Few have crafted stories as haunting as those by Edgar Allan Poe. Collected here to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of Poe's birth are sixteen of his best tales accompanied by twenty essays from beloved authors, including T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, and Joseph Wambaugh, among others, on how Poe has changed their life and work.

Michael Connelly recounts the inspiration he drew from Poe's poetry while researching one of his books. Stephen King reflects on Poe's insight into humanity's dark side. Jan Burke recalls her childhood terror during late-night reading sessions. Tess Gerritsen, Nelson DeMille, and others remember the classic B-movie adaptations of Poe's tales. And Laurie R. King complains about how Poe stole all the good ideas . . . or maybe just thought of them first.

Powerful and timeless, "In the Shadow of the Master" is a celebration of one of the greatest literary minds of all time.

It's hard to sit still when your client is scheduled to die in 15 hours.... As he makes an 11th hour plea for mercy, lawyer Alex Sedaka is resigned to the fact that Clayton Burrows will be executed. Charged with the rape and murder of 18-year-old classmate Dorothy Olsen - a girl he mercilessly bullied and victimised at school - the case seems cut and dry. But then the victim's mother makes an astonishing offer - clemency in return for the whereabouts of her daughter's body before she herself dies of the terminal disease ravaging her body. On the other side of the Atlantic, a nurse watching Fox News recognises Dorothy's name. Does she hold the key to this case? Alex must now convince Clayton to come clean - but he still protests his innocence Is this another one of Clayton's games to or is he an innocent man about to be condemned to death? Prepare to be up all night with this race-against-the clock thriller for fans of Jeff Abbot, Simon Kernick and 24.

"The invincible Reacher is as irresistible as ever." (Sunday Telegraph) You do not mess with Jack Reacher. He is as close to untraceable as a person can get. A loner comfortable in his anonymity and solitude. So when a member of his old Army unit finds a way to contact him, he knows this has to be serious. You do not mess with the Special Investigators. In the past the elite team always watched each other's backs. Now one of them has shown up dead in the California desert and six more are missing. Reacher's old buddies are in big trouble, and he can't let that go. _________ Although the Jack Reacher novels can be read in any order, Bad Luck and Trouble is the 11th in the series. And be sure not to miss Reacher's newest adventure, no.26, Better off Dead! ***OUT NOW***

The first novel in a new series, featuring female PI Grace Cornish, from the acclaimed author of the Philip Fletcher series of theatrical mysteries There's something about Lewis. Something that women can't resist. And being a builder, he has easy access to the houses, and the beds, of the most attractive of his clients' wives. A natural playboy, but without the money, Lewis has two simple rules: never get involved and never stick around. But with Julie he finds himself breaking the code, and he continues seeing her long after the job on her house is done. There's something about Peter McGovern, too. But he's very different from Lewis. He's rich, for a start. And he's ugly. They do have something in common, though - Peter's wife, Julie - and when Lewis and McGovern meet by chance over a game of pool, the lives of the three of them can never be the same. And Grace? There's definitely something about Grace. A killer blonde with a dirty mouth, she's nobody's fool. So how come she ends up getting involved with both Lewis and McGovern, sparring in a dangerous game where it's never clear who is the victim and who is the hunter.

Agatha Christie's first ever murder mystery, now presented as a sumptuous special edition hardback. 'Beware! Peril to the detective who says: "It is so small - it does not matter..." Everything matters.' After the Great War, life can never be the same again. Wounds need healing, and the horror of violent death banished into memory. Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to the rolling country estate of Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder. Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who has grown bored of retirement... The first Hercule Poirot mystery, now published with a previously deleted chapter and introduced by Agatha Christie expert Dr John Curran.

The spine-tingling thriller about a depraved female serial killer from the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author. Jordan Price doesn't look like your typical serial killer... Young and beautiful, she exudes innocence and vulnerability. But after her latest husband dies in mysterious circumstances, Rick Carson is forced to consider her capable of cold-blooded murder. The deeper he delves into the string of deaths which stalk Jordan, the more dangerous the game of cat-and-mouse becomes. The targets are changing and suddenly no one is safe. If Jordan is as innocent as she claims, Rick may have placed in a brutal killer's crosshairs. But if she's guilty, Rick will pay in blood...

After a twenty-year absence Renee Callister is back in Helena, Montana, to bury her estranged father. John Callister was a local pariah believed to have had a hand in his wife's murder when she was protesting the opening of a controversial silver mine. But the discovery of disturbing photographs and one silver earring in her father's home is causing Renee to reexamine her stepmother's death in a shocking new light--and sending her to Hugh Davoren for help.

A California expatriate, Hugh Davoren makes his living under Montana's Big Sky, working as a carpenter with his Blackfoot pal Madbird--and he's always there for a friend. But the truth Renee Callister seeks is buried in dark and dangerous places, and Davoren's going to make some powerful, unforgiving enemies when he digs too deep.

Fifty-something librarian Shona is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, but has a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name. Impeccably educated and an accomplished martial artist, linguist and musician, Shona is personally selected by Marcia Blaine herself to travel back in time for an important mission in fin-de-siecle France. But Shona finds this mission very confusing. Why, for example, have so many people been torn to death by wild animals, what are Maman and the mayor up to, and is the reclusive aristocrat really suffering from toothache? It's a race against time to solve the mystery. It is also a very tall order - but as Shona is wont to remind herself: Never underestimate a librarian!

PI can mean many things, but can it really mean a balding, middle-aged lathe operator from a high rise in Luton? Joe Sixsmith thinks it can. His Aunt Mirabelle thinks you'd have to be crazy to hire him, and Joe's current clients certainly fit the bill. One's confessing to the brutal murder of his whole family; another thinks she's a witch. Next to them, the two heavies who believe Joe is hiding their illicit drugs seem almost normal. As Joe stumbles his way through bodies, gangsters and hostile police officers, he is protected by a combination of sheer luck and the help of a new lady friend. And soon it seems like he might just surpass everyone's expectations...

Edgar winner Lisa Scottoline returns to the courtroom with a taut and intriguing legal thriller where the search for justice turns into a fight to the death.

'Few writers in the genre today have Hill's gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace' Sunday Times Joe Sixsmith is going west, though only as far the Llanffugiol Choral Festival in Wales. But his plans are interrupted when they happen upon a burning house with a mysterious woman trapped inside. Joe risks life and limb to rescue the woman, only to be roped in to the investigation by the police officer in charge. Suddenly surrounded by a bevy of suspicious characters, he soon realizes that this case is much more than just arson. Aided by little more than his acute instinct for truth, Joe moves forward over the space of a single weekend to uncover crimes which have been buried for years.

A terrible accident. A secret discovered. An inescapable nightmare. Who needs enemies with friends like these? The unnerving new novel from the acclaimed author of LULLABY En route from ending a destructive love affair, TV producer Maggie Warren is involved in a freak accident. Lucky to escape with her life, Maggie's further disturbed to discover she's now front-page news. When invited to discuss her trauma on a chat-show, Maggie comes face to face with fellow survivor, the beautiful but damaged Fay Carter - fame-hungry, needy and now apparently infatuated. One by one the tentacles of Maggie's past mistakes seem to be reaching inexorably into her future. Her compromised career is catching up with her, ex-boyfriend Alex just won't take no for an answer - but worse, the secret Maggie has tried so hard to bury is coming back to haunt her. When Maggie's flat is ransacked, she refuses to believe it's a coincidence. Now Maggie's clutching onto sanity for dear life, but she's horribly aware that one final push might send her over the edge...or is that exactly what someone wants?

The Orange County, California, that the Becker brothers knew as boys is no more--unrecognizably altered since the afternoon in 1954 when Nick, Clay, David, and Andy rumbled with the lowlife Vonns, while five-year-old Janelle Vonn watched from the sidelines. The new decade has ushered in the era of Johnson, hippies, John Birchers, and LSD. Clay becomes a casualty of a far-off jungle war. Nick becomes a cop, Andy a reporter, David a minister. And a terrible crime touches them all in ways they could never have anticipated when the mutilated corpse of teenage beauty queen Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned warehouse.

The Trade Off from Sandie Jones - the author of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, The Other Woman - is an addictive, page-turning psychological thriller about how far a journalist will go to get the story. Everyone has a price. What's yours?

Would you print a lie across a front page?

For Stella, Deputy Editor of The Globe, the choice has always been clear. There is no stone she will leave unturned in her pursuit of the best story. It’s what she’s built her reputation on.

For Jess, The Globe’s rookie reporter, the story stops when the truth does. But she knows that the dirty tricks of the tabloids will be hard to overturn.

And when the subject of the story Jess is working on pays the ultimate price, she suspects that the paper may have had more to do with it than they’re letting on . . .

What price would you pay to uncover the truth if someone is prepared to kill to bury it?

Whether you run or whether you hide, he'll find you. And then he'll kill you... The game is simple-he is the Hunter. They are the prey. And they're both entangled in a terrifying game of hide and seek... He gives them a chance to escape. To outsmart him. But eventually, he captures them. And that's when the game gets deadly... Private investigator Griffin Powell and FBI agent Nicole Baxter know a lot about serial killers - they took one down together. But this new killer is as sadistic as they've ever seen. He likes his little games, and he especially likes forcing Nicole and Griff to play along. Every unsolvable clue, every posed victim, every taunting phone call - it's all part of his twisted, elaborate plan. And then the Hunter seeks out his most precious prey of all and Griff finds himself playing for the biggest stakes of his life.

An addictive thriller from the most sensational new voice in YA fiction. When sixteen-year-old Asha Kennedy discovers her older sister Maya's dead body in their home, her world falls apart. Desperate for answers, and to stay out of the hands of the social services she grew up in, Asha turns to her hacker friends for help. Her search leads her to Zu Tech, the hit games studio where Maya was a lead coder. As Asha begins to unravel the riddle of her death, she realises that the only way to uncover the truth is from the inside. Asha ghosts her old life and infiltrates a Zu Tech eSport tournament as they launch 'SHACKLE', the revolutionary Virtual Reality video game Maya was working on - and which hides a monstrous secret... Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and A Good Girl's Guide to Murder A guaranteed page turner full of heart, tension and twists you won't see coming! The first book in a major new YA series

The murder, a brutal stabbing, definitely took place on Guy Fawkes' night. It was definitely by the bonfire on the village green. There were definitely a number of witnesses. And yet, was it definitely clear to anybody exactly what they had seen? In the writhing, violent shadows, it seems as if the truth may have gone up in smoke. Julian Symons' phenomenal 1960 novel is a searing drama of wrongful accusation, twisty police procedural and account of grim murder all rolled together. This edition also includes the resonant short story 'The Tigers of Subtopia'.

When the San Angelo drifts into port in the Thames Estuary, telephones begin to ring across the capital and an intricate series of events is set in motion. Beset by dreadful storms in the Bay of Biscay, the ship, along with the 'mixed cargo' it carries, is late. Unaware of the machinations of avaricious importers, wayward captains and unscrupulous traders, Harry Reed and June Harvey are thrust together by a riverside accident, before being swept into the current of a dark plot developing on the dockside. A moody classic set around London's historic docks published in 1938, Josephine Bell's unique and atmospheric writing shines in a mystery weaving together blackmail, bootleg lingerie and, of course, murder.

THE RUNAWAY GLOBAL BESTSELLER ***Includes a preview of Paula's scorching new thriller, A Slow Fire Burning *** 'Gripping, enthralling - a top-notch thriller and a compulsive read.' SJ Watson, bestselling author of BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She's even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. 'Jess and Jason', she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy. And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough. Now everything's changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she's only watched from afar. Now they'll see; she's much more than just the girl on the train...

Duchlan Castle is a gloomy, forbidding place in the Scottish Highlands. Late one night the body of Mary Gregor, sister of the laird of Duchlan, is found in the castle. She has been stabbed to death in her bedroom - but the room is locked from within and the windows are barred. The only tiny clue to the culprit is a silver fish's scale, left on the floor next to Mary's body.Inspector Dundas is dispatched to Duchlan to investigate the case. The Gregor family and their servants are quick - perhaps too quick - to explain that Mary was a kind and charitable woman. Dundas uncovers a more complex truth, and the cruel character of the dead woman continues to pervade the house after her death. Soon further deaths, equally impossible, occur, and the atmosphere grows ever darker. Superstitious locals believe that fish creatures from the nearby waters are responsible; but luckily for Inspector Dundas, the gifted amateur sleuth Eustace Hailey is on the scene, and unravels a more logical solution to this most fiendish of plots.Anthony Wynne wrote some of the best locked-room mysteries from the golden age of British crime fiction.This cunningly plotted novel - one of Wynne's finest - has never been reprinted since 1931, and is long overdue for rediscovery.

It's December, and the Shannon family are returning home to their clifftop mansion near Kinloch for their annual AGM. Shannon International is one of the world's biggest private companies, with tendrils reaching around the globe in computing, banking and mineral resourcing, and it has brought untold wealth and privilege to the family. However, a century ago Archibald Shannon stole the land upon which he built their home - and his descendants have been cursed ever since. When heavy snow cuts off Kintyre, DCI Jim Daley and DS Brian Scott are assigned to protect their illustrious visitors. As an ancient society emerges from the blizzards, and its creation, the Rat Stone, reveals grisly secrets, ghosts of the past come to haunt the Shannons. As the curse decrees, death is coming - but for whom and from what?