prison system, tracking down a chameleon con artist in Europe, or riding in a cyclone-tossed skiff with a scientist hunting the elusive giant squid, David Grann revels in telling stories that explore the nature of obsession and that piece together true and unforgettable mysteries.Each of the dozen stories in this collection reveals a hidden and often dangerous world and, like Into Thin Air and The Orchid Thief, pivots around the gravitational pull of obsession and the captivating personalities of those caught in its grip. There is the world's foremost expert on Sherlock Holmes who is found dead in mysterious circumstances; an arson sleuth trying to prove that a man about to be executed is innocent, and sandhogs racing to complete the brutally dangerous job of building New York City's water tunnels before the old system collapses. Throughout, Grann's hypnotic accounts display the power-and often the willful perversity-of the human spirit.Compulsively readable, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant mosaic of ambition, madness, passion, and folly.

    The Queen of Crime.Curious? Then you're invited to read ... 'Parker Pyne Investigates'. In the US, known as, 'Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective'. Two titles, same great short stories. In fact 12 of them! Our detective's personal ad posed a simple question, 'Are you happy? If not, consult Mr. Parker Pyne'. The answer was a resounding 'I am not happy' for a jealous wife who suspects her husband of infidelity, for a lonely widow driven to assume a new identity, for a distraught mother whose son has been kidnapped, and for a strangely reclusive bride-to-be. But what sort of detective would solicit in the personal column? The sort who has a knack for investigating affairs of the heart. For therein lie the darkest motives for murder. And they are proving most lucrative for the hopelessly romantic, and highly suspicious, Parker Pyne.The 12 stories are: 1. The Case of the Middle-Aged Wife, 2. The Case of the Discontented Soldier, 3. The Case of the Distressed Lady, 4. The Case of the Discontented Husband, 5. The Case of the City Clerk, 6. The Case of the Rich Woman, 7. Have You Got Everything You Want?, 8. The Gate of Bagdad, 9. The House at Shiraz, 10. The Pearl of Price, 11. Death on the Nile, and 12. The Oracle at Delphi. Librarian's note #1. the short story, Death on the Nile in this compilation starring Parker Pyne, should not be mistaken with the novel, Death on the Nile starring Hercule Poirot. Both by Christie.Librarian's note #2: there are two more Parker Pyne stories in other collections. The stories are titled: 'The Regatta Mystery' and 'Problem at Pollensa Bay'. Including these two, there are 14 Pyne stories for your reading pleasure.Librarian's note #3: this is the entry for the collection of 12 short stories, "Parker Pyne Investigates' ('Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective'). Entries for each of the individual stories are located elsewhere on Goodreads. All 14 can be found by searching Goodreads for: 'a Parker Pyne Short Story'.

    Here, her chronicles continue with a Christmas story, a tale of robbery and attempted murder, and a narrative of Brother Cadfael's early years.

    The plots are all new, with painstaking attention to the mood, tone, and detail of the original stories. Here is a fascinating volume of mysteries for new Sherlock fans, as well as for those who have read all the classics and crave more!The Adventure of the Seven Clocks The Adventure of the Gold Hunter The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle The Adventure of the Black Baronet The Adventure of the Sealed Room The Adventure of the Foulkes Rath The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby The Adventure of the Dark Angles The Adventure of the Two Women The Adventure of the Depthford Horror The Adventure of the Red Widow

    K. Chesterton (1874–1936) is best known as the creator of detective-priest Father Brown (even though Chesterton's mystery stories constitute only a small fraction of his writings). The eight adventures in this classic British mystery trace the activities of Horne Fisher, the man who knew too much, and his trusted friend Harold March. Although Horne's keen mind and powerful deductive gifts make him a natural sleuth, his inquiries have a way of developing moral complications. Notable for their wit and sense of wonder, these tales offer an evocative portrait of upper-crust society in pre–World War I England.

    Now it turns out that numerous people with secrets to hide had every reason to wish him dead. But which of them murdered him? For Freddy Pilkington-Soames, newspaper reporter and man-about-town, the question hits a little too close to home, thanks to an unfortunate drunken encounter with Ticky's corpse which he'd much rather the police didn't find out about—and thanks also to his exasperating mother Cynthia's seeming determination to get herself arrested by tampering with the evidence. But a pretty girl with big blue eyes is demanding his help in solving the mystery, so what can he do but agree? Now all he has to do is hide the wrong clues, find the right ones, and unmask the murderer before the police discover what's really been going on. That ought to be easy enough. If only people didn't keep getting killed...

    When an elderly man shoots an intruder he finds in his home, it seems like a clear case of self defense. What’s not so clear is why the robber was there. His bag contains no silver or jewelry­—only three crude ceramic figurines of Queen Victoria which were mass-produced for her Golden Jubilee. When two of the figurines are traced to other houses on the same street, it’s Sherlock Holmes who sees the key to unlock the mystery.Three Monarchs includes a preview chapter from Moriarty.

    In "Cielo Azul," Bosch is haunted by a long-ago closed case -- the murder of a teenage girl who was never identified. As her killer sits on death row, Bosch tries one last time to get the answers he has sought for years. In "One Dollar Jackpot," Bosch works the murder of a professional poker player whose skills have made her more than one enemy. Whether investigating a cold case or fresh blood, Bosch relentlessly pursues his quarry, always on the lookout for the "tell." In this first collection of Harry Bosch stories, Michael Connelly once again demonstrates that he is the master of "fast-paced, brilliantly plotted crime fiction.... Harry Bosch is back on the case, and not a moment too soon" (Chicago Sun Times).

    John Watson investigate a series of previously unrecorded cases in this new collection of original tales. In the Scottish Highlands and Afghanistan, in the cases of a dying doctor and a mooning sentry, of a black basalt bird and white chalk horse, popular contemporary mystery writers—among them Sharyn McCrumb, Carolyn Wheat, Anne Perry and Malachi Saxon, Jon L. Breen, Bill Crider, Colin Bruce—craftily celebrate the mind, methods, and manners of the peerless Sherlock Holmes. In addition, with one foot in the Victorian age and the other in the computer age, Christopher Redmond illuminates the vast possibilities that new technology offers Sherlockians in "Sherlock Holmes on the Internet," while in "A Sherlockian Library" editors Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower provide a new list of fifty essential titles on Arthur Conan Doyle and the Holmes canon. Finally, an essay by mystery novelist Philip A. Shreffler explores one of English literature's most famous friendships in "Holmes and Watson, the Head and the Heart."(front flap)

    A Burnable Book is an irresistible thriller, reminiscent of classics like An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose and The Crimson Petal and the White. London, 1385. Surrounded by ruthless courtiers—including his powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, and Gaunt’s flamboyant mistress, Katherine Swynford—England’s young, still untested king, Richard II, is in mortal peril, and the danger is only beginning. Songs are heard across London—catchy verses said to originate from an ancient book that prophesies the end of England’s kings—and among the book’s predictions is Richard’s assassination. Only a few powerful men know that the cryptic lines derive from a “burnable book,” a seditious work that threatens the stability of the realm. To find the manuscript, wily bureaucrat Geoffrey Chaucer turns to fellow poet John Gower, a professional trader in information with connections high and low. Gower discovers that the book and incriminating evidence about its author have fallen into the unwitting hands of innocents, who will be drawn into a labyrinthine conspiracy that reaches from the king’s court to London’s slums and stews--and potentially implicates his own son. As the intrigue deepens, it becomes clear that Gower, a man with secrets of his own, may be the last hope to save a king from a terrible fate.Medieval scholar Bruce Holsinger draws on his vast knowledge of the period to add colorful, authentic detail—on everything from poetry and bookbinding to court intrigues and brothels—to this highly entertaining and brilliantly constructed epic literary mystery that brings medieval England gloriously to life.

    A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend – until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris. Mademoiselle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star writes that her illegitimate son by an English Lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.Racing to Paris with Watson at his side, Holmes discovers the missing child is only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem. The most valuable statue since the Winged Victory has been violently stolen in Marseilles, and several children from a silk mill in Lancashire have been found murdered. The clues in all three cases point to a single, untouchable man.Will Holmes recover in time to find the missing boy and stop a rising tide of murders? To do so he must stay one step ahead of a dangerous French rival and the threatening interference of his own brother, Mycroft.This latest adventure, in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sends the iconic duo from London to Paris and the icy wilds of Lancashire in a case which tests Watson's friendship and the fragility and gifts of Sherlock Holmes' own artistic nature to the limits.

    . . and Daniel was gone.Now they are a pair of strangers who can't even look each other in the eye.Distrust and unspoken words fill the void where their son used to be.Anna will go to any lengths to find Daniel - a four-year-old doesn't just vanish into thin air. But how far will this desperate search push her?Right to the brink.And beyond.

    What she never expected was to find herself at the heart of a 200-year-old mystery that still has the power to put lives on the line. And with each new lead she pursues, death follows hard on her heels….

    Yet this most British of civil servants has strong ties to the faraway island of Trinidad, the birthplace of his best friend, Cyrus Douglas, a man of African descent, and where his fiancée Georgiana Sutton was raised.Mycroft’s comfortable existence is overturned when Douglas receives troubling reports​ from home. There are rumors of mysterious disappearances, strange footprints in the sand, and spirits enticing children to their deaths, their bodies found drained of blood. Upon hearing the news, Georgiana abruptly departs for Trinidad. Near panic, Mycroft convinces Douglas that they should follow her, drawing the two men into a web of dark secrets that grows more treacherous with each step they take...Written by NBA superstar Kareem Abdul- Jabbar and screenwriter Anna Waterhouse, Mycroft Holmes reveals the untold story of Sherlock’s older brother. This harrowing adventure changed his life, and set the​ stage for the man Mycroft would become: founder of the famous Diogenes Club and the hidden power behind the British government.

    But why? Fennan, a Foreign Office man, had been under investigation for alleged Communist Party activities, but Smiley had made it clear that the investigation -- little more than a routine security check -- was over and that the file on Fennan could be closed. The very next day, Fennan was found dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn't go on. Smiley was puzzled...