Eighteen short stories of crime, suspense, and seduction exploring the timeless allure of lethal ladies. Dangerous women are a steadfast tradition in crime and mystery books—smart, sexy, and an invitation to trouble. From wealthy wives with secret lives to baby-faced beauties spinning webs and laying traps, this collection is filled with compelling short fiction featuring females who are deadlier than the male. With stories by Robert Lopresti, Bev Vincent, Ali Seay, Ana Teresa Pereira, Bernie Crosthwaite, and many more, this seductive volume was handpicked by Anthony Award winner Maxim Jakubowski to represent the finest femmes fatales in crime and mystery fiction.

Novelist, editor, and mystery extraordinaire Maxim Jakubowski has compiled another excellent set of mystery and thriller stories, this time centered on female villains and cunning consorts. The Extraordinary Book of Femme Fatales features work from some of the best new voices in the genre, hand-picked by Jakubowski himself.

This anthology draws together some of the best new stories of mystery and murder—compiled by the Anthony Award–winning crime fiction editor. This anthology collects the most original stories of murder by some of mystery fiction's most inventive talents from the United States and United Kingdom. With innovative new takes on locked-room mysteries and impossible crimes, these short stories are full of vexing conundrums and reality-defying puzzles. A murder has been committed—but how could it have happened? Curated by Maxim Jakubowski, one of the crime genre’s most renowned editors, this volume features never-before-seen stories by acclaimed authors—including British Science Fiction Award–winner Eric Brown, Derringer Award–winner O'Neil de Noux, and multiple CWA Dagger Award–winners and nominees.

'Brinda' will draw you in bit-by-bit to experience an extraordinary story; for there will always be secret-lives we will never know about, but are free to glimpse through the 'reel'.This is Brinda's story-she was thrown into the local MLA's house for servitude by the intertwining of her poor family's greed and a quirk of fate. As she began a new chapter in her life with great anticipation of a financially secure future, fate held darker challenges for her to overcome.The MLA's son, Virender, was prying on her blossoming youth. She knew she was sought, and she knew she was bought. As Payal, her only friend in the palatial bungalow plotted her escape, she was not sure if she should go-they both knew some dark and tightly held secrets of the house, and she knew the implications of an escape for herself, and more so, for Payal.Will Brinda leave or stay on to be exploited? Knowing what could shape out of even the slightest slip, will Brinda take the plunge, or will she resign herself to her fate and wait for what's in store?In this intriguing plot filled with choosing between two equally hazardous courses, what does Brinda choose? And what will be the outcome of that choice?WHAT SHOULD BE ONE'S STAND WHEN DOOM AWAITS IN THE ONLY TWO DIRECTIONS TO TAKE? ***This is a story with a happy ending.

Irene Adler is the only woman ever to have outwitted Sherlock Holmes... and the one who has come closest to stealing his heart. She has competed (and sometimes cooperated) with the famous fictional detective over six popular and acclaimed novels, featuring her daring investigations across the Continent. All along, the beautiful and brilliant American diva-turned-detective has managed to conceal her background and history, even from her dashing barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, and her devoted companion and biographer, English spinster Nell Huxleigh. But she has had some help along the way to do this, from such unlikely sources as the Baron de Rothschild, Sarah Bernhardt, and Bram Stoker, as well as the soon-to-be-infamous Nellie Bly, a daring American journalist who helped Irene hunt Jack the Ripper. Now Nellie has wired Irene some astounding news, news that will shake her world: Irene's mother is the target of an assassin. Irene's past is shrouded in secrecy, and at first she is unwilling to divulge anything that would link her to America. But a series of bizarre killings in New York City draws her reluctantly back to her native country, where she must race with a murderer to find her mother, a woman of mystery who may turn out to be the most notorious woman of the nineteenth century. As Irene forges a trail into her own hidden past, Nellie Bly draws another ace investigator across the Atlantic to join in the hunt for a serial killer, the last man on earth Irene Adler wants to discover anything about her shocking past... Sherlock Holmes. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Two Sisters is Gore Vidal's fictional memoir of a love affair with a beautiful set of twins in post-war Paris - a story skilfully interwoven with notebooks, diaries and the vivid fragment of a screenplay set in ancient Greece. In seductive settings from a brothel in a Parisian backstreet to the rooftops of seventies Rome, Vidal assembles his characters, real and imagined: Cocteau and Tennessee Williams, Gide and Mailer rub shoulders with creations as unforgettable as the ageing femme fatale Marietta Donegal and Hollywood hustler and flagellant Murray Morris. All are bound together in a mesmerising fiction that builds to an extraordinary conclusion.

Savage Holiday, first published in 1954 by noted American author Richard Wright, is a tense, well-written psychological thriller about Erskine Fowler, an insurance executive forced into early retirement, who, over the course of a bizarre weekend, is responsible for the accidental death of his neighbor’s young son. Tragic consequences follow as Fowler attempts to redeem himself and is forced to question his own life, as events spiral out-of-control to their inevitable conclusion.

More accurately a love triptych than triangle, The Femme Fatale Hypothesis is the story of one spring in 2015 when three people form intimate bonds forged in the fires of their respective tribulations. As Rose Geddes's lung cancer progresses toward its inexorable end and her husband's ability to care for her diminishes, their widowed neighbor, June Danhill, stumbles into the middle of their intersecting crises. June's only son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren have recently moved to the West Coast. She embraces the opportunity to distract herself from her loneliness by helping to care for the Geddeses. But it isn't long before June realizes that Rose wants more from her than she is willing to give. Love and loss, family secrets, visiting vultures, the Memorial Park boys, a long-forgotten keepsake, morphine versus fentanyl, and the sexual cannibalism of the false garden mantid all fuel this psychological thriller that tests the thin line between mercy and murder.

The “propulsive and mesmerizing” (The New York Times) story collection by the International Booker–shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Our Share of Night—now with a new short story. The short stories of Mariana Enriquez are: “The most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”—Kazuo Ishiguro “Violent and cool, told in voices so lucid they feel spoken.”—The Boston Globe (Best Books of the Year) Electric, disturbing, and exhilarating, the stories of Things We Lost in the Fire explore multiple dimensions of life and death in contemporary Argentina. Each haunting tale simmers with the nation's troubled history, but among the abandoned houses, black magic, superstitions, lost loves and regrets, there is also friendship, compassion, and humor. Translated by the National Book Award-winning Megan McDowell, these “slim but phenomenal” (Vanity Fair) stories ask the biggest questions of life and show why Mariana Enriquez has become one of the most celebrated new voices in global literature.

**THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "An unforgettable—and Hollywood-bound—new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." —Entertainment Weekly The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....