad and bloody hour / Joe Gores — The Christmas Masque / S. S. Rafferty — Murder lock’d in / Lillian de la Torre — Captain Nash and the Wroth inheritance / Raymond Butler — The Doomdorf mystery / Melville Davisson Post — Murder in the Rue Royale / Michael Harrison — The gentleman from Paris / John Dickson Carr — The Golden Nugget poker game / Edward D. Hoch — The case of the Deptford horror / Adrian Conan Doyle — Five rings in Reno / R. L. Stevens — Afterword : Old-time detection / Arthur Griffiths