Selected by #1 bestselling author Lee Child: the twenty finest short stories of 2021. There is no finer form for a crime than the short story. WIthin a few pages, a clue can be discovered, divulged and its significance determined; all else is mere embellishment. The classic mystery tale will be familiar to aficionados and casual readers alike: it was invented by Edgar Allen Poe, popularised by Arthur Conan Doyle, and perfected by Agatha Christie. But mystery fiction has changed a great deal over the years - as have all things - and the writers within these pages present far more than a simple case of crime and resolution. Far from predictable, these stories provide fertile grounds of aberrant circumstances and the poor choices they lead to. You will find diverse methods and motivations, original perspectives and perils. Above all, you will find tales of the extremes of human psychology caused by despair, hate, greed, fear, envy, insanity or love. Featuring stories by: Doug Allyn, Jim Allyn, Ambrose Bierce, Michael Bracken, James Lee Burke, Martin Edwards, John Floyd, Jacqueline Freimor, Alison Gaylin, Sue Grafton, Paul Kemprecos, Stephen King, Janice Law, Dennis McFadden, David Marcum, Tom Mead, David Morrell, Joyce Carol Oates, Sara Paretsky, Joseph Walker, Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

A collection of the year's best mystery short fiction selected by New York Times best-selling and Edgar Award-winning author C. J. Box. C. J. Box, #1 New York Times best-selling author of the hugely popular Joe Pickett series, selects the best short mystery and crime fiction of the year in this annual "treat for crime-fiction fans" (Library Journal).

A special reissue from Head of Zeus's bestselling anthology collection of the 100 best Yuletide whodunnits. A Times Book of the Year 2014. This Christmas crime anthology stars Poirot, Marple, Rebus, More, Rumpole, Sherlock, Cadfael and many, many more. Festive felonies, unscrupulous santas, deadly puddings, and misdemeanors under the mistletoe... From Victorian detective stories to modern mysteries, police procedurals to pulp fiction, comic gems to cozy crime, there's something for every festive mood in this must-read collection starring sixty of the world's favourite detectives. Featuring an all-star cast of authors including Isaac Asimov, Mary Higgins Clark, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Colin Dexter, Thomas Hardy, H.R.F. Keating, Ngaio Marsh, John Mortimer, Ellis Peters, Sara Paretsky, Robert Louis Stevenson and - of course - Agatha Christie, this is the biggest and best Christmas crime anthology in print today.

The biggest, the boldest, the most comprehensive collection of Pulp writing ever assembled.
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train--a bullet couldn't pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like "Black Mask," "Dime Detective," "Detective Fiction Weekly," and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
Including:
- Three stories by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Dashiell Hammett.
- Complete novels from Carroll John Daly, the man who invented the hard-boiled detective, and Fredrick Nebel,
one of the masters of the form.
- A never before published Dashiell Hammett story.
- Every other major pulp writer of the time, including Paul Cain, Steve Fisher, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, and many
many more of whom you've probably never heard.
- Three deadly sections-The Crimefighters, The Villains, and Dames-with three unstoppable introductions by Harlan Coben,
Harlan Ellison, and Laura Lippman
Featuring:
- Plenty of reasons for murder, all of them good.
- A kid so smart-he'll die of it.
- A soft-hearted loan shark's legman learning-the hard way-never to buy a strange blonde a hamburger.
- The uncanny "Moon Man" and his mad-money victims.

Fact. Fiction. Legend.

The predatory ritual, the escalating savagery of the crimes, the grisly trophies taken from his victim's bodies, the games played with his pursuers, the cannibalism: Jack the Ripper's reign of terror in London's East End during the autumn of 1888 casts a long shadow.

Many have murdered more, but few have killed so brutally and none have forged such an enduring legend. For a century and a quarter the Ripper's crimes have appalled and fascinated in equal measure, inspiring over one hundred theories about this prototypical serial killer's identity and spawning thousands of works of fiction. This collection is the ultimate exploration of the Ripper legend. It sifts through Jack's legacy, blending the true story (told via contemporary reports and a century's worth of the best analysis) with the best crime and horror fiction his depraved deeds have inspired.

Some of these stories are classics, some have been written especially for this volume. Including writing from Jeffery Deaver, Anne Perry, George Bernard Shaw, Ellery Queen, Boris Akunin, Ramsey Campbell, Harlan Ellison and Robert Bloch.

Selected by #1 bestselling author Lee Child: the twenty finest short stories of 2021. There is no finer form for a crime than the short story. WIthin a few pages, a clue can be discovered, divulged and its significance determined; all else is mere embellishment. The classic mystery tale will be familiar to aficionados and casual readers alike: it was invented by Edgar Allen Poe, popularised by Arthur Conan Doyle, and perfected by Agatha Christie. But mystery fiction has changed a great deal over the years - as have all things - and the writers within these pages present far more than a simple case of crime and resolution. Far from predictable, these stories provide fertile grounds of aberrant circumstances and the poor choices they lead to. You will find diverse methods and motivations, original perspectives and perils. Above all, you will find tales of the extremes of human psychology caused by despair, hate, greed, fear, envy, insanity or love. Featuring stories by: Doug Allyn, Jim Allyn, Ambrose Bierce, Michael Bracken, James Lee Burke, Martin Edwards, John Floyd, Jacqueline Freimor, Alison Gaylin, Sue Grafton, Paul Kemprecos, Stephen King, Janice Law, Dennis McFadden, David Marcum, Tom Mead, David Morrell, Joyce Carol Oates, Sara Paretsky, Joseph Walker, Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The greatest detective of all time.

In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle put pen to paper and created a legend: Sherlock Holmes. His tall, slender, hawk-nosed figure with his deerstalker hat is instantly recognizable in every corner of the world.

Alongside Doyle's original stories, Sherlock has spawned a literature of his own in parodies and homages. More than 25,000 books, stories and articles have been written by authors, amateurs and scholars.

In this stupendous anthology, the best and most brilliant are collected together for the first time.

'What treats you have in store!' IAN RANKIN. Who knew literature could be so lethal? Here are 20 specially commissioned stories about deadly books from the world's best crime writers. By turns hair-raising and playful, packed with twists and turns, literary references and bookish conundrums, this is a treasure chest of bloodthirsty bibliophilia

Lawrence Block, in Keller by a Nose," asks what obsession holds more hazards than betting on the ponies. The answer will surprise you...Max Allan Collins's "That Kind of Nag" proves that it's bad to play the wrong horse, but worse to pick the wrong woman..."The Great, the Good and the Not-So-Good" by H.R.F. Keating warns against old English ladies at the racecourse...Joyce Carol Oates shows how a young woman teams to trust a prize stallion more than her violent lover in "Meadowlands..".and Scott Wolven's "Pinwheel" offers a Japanese lesson in flying horses and honor among thieves."--BOOK JACKET.

International bestselling author Sara Paretsky selects the twenty best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Michael Connelly, Jo Nesbo, Joyce Carol Oates, Colson Whitehead, and more in this crime connoisseur's collection. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume. The classic mystery tale will be familiar to aficionados and casual readers alike: it was invented by Edgar Allen Poe, popularised by Arthur Conan Doyle, and perfected by Agatha Christie. WIthin a few pages, a clue can be discovered, divulged, and its significance determined: all else is mere embellishment. Featuring stories by: Doug Allyn, Colin Barrett, Jerome Charyn, Michael Connelly, Susan Frith, Tom Larsen, Sean Marciniak, Stefon Mears, Keith Lee Morris, Gwen Mullins, Jo Nesbo, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Reed, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Anna Scotti, Ginny Swart, Ellen Tremiti, Joseph S. Walker, Colson Whitehead, and Michael Wiley - plus a bonus vintage story from the annals of mystery fiction, written over a century in the past.

The Vampire Archives is the biggest, hungriest, undeadliest collection of vampire stories, as well as the most comprehensive bibliography of vampire fiction ever assembled. Dark, stormy, and delicious, once it sinks its teeth into you there's no escape.
Vampires Whether imagined by Bram Stoker or Anne Rice, they are part of the human lexicon and as old as blood itself. They are your neighbors, your friends, and they are always lurking. Now Otto Penzler--editor of the bestselling Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps--has compiled the darkest, the scariest, and by far the most evil collection of vampire stories ever. With over eighty stories, including the works of Stephen King and D. H. Lawrence, alongside Lord Byron and Tanith Lee, not to mention Edgar Allan Poe and Harlan Ellison, The Vampire Archives will drive a stake through the heart of any other collection out there.
Other contributors include:
Arthur Conan Doyle - Ray Bradbury - Ambrose Bierce - H. P. Lovecraft - Harlan Ellison - Roger Zelazny - Robert Bloch - Clive Barker

THE BIG BOOK OF GHOST STORIES is a spirited Black Lizard anthology with over a thousand pages of haunted--and haunting--tales.
The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight.
Including such classics as "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Open Window" and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore