In this seventh installment in the internationally bestselling, universally beloved series, there is considerable excitement at the shared premises of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. A cobra has been found in Precious Ramotswe’s office. Then a nurse from a local medical clinic reveals to Mma Ramotswe that faulty blood-pressure readings are being recorded there. And it looks as though Aunty Emang, the advice columnist in the local newspaper, may not be what she seems. It all means a lot of work for Mma Ramotswe and her inestimable assistant, Grace Makutsi, and they are, of course, up to the challenge. But there’s trouble brewing in Mma Makutsi’s own life. Her greedy uncles are demanding an extra-large bride price from her well-to-do fiancé, a man of substance, Phuti Radiphuti, and though money may buy her that fashionably narrow (and uncomfortable) pair of blue shoes, it won’t buy her the happiness that Mma Ramotswe promises her she’ll find in simpler things – in contentment with the world and enough tea to smooth over the occasional bumps in the road.

15 stories "reproduced from the original magazines--including the campy illustrations and advertisements--and supplemented by an introduction to the pulps and biographical notes on the writers."

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency received two Booker Judges’ Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.

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.

Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. Mma Makutsi, who has recently been promoted to co-director, has been encouraging Mma Ramotswe to update to more modern office practices. An unusual case, however, will require both of them to turn their attention firmly to the past. A young Canadian woman who spent her early childhood in Botswana requests the agency’s help in recalling her life there. Precious and Grace set out to locate the house that the woman lived in and the caretaker who looked after her many years ago. But when the journey takes an unexpected turn, they are forced to consider whether some things are better left in the past. Mma Ramotswe dispenses help and sympathy with the graciousness and warmth for which she is so well known, and everyone involved is led to surprising insights into the healing power of compassion, forgiveness, and new beginnings.

In ancient Athens, the great philosopher applies logic to a lethal crime—in the “eminently enjoyable” first novel in a historical mystery series (Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse Mysteries). Young Stephanos is desperate to save his family’s honor by proving in the Athenian court that his exiled cousin is not guilty of shooting an arrow into a prominent patrician. For help, he turns to his old teacher—the cunning and clever thinker known as Aristotle. It will all lead up to a tense public trial in which Stephanos must draw on the rhetorical skills he’s learned from his eccentric, brilliant mentor, in this novel filled with suspense, humor, and historical detail—the first in a series of “witty, elegant whodunits” (Times Literary Supplement). “[An] unusually authentic Ancient-Greece murder tale.”—Kirkus Reviews “Doody brings the Athens of 322 BC to life with skill and verve…wonderfully plotted.”—Publishers Weekly

While the roots of the detective novel go back to the 19th century, the genre reached its height around 1925 to 1945. This work presents information on 21 British and American women who wrote during the 20th century. As a group they were largely responsible for the great popularity of the detective novel in the first half of the century. The British authors are Dora Turnbull (Patricia Wentworth), Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Elizabeth Mackintosh (Josephine Tey), Ngaio Marsh, Gladys Mitchell, Margery Allingham, Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters), Phyllis Dorothy James White (P.D. James), Gwendoline Butler (Jennie Melville), and Ruth Rendell, and the Americans are Patricia Highsmith, Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Amanda Cross), Edna Buchanan, Kate Gallison, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Patricia Cornwell, Carol Higgins Clark, and Megan Mallory Rust. A flavor of each author's work is provided.

The eighteenth Best New England Crime Stories anthology.

Unholy passions and demonic deaths... In the fair autumn of Our Lord's grace 1431, the nuns of England's St. Frideswide's prepare for the simply ceremonies in which the saintly novice Thomasine will take her holy vows. But their quiet lives of beauty and prayer are thrown into chaos by the merciless arrival of Lady Ermentrude Fenner and her retinue of lusty men, sinful women, and baying hounds. The hard-drinking dowager even keeps a pet monkey for her amusement. She demands wine, a feast.... And her niece, the angelic Thomasine. The lady desires to enrich herself and her reputation by arranging a marriage for the devout novice. She cares nothing for the panic and despair she leaves behind her. But all her cruel and cunning schemes are brought to a sudden end with strange and most unnatural murder. As suspicious eyes turn on the pious Thomasine, it falls to Sister Frevisse, hosteler of the priory and amateur detective, to unravel the webs of unholy passion and dark intrigue that entangle the novice and prove her innocence...or condemn her.

Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. Precious is busier than usual at the detective agency when she discovers an intruder in her house on Zebra Drive—and perhaps even more baffling—a pumpkin on her porch. Her associate, Mma Makutsi, also has a full plate. She's taken up dance lessons, only to be partnered with a man with two left feet. And at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, where Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is already overburdened with work, one of his apprentices has run off with a wealthy older woman. But what finally rattles Mma Ramotswe’s normally unshakable composure is a visitor who forces her to confront a difficult secret from her past.