A virtual cornucopia of whodunits from the true masters of the craft, including Edgar Alan Poe, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Craig Rice, Ellery Queen, and Raymond Chandler, this anthology contains some genuine rarities.

Whether a housekeeper, secretary, lodger, or pawn-broker in a seedy area of Victorian London, the woman detective's powers of observation and deduction are most effective in uncovering and resolving crimes. These 12 engaging mysteries gives us a glimpse of some of the most memorable characters ever created--such as Miss Marple, Carlotta Carlyle, Sharon McCone and other beloved heroines of the detective novel--by both men and women writers.

Featuring distinctly American language and locales, the stories in this collection range from those with a strongly regional flavor to hard-boiled fiction. "Twelve American Crime Stories" includes the best of the genre and is a delightful guide to who did what to whom, and how.

A History of American Crime Fiction places crime fiction within a context of aesthetic practices and experiments, intellectual concerns, and historical debates generally reserved for canonical literary history. Toward that end, the book is divided into sections that reflect the periods that commonly organize American literary history, with chapters highlighting crime fiction's reciprocal relationships with early American literature, romanticism, realism, modernism and postmodernism. It surveys everything from 17th-century execution sermons, the detective fiction of Harriet Spofford and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, to the films of David Lynch, HBO's The Sopranos, and the podcast Serial, while engaging a wide variety of critical methods. As a result, this book expands crime fiction's significance beyond the boundaries of popular genres and explores the symbiosis between crime fiction and canonical literature that sustains and energizes both.

When a Roman widow shows unusual interest in Flavia's father, Flavia decides to discover Cartila's true motives by performing twelve tasks, just like the Greek hero Hercules.

12 Shocking True Crime Stories of America's Worst Serial Killers True Murder Cases included in this volume; Roger Kibbe: Serial strangler who preyed on stranded female motorists along California's I-5 freeway. The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run: A still unidentified monster who carried out a series of mutilation murders in Cleveland, Ohio. Jane Toppan: A deeply disturbed nurse with a terrifying ambition - to kill more people than anyone else ever had. Joseph Naso: When 69-year-old Joseph Naso was arrested for shoplifting, the police had no inkling of what they'd discover about his deadly past. Glennon Engleman: Dentist by day, hitman and murder-for-profit killer by night, Engleman was responsible for at least seven deaths. Dana Sue Gray: The barely believable story of a female psychopath who killed so that she could treat herself to shopping sprees on her victims' credit cards. John Muhammad & Lee Malvo: The Beltway snipers conducted a cross-country killing spree, ending with a deadly siege of the nation's capital. Ronald Dominique: Known as the Bayou Strangler, Dominique raped and murdered as many as 23 men in Houma, Louisiana. Joseph Paul Franklin: A racially motivated serial killer, Franklin targeted mixed race couples, ruthlessly gunning them down in a cross-country rampage. Gerald Patrick Lewis: Obsessed by the girlfriend who had deserted him, Lewis took his revenge on women who resembled his lost love. Lydia Sherman: A prolific poisoner who cold-bloodedly murdered husbands and children, claiming at least ten victims. Gary Alan Walker: Traveling serial killer who rampaged across Oklahoma in a spree of rape and murder that left six victims brutally slain. Scroll up to grab a copy of American Monsters Volume 12.

A must for all crime aficionados, The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 spotlights the very best the genre has to offer. Notable for their dark tone, frequent plot twists, and, above all, their outright entertainment value, here are twenty of 2006's stand-out short stories by bestselling authors and newcomers alike. The veterans show us they still have new tricks up their sleeves, while the (as yet) unknowns clearly mark themselves as talents to watch.Sellected by bestselling author Scott Turrow, 2006's collection includes stories by: James Lee Burke, Jeffery Deaver, Andrew Klavan, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, Laura Lippman, Walter Mosely, and Joyce Carol Oates.

These twelve stories provide an entertaining exploration of this extensive and fascinating corner of English popular fiction, celebrating the detective's intellectual and intuitive powers when confronted with murder, theft, and other mysteries. The main focus of this collection is from the 1890s to the 1920s, the period when the classic English detective story was at its confident and original best, but it also offers examples from earlier and later periods. Presenting a balance of classic and more unusual stories, and featuring works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Michael Innes, this anthology will appeal to both the newcomer and aficionado of the genre.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Cockroaches, a “forcefully written story of personal defeat, despair, and salvation” (The New York Times Book Review) about a man with one small problem—his former boss, Oslo's most notorious drug kingpin, wants him dead. "A fun read, with a likable protagonist and a brisk, page-turning pace." —Los Angeles Times Ulf was once the kingpin's fixer, but after betraying him, Ulf is now the one his former boss wants fixed. Hiding out at the end of the line in northern Norway, Ulf lives among the locals. A mother and son befriend him, and their companionship stirs something deep in him that he thought was long dead. As he awaits the inevitable arrival of his murderous pursuers, he questions if redemption is at all possible or if, as he's always believed, “hope is a real bastard.”

Theres nothing like a good ghost story, and the Irish have traditionally excelled at them. The specters which haunt these Irish ghost stories include massacred Spanish sailors, a silver-robed woman who plies her guests with poison, a mutilated peddler, a benign but icy embrace, and the devil himself. Twelve Irish Ghost Stories draws from the rich and varied literary tradition of a culture long enchanted by things supernatural, a land where ghosts and ghost-seers are common. Energetically inventive, and infused with a relish of the supernatural, these classic ghost stories still retain their original power to unsettle and surprise. Twelve Irish Ghost Stories is one chilling anthology no fan of the genre will want to be without.