Otto Penzler Books

"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 Lee Child has selected the twenty most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume. Includes stories by: Alison Gaylin, David Morrell, James Lee Burke, Joyce Carol Oates, Martin Edwards, Sara Paretsky, Stephen King, Sue Grafton (with a new, posthumously-published work!) And many more!"--

Annual collection of cutting edge crime writing from established names and total newcomers. Each year a different best-selling crime author is invited to write an introduction and be guest editor. Otto Penzler is the series editor.

Harlan Coben introduces a selection of the greatest of the great from the golden age of pulp fiction. Here are 14 classic tales of virtue versus villainy that will keep you riveted to your seat. Legendary writers you've already heard of like Dashiell Hammet, Earle Stanley Gardner, Cornell Woolrich and Raymond Chandler are here. Legendary writers that you should have heard of like Frederick Nebel, Paul Cain, Carroll John Daly, George Harmon Coxe, Charles Booth, Leslie White, William Rollins, Norbert Davis, Horace McCoy and Thomas Walsh are also where they should be - with the greats. Tailor-made for both pulp novices and hard-boiled fans with a soft spot for the masters, this collection shows that some writing has an edge that time just can't dull.

International in scope, this series of non-fiction trade paperbacks offers books that explore the lives, customs and thoughts of peoples and cultures around the world.

Each year, for the past seventeen years, Mysterious Bookshop proprietor Otto Penzler has commissioned an original Christmas story by a leading suspense writer. These stories were then produced as pamphlets, just 1,000 copies, and given to customers of the bookstore as a Christmas present. Now, all seventeen tales have been collected in one volume, showcasing the talents of: Charles Ardai Lisa Atkinson George Baxt Lawrence Block Mary Higgins Clark Thomas H. Cook Ron Goulart Jeremiah Healy Edward D. Hoch Rupert Holmes Andrew Klavan Michael Malone Ed McBain Anne Perry S. J. Rozan Jonathan Santlofer Donald E. WestlakeSome of these stories are humorous, others suspenseful, and still others are tales of pure detection, but all of them together make up a charming collection and a perfect Christmas gift for all ages.

A treasure trove of a hundred years' worth of the finest noir writing selected by James Ellroy

The purest kind of detective story involves a crime solved by observation and deduction, rather than luck, coincidence or confession. The supreme form of detection involves the explanation of an impossible crime, whether the sort of vanishing act that would make Houdini proud, a murder that leaves no visible trace, or the most unlikely villain imaginable. Virtually all of the great writers of detective fiction have produced masterpieces in this genre, including Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy L. Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, G.K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr, Dashiell Hammett, Ngaio Marsh and Stephen King. In this definitive collection, Otto Penzler selects a multifarious mix from across the entire history of the locked room story, which should form the cornerstone of any crime reader's library.

An unstoppable anthology of crime stories culled from Black Mask magazine the legendary publication that turned a pulp phenomenon into literary mainstream. Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this. Featuring • Deadly Diamonds • Dancing Rats • A Prize Fighter Fighting for His Life • A Parrot that Wouldn’t Talk Including • Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon as it was originally published • Lester Dent's Luck in print for the first time

"The best crime stories from the pulps during their golden age -- the '20s, '30s, & '40s." -- From cover

When Amanda Garth was born, a mix-up caused the hospital to briefly hand her over to the prestigious Garrison family instead of to her birth parents. The error was quickly fixed, Amanda was never told, and the secret was forgotten for twenty-three years until her aunt thoughtlessly revealed it in casual conversation. But what if the initial switch never actually occurred, and what if the real accident was Amanda's being "returned" to the wrong parents? Determined to discover her true identity, Amanda calls on her almost-family, only to discover that a deadly secret lurks