The most complete collection of Yuletide whodunits ever assembled • The Edgar Award-winning editor collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories—from Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy to Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain. “Anyone who cares about the best mystery writing of the past century and beyond would be lucky to receive this thick volume during the holidays." —The Washington Post This collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for--suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural—can be found in these pages. FEATURING: • Unscrupulous Santas • Crimes of Christmases Past and Present • Festive felonies • Deadly puddings • Misdemeanors under the mistletoe • Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe.

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler—“detective fiction’s best editor and champion” (The Washington Post)—returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horsedrawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. With his latest title in the Big Book series, Otto Penzler is cracking cases and serving up the most thrilling, suspenseful Victorian mysteries. This collection brings together incredible stories from Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Guy de Maupassant among other legendary writers of the grand era of the British Empire. So brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

The Most Complete Collection of Impossible Crime Stories Ever Assembled, with puzzling mysteries by Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many, many more THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES: An empty desert, a lonely ski slope, a gentleman’s study, an elevator car—nowhere is a crime completely impossible. Edgar Award–winning editor Otto Penzler has collected sixty-eight of the all-time best impossible-crime stories from almost two hundred years of the genre. In addition to the many classic examples of the form—a case of murder in a locked room or otherwise inaccessible place, solved by a brilliant sleuth—this collection expands the definition of the locked room to include tales of unbelievable thefts and incredible disappearances. Among these pages you’ll find stories with evocative titles like “The Flying Death”, “The Man From Nowhere”, “A Terribly Strange Bed”, and “The Theft of the Bermuda Penny”, not to mention appearances by some of the cleverest characters in all of crime, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, and many more. Featuring • Unconventional means of murder • Pilfered jewels • Shocking solutions Includes • Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the first detective story and the first locked-room mystery • Masters of the short story form: Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen, Carter Dickson, and Stanley Ellin A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler is back with a new anthology that has gathered the intel on the world's greatest secret agents, declassified in these pages for the first time. Statesecrets. Double agents. Leaks. Otto Penzler brings you all this and more with his latest title in the Big Book series. No need to wait for the government to release redacted information, Otto is ready to declassify confidential matters. Great stories from Lee Child and Charles McCarry are pulled from the shadows and into the light. So pull your fedora down, adjust your fake moustache, and get ready to settle in with some of the greats.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology rolls out the red carpet for the stories that Hollywood is made of. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original. Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. There's the W. Somerset Maugham short story that inspired Hitchcock's Secret Agent; Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; Sir Ian Fleming's "From a View to a Kill," later one of Roger Moore's greatest Bond films; and "Cyclists' Raid," the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One. Otto Penzler delivers the director's cut on these classic short stories and the films they gave rise to. So grab your Sno-Caps and a jumbo box of popcorn and curl up with these cinematic tales from the likes of Agatha Christie, Dennis Lehane, Joyce Carol Oates, Dashiell Hammett, O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, resourceful, and brilliant female sleuths in mystery fiction. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original. For the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the most iconic women of the detective canon over the past 150 years, captivating and surprising readers in equal measure. The 74 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most determined of gumshoe gals, from debutant detectives like Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange to spinster sleuths like Mary Roberts Rinehart's Hilda Adams, from groundbreaking female cops like Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly to contemporary crime-fighting P.I.s like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, and include indelible tales from Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells, Edgar Wallace, L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Linda Barnes, Laura Lippman, and many more.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, ruthless, and brilliant criminals in mystery fiction, for the biggest compendium of bad guys (and girls) ever assembled. The best mysteries--whether detective, historical, police procedural, cozy, or comedy--have one thing in common: a memorable perpetrator. For every Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade in noble pursuit, there's a Count Dracula, a Lester Leith, or a Jimmy Valentine. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations--and who often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect. Now, for the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the iconic traitors, thieves, con men, sociopaths, and killers who have crept through the mystery canon over the past 150 years, captivating and horrifying readers in equal measure. The 72 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most depraved of psyches, from iconic antiheroes like Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin and Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu to contemporary delinquents like Lawrence Block's Ehrengraf and Donald Westlake's Dortmunder, and include unforgettable tales by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Jack London, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, O. Henry, Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward D. Hoch, Max Allan Collins, Loren D. Estleman, and many more.

Edgar Award–winning editor Otto Penzler's latest anthology takes its inspiration from the historical enigma whose name has become synonymous with fear: Jack the Ripper. Of the real-life serial killers whose gruesome acts have been splashed across headlines, none has reached the mythical status of Jack the Ripper. In the Ripper's wake, terror swept through the streets of London’s East End in the fall of 1888. As quickly as his nightmarish reign came, Saucy Jack vanished without a trace—leaving future generations to speculate upon his identity and whereabouts. He was diabolical in a way never seen before—a killer who taunted the police, came up with his own legendary monikers, and, ultimately, got away with his heinous crimes. More than a century later, the man “from hell” continues to live on in the imaginations of readers everywhere—and in some of the most spec­tacularly unnerving stories, both fiction and nonfiction, ever written. The Big Book of Jack the Ripper immerses you in the utterly chilling world of Red Jack’s London, where his unprecedented evil still lurks. Including: · Legendary stories by Marie Belloc Lowndes, Robert Bloch, and Ellery Queen · Captivating essays from George Bernard Shaw, Stephen Hunter, and Peter Underwood · Riveting new stories by contemporary masters Jeffrey Deaver, Loren D. Estleman, Lyndsay Faye, and many more · Astonishing theories from the world’s foremost Ripperologists From the Ripper Vault: · Demonic letters from Jack himself · Gruesome postmortem exams documenting all the bits and pieces of the cases · Harrowing witness statements taken on those hellish nights · Breaking newspaper accounts of the East End hysteria

"Including stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Laurie R. King, Colin Dexter, Anthony Burgess, Anne Perry, Stephen King, P.G Wodehouse, Neil Gaiman, Kingsley Amis, and many, many more"--Jacket.

The Edgar Award-winning editor collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories—from Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy, to Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain. • “Anyone who cares about the best mystery writing of the past century and beyond would be lucky to receive this thick volume during the holidays." —The Washington Post This collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for--suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural—can be found in these pages. FEATURING: - Unscrupulous Santas - Crimes of Christmases Past and Present - Festive felonies - Deadly puddings - Misdemeanors under the mistletoe - Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe.