DIVA Nazi’s widow comes to the Beaumont Hotel with death in her entourage/divDIV As befits the manager of New York’s finest hotel, Pierre Chambrun has certain standards for his guests at the Beaumont. Were it not for the pleading of the hotel’s owner, no amount of money could persuade him to allow the Baroness Charmian Zetterstrom a room. She is the stunning young widow of a Nazi war criminal; her husband was an infamous sadist who escaped before the fall of the Reich to live out the rest of his days in hedonistic isolation on a Mediterranean isle. Off the island for the first time since the war, the baroness comes to New York with an entourage of misfits, and mayhem follows./divDIV /divDIVThe first victim is the baroness’s dog, which is savagely murdered by an unknown hand. The next to die will be human, forcing Chambrun to identify the killer, or risk having his hotel destroyed by the vindictive ghosts of the fallen Reich./div

DIVDIVA lost boy draws Pierre Chambrun into an international conspiracy/divDIVGuy Willis knows that if he is ever in trouble at the Beaumont Hotel, he can trust Pierre Chambrun. The manager of this world-famous Manhattan institution, Chambrun owes his life to young Guy’s father—an Air Force intelligence operative who once rescued the unflappable Frenchman from a gang of terrorists. When Guy’s parents disappear during a stay at the Beaumont, a priest turns up and approaches the boy, claiming to be an old family friend sent to take care of him. Guy doesn’t trust the phony padre—or the pistol in his shoulder holster—one bit, and screams for Chambrun to help./divDIV /divDIVChambrun dispatches the ersatz priest, but finding Guy’s parents will be more than a matter of visiting the lost and found. Major Willis has been kidnapped, and if he is not recovered, it will be more than just a mishap for the hotel—it will be a catastrophe for all of the United States./div/div

When Edgar Allan Poe set down the tale of the accursed House of Usher in 1839, he also laid the foundation for a literary tradition that has assumed a lasting role in American culture. “The House of Usher” and its literary progeny have not lacked for tenants in the century and a half since: writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Stephen King have taken rooms in the haunted houses of American fiction. Dale Bailey traces the haunted house tale from its origins in English gothic fiction to the paperback potboilers of the present, highlighting the unique significance of the house in the domestic, economic, and social ideologies of our nation. The author concludes that the haunted house has become a powerful and profoundly subversive symbol of everything that has gone nightmarishly awry in the American Dream.

In an accessible and droll style, well-known sociologist Joel Best shines a light on how we navigate these anxious, insecure social times. While most of us still strive for the American Dream—to graduate from college, own a home, work toward early retirement—recent generations have been told that the next generation will not be able to achieve these goals, that things are getting—or are on the verge of getting—worse. In American Nightmares, Best addresses the apprehension that we face every day as we are bombarded with threats that the social institutions we count on are imperiled. Our schools are failing to teach our kids. Healthcare may soon be harder to obtain. We can’t bank on our retirement plans. And our homes—still the largest chunk of most people’s net worth—may lose much of their value. Our very way of life is being threatened! Or is it? With a steady voice and keen focus, Best examines how a culture develops fears and fantasies and how these visions are created and recreated in every generation. By dismantling current ideas about the future, collective memory, and sociology’s marginalization in the public square, Best sheds light on how social problems—and our anxiety about them—are socially constructed.

The origins of literature’s finest crime fighters, told by their creators themselves Their names ring out like gunshots in the dark of a back alley, crime fighters of a lost era whose heroic deeds will never be forgotten. They are men like Lew Archer, Pierre Chambrun, Flash Casey, and the Shadow. They are women like Mrs. North and the immortal Nancy Drew. These are detectives, and they are some of the only true heroes the twentieth century ever knew. In this classic volume, Otto Penzler presents essays written by the authors who created these famous characters. We learn how Ed McBain killed—and resurrected—the hero of the 87th Precinct, how international agent Quiller wrote his will, and how Dick Tracy first announced that “crime does not pay.” Some of these heroes may be more famous than others, but there is not one whom you wouldn’t like on your side in a courtroom, a shootout, or an old-fashioned barroom brawl.

Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883-1948) was the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States, publishing her stories under the pseudonym Francis Stevens. Bennett wrote a number of highly acclaimed fantasies between 1917 and 1923 and has been called ""the woman who invented dark fantasy."" Her most famous books include Claimed (which Augustus T. Swift, in a letter to The Argosy called ""One of the strangest and most compelling science fantasy novels you will ever read"") and the lost world novel The Citadel of Fear. Bennett also wrote an early dystopian novel, The Heads of Cerberus (1919). Nighmares! And other stories - is a nice collection of her short stories and novelettes.

DIVA spy marked for death finds a corpse in his hotel room/divDIV George Lovelace has spent more than two decades in the shadows. Shielded by an array of forged passports, he has battled Nazis, Communists, and anyone else who might harm the United States. He has enemies on every continent, and one is planning to kill him. When a series of threats convinces the aging spy that he is about to be retired permanently, Lovelace comes to the Beaumont hotel. If he must die, he prefers to do it in style. /divDIV /divDIVThe manager of this most exclusive establishment is his old friend Pierre Chambrun, a former resistance fighter who promises to protect him with the full resources of the hotel. But when an unknown guest is found murdered in Lovelace’s room, it becomes apparent that the assassin has already penetrated the Beaumont’s walls. Someone wants Lovelace dead, and only the world’s greatest hotel manager can save him./div

In the pool of the Beaumont Hotel, a teenager is found murdered and faceless Manhattan’s charitable circles know no finer place for a fundraiser than the stately Beaumont Hotel, whose brilliant manager Pierre Chambrun will do whatever it takes to make Good Samaritans feel at home. This means that after popular singer Stan Nelson has completed his annual twenty-four-hour telethon for cancer research, Chambrun is loath to wake the crooner from his well-earned sleep. But there has been a murder in the hotel’s pool, and that means no good deed will go unpunished. A young man is found floating in the water, his face a bloody mess, his pockets empty of everything but a telethon pledge card bearing Stan’s autograph. The star swears he doesn’t recognize the corpse, but as Chambrun and his team dig into the secrets behind the charity, they discover a tangled plot involving sin and religion, and the deadly consequences that can come from doing good.

DIVDIVSoon after the Beaumont is sold, its new owner is found dead in Suite 912/divDIVWhen crushing debts force the proprietor of the world-famous Beaumont Hotel to offload his prized possession to the ruthless tycoon J. W. Sassoon, hotel manager Pierre Chambrun and his staff brace for change. But the threat isn’t J.W., it’s his son, Johnny-baby—a cigar-puffing playboy whose bright ideas for “modernizing” one of Manhattan’s most elegant destinations amount to nothing more than sleaze. When he suggests that the Spartan Bar’s cigarette girls go topless, Chambrun quits, leaving the hapless wannabe to fend for himself. /divDIV /divDIVChambrun retires to his penthouse to write his memoirs, waiting for the inevitable crisis to force his return. It comes in the form of a dead body, Johnny-baby’s father, who is found in Suite 912 with a tap on his phone and a call girl’s underwear on the floor. To save his hotel, Chambrun is happy to come out of retirement—and clean up Johnny-baby’s mess./div /div