New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award-winner Daniel Stashower returns with American Demon, a historical true crime starring legendary lawman Eliot Ness. Boston had its Strangler. California had the Zodiac Killer. And in the depths of the Great Depression, Cleveland had the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. On September 5th, 1934, a young beachcomber made a gruesome discovery on the shores of Cleveland's Lake Erie: the lower half of a female torso, neatly severed at the waist. The victim, dubbed "The Lady of the Lake," was only the first of a butcher's dozen. Over the next four years, twelve more bodies would be scattered across the city. The bodies were dismembered with surgical precision and drained of blood. Some were beheaded while still alive. Terror gripped the city. Amid the growing uproar, Cleveland's besieged mayor turned to his newly-appointed director of public safety: Eliot Ness. Ness had come to Cleveland fresh from his headline-grabbing exploits in Chicago, where he and his band of "Untouchables" led the frontline assault on Al Capone's bootlegging empire. Now he would confront a case that would redefine his storied career. Award-winning author Daniel Stashower shines a fresh light on one of the most notorious puzzles in the annals of crime, and uncovers the gripping story of Ness's hunt for a sadistic killer who was as brilliant as he was cool and composed, a mastermind who was able to hide in plain sight. American Demon reconstructs this ultimate battle of wits between a hero and a madman.

"It's history that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller."--"Harlan Coben"

Daniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award-winning author of "The Beautiful Cigar Girl," uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War in THE HOUR OF PERIL.
In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and fully-matured" threat of assassination as he traveled by train from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration. Over a period of thirteen days the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked feverishly to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne, America's first female private eye.
As Lincoln's train rolled inexorably toward "the seat of danger," Pinkerton struggled to unravel the ever-changing details of the murder plot, even as he contended with the intractability of Lincoln and his advisors, who refused to believe that the danger was real. With time running out Pinkerton took a desperate gamble, staking Lincoln's life--and the future of the nation--on a "perilous feint" that seemed to offer the only chance that Lincoln would survive to become president. Shrouded in secrecy--and, later, mired in controversy--the story of the "Baltimore Plot" is one of the great untold tales of the Civil War era, and Stashower has crafted this spellbinding historical narrative with the pace and urgency of a race-against-the-clock thriller.

A "Washington Post "Notable Nonfiction Book of 2013

Winner of the 2014 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime

Winner of the 2013 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction

A collection of letters between Arthur Conan Doyle (author and creator of Sherlock Holmes) and his mother, covering most of his life, written between 1867 and the year of her death in 1921. Doyle was raised almost solely by his mother in Dickensian circumstances, (his father latterly suffered from dipsomania and epilepsy and so spent much of his later life in asylums). Since Sherlock Holmes's inception in 1887, he has been one of the best-known and widely read literary characters, and the subject of more radio and television shows and motion pictures than any other fictional character in history. Although Doyle and his Holmes continue to be much written about, talked about and adapted, this is the first time that this material, along with other personal papers, has ever been made available. Conan Doyle although most famously remembered for Holmes, was also a physician, sportsman, public figure, war correspondent, pioneer of science fiction, psychic investigator, and prominent spiritual missionary. These letters reveal fascinating portraits of Doyle: his trip to the Arctic aged 21 where he served as a ship's surgeon on a whaling ship; his unprofitable stint as a Harley Street doctor and his decision to abandon this in favour of writing, more money and the opportunity to help his mother to look after his many younger brothers and sisters; his friendships with J.M.Barrie (among others); his attempts to write material other than Holmes; and his involvement in the spiritualist movement - something that his mother, a devout Roman Catholic, was completely against. 'Mam' as he called her, was his most loyal confidant, and his letters functioned to a certain extent as confession and cleansing penance, until his mother's death in 1921. The collection is annotated by Daniel Stashower, award-winning mystery novelist and author of the recent Conan Doyle biography "Teller of Tales", and Jon Lellenberg, the U.S agent for the Conan Doyle estate.

In 1880 a young medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle embarked upon the "first real outstanding adventure" of his life, taking a berth as ship's surgeon on an Arctic whaler, the "Hope." The voyage took him to unknown regions, showered him with dramatic and unexpected experiences, and plunged him into dangerous work on the ice floes of the Arctic seas. He tested himself, overcame the hardships, and, as he wrote later, "came of age at 80 degrees north latitude."Conan Doyle's time in the Arctic provided powerful fuel for his growing ambitions as a writer. With a ghost story set in the Arctic wastes that he wrote shortly after his return, he established himself as a promising young writer. A subsequent magazine article laying out possible routes to the North Pole won him the respect of Arctic explorers. And he would call upon his shipboard experiences many times in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, who was introduced in 1887's "A Study in Scarlet." Out of sight for more than a century was a diary that Conan Doyle kept while aboard the whaler. "Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure "makes this account available for the first time in a beautiful facsimile edition that reproduces Conan Doyle's notebook pages in his own elegant hand, accompanied by his copious illustrations. With humor and grace, Conan Doyle provides a vivid account of a long-vanished way of life at sea. His careful detailing of the experience of arctic whaling is equal parts fascinating and alarming, revealing the dark workings of the later days of the British whaling industry. In addition to the facsimile and annotated transcript of the diary, the volume contains photographs of the "Hope," its captain, and a young Conan Doyle on deck with its officers; two nonfiction pieces by Doyle about his experiences; and two of his tales inspired by the journey. To the end of his life, Conan Doyle would look back on this experience with awe: "You stand on the very brink of the unknown," he declared, "and every duck that you shoot bears pebbles in its gizzard which come from a land which the maps know not. It was a strange and fascinating chapter of my life." Only now can the legion of Conan Doyle fans read and enjoy that chapter.

A special limited, numbered edition of the clothbound book is also available. In addition, a text-only e-book edition is published as "Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure, Text-only Edition."

A remarkable annotated collection of previously unpublished private correspondence from the creator of Sherlock Holmes
This extraordinary annotated collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's private correspondence offers unique insight into one of the world's most popular authors. Detailing Conan Doyle's life from his beginnings as a country doctor to his struggle with the success of Sherlock Holmes and his ultimate calling as the foremost spokesman for Spiritualism, Conan Doyle's letters expose his innermost thoughts on literature, world events, and matters of the heart. Under the stewardship of editors renowned for their expertise on both Conan Doyle's life and the Sherlock Holmes stories, this remarkable volume reveals a man whose character and exploits rival that of his famous creation.

On July 28, 1841, the body of Mary Rogers, a twenty-year-old cigar girl, was found floating in the Hudson-and New York's unregulated police force proved incapable of solving the crime. One year later, a struggling writer named Edgar Allan Poe decided to take on the case-and sent his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to solve the baffling murder of Mary Rogers in "The Mystery of Marie RogAt."

The game's afoot! Read all-new Sherlock Holmes stories and speculative essays, praised as "of the highest order and should be required for every Sherlockian shelf" (Rocky Mountain News). Eccentric, coldly rational, brilliant, doughty, exacting, lazy-in full bohemian color the world's most famous literary detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his loyal companion Dr. John Watson, investigate a series of previously unrecorded cases in this collection of totally original and confounding tales. As in the popular debut Murder in Baker Street, Anne Perry and ten more popular mystery writers celebrate the mind and methods of Sherlock Holmes. Includes new tales by: Sharyn McCrumb Loren D. Estleman Carolyn Wheat Malachi Saxon Jon L. Breen Bill Crider Colin Bruce Lenore Carroll Barry Day Daniel Stashower And brilliantly insightful essays including: Christopher Redmond on illuminating the vast possibilities that new technology offers in "Sherlock Holmes on the Internet" Editors Lellenberg and Stashower's "A Sherlockian Library" details fifty essential books for the Arthur Conan Doyle fan Philip A. Shreffler's essay explores one of English literature's most famous friendships in "Holmes and Watson, the Head and the Heart"

Now in paperback, the second treasury of never-before-published Sherlockian tales by Anne Perry and ten other outstanding contemporary mystery writers Eccentric, coldly rational, brilliant, doughty, exacting, lazy--in full bohemian color the world's most famous literary detective and his loyal companion Dr. John Watson investigate a series of previously unrecorded cases in this second collection of totally original and confounding tales. As in the popular debut volume, Murder in Baker Street, Anne Perry and ten more popular mystery writers--including Sharyn McCrumb, Carolyn Wheat, Malachi Saxon, Jon L. Breen, Bill Crider, Colin Bruce, Lenore Carroll, Barry Day, Daniel Stashower, and Loren D. Estleman--celebrate the mind and methods of Sherlock Holmes. In addition, Christopher Redmond illuminates the vast possibilities that new technology offers in "Sherlock Holmes on the Internet, " while in "A Sherlockian Library" editors Lellenberg and 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."

Struggling young performer Harry Houdini is working for the renowned Kellar "Dean of American Magicians" in turn-of the-century New York.
When his master's astonishing Floating Lady illusion goes horribly wrong, Houdini, along with his wife Bess and brother Dash, must solve the deadly conundrum and figure out how the young lady died from drowning rather than a fatal fall...
Another thrilling title in the "Harry Houdini Mysteries" series from award-winning author Daniel Stashower!