On vacation in Hollywood, Miss Withers gets a job—and a case—in a mystery “that will keep you laughing and guessing from the first page to the last” (The New York Times). Hildegarde Withers—schoolteacher and occasional detective—has just finished planning her grand European tour when Germany invades Poland. Not wishing to join the international conflict, she books a ticket to Hollywood, trading the Louvre and the Vatican for the Brown Derby and La Brea tar pits. She has only been in Los Angeles three days when she’s offered a job in pictures. Not as a starlet—Miss Withers is no ingénue—but as a technical adviser to a film version of the Lizzie Borden story. The job is perfect, for no one knows murder like Miss Withers. On her first day at Mammoth Studios, the screenwriter in the next office dies of an apparent broken neck. To understand why, Miss Withers must contend with a film producer who makes her third graders look like grown-ups—and a killer every bit as vicious as Lizzie Borden herself. The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.

A speakeasy performer is murdered in this pioneering mystery from the mother of the police procedural. When one of New York’s favorite dancers is killed in a crowded high-tone speakeasy, everyone present becomes a suspect—and those that may have eluded questioning as well. It’s up to Inspector McKee of the NYPD to sift through the witness statements, separate fact from fiction, and put together a picture of the crime as it happened in order to discover what’s missing from the official narrative. And in the process, he’ll uncover a story that leads back into the past, with blackmail and stolen emeralds lurking in the shadows.… As McKee’s case comes into focus, a rich and confounding mystery plot is revealed, which will take all of the inspector’s resources to solve. Along the way, the inner workings of the New York City police department in the 1930s is on full display, including the line-ups, the radio room, the morgue, and the fingerprinting office—technologies that were at the cutting edge of the era’s fight against crime. Reissued for the first time eighty years, McKee of Centre Street is one of the first police procedurals ever written by a woman. The novel’s realistic New York setting and insightful view of police work was an instant hit with fans and its lead character went on to star in over thirty books.

Fifteen puzzling tales from the masters of the mystery genre Depending on who you ask, the term “whodunit” was first coined sometime around 1930, but the literary form predates that name by several decades. Still, it was in the years between the two World Wars—the so-called “Golden Age” of mystery fiction—that the style flourished. Short mysteries were published far and wide by a variety of authors, not just those primarily associated with the genre. They appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, and other high-end periodicals that still exist today. These tales were, in short, among the most popular diversions in literature and were of the highest caliber. In this volume, Edgar Award–winning anthologist Otto Penzler collects some of the finest American whodunits of the era, including household names and welcome rediscoveries. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ellery Queen, and Mary Roberts Rinehart are all included, as are Ring Lardner, Melville Davisson Post, and Helen Reilly. The result is a cross section of the whodunit tale in the years that made it a staple in mystery fiction.

This is an encyclopedic work, arranged by broad categories and then by original authors, of literary pastiches in which fictional characters have reappeared in new works after the deaths of the authors that created them. It includes book series that have continued under a deceased writer's real or pen name, undisguised offshoots issued under the new writer's name, posthumous collaborations in which a deceased author's unfinished manuscript is completed by another writer, unauthorized pastiches, and "biographies" of literary characters. The authors and works are entered under the following categories: Action and Adventure, Classics (18th Century and Earlier), Classics (19th Century), Classics (20th Century), Crime and Mystery, Espionage, Fantasy and Horror, Humor, Juveniles (19th Century), Juveniles (20th Century), Poets, Pulps, Romances, Science Fiction and Westerns. Each original author entry includes a short biography, a list of original works, and information on the pastiches based on the author's characters.

A comedian is dead, a witness is missing, and it’s up to Miss Withers—“one of the world’s shrewdest and most amusing detectives”—to solve the crime (The New York Times). In comedy, timing is everything. If Tony Fagan were a better comic, perhaps he would’ve known when to keep his mouth shut. After weeks of jokes at the expense of businessman Winston H. “Junior” Gault, the sponsor of Fagan’s television show, Fagan is found with his head bashed in, and Gault is charged with the murder. The case seems open and shut, but Gault has the money to buy himself an acquittal. The only witness against him is Ina Kell—a small-town dreamer who came to New York to find fame—and she’s disappeared. It’s up to Hildegarde Withers, a retired schoolteacher with expertise in solving crime, to find the vanished witness. Ina may have come to New York seeking excitement, but she didn’t deserve to get caught in the line of fire. Nipped in the Bud is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.

When a Hollywood cartoonist is poisoned, sharp-witted sleuth Miss Withers must draw her own conclusions. “[Miss Withers is] . . . still one of the best” (Anthony Boucher). At Hollywood’s most renowned cartoon studio, there are a few things you simply do not draw: snakes, cows with udders, violence, and death. So when Janet Poole finds a doodle of the studio’s famous cartoon penguin with a noose around its neck, she takes the drawing as a threat. Someone at the studio has murder on the mind. The top brass reach out to Hildegarde Withers, a retired amateur sleuth who has come to Los Angeles to relieve her asthma. The obvious suspect is Larry Reed, a disturbed cartoonist with a dark sense of mischief, but on Miss Withers’s first day working the case, something happens that suggests Larry is likely innocent: He’s murdered. This studio may work in animation, but Miss Withers will find the violence on the lot anything but cartoonish. Cold Poison is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.

“This twisty whodunit from Starrett, best known for his writings about Sherlock Holmes, stars an eccentric amateur sleuth.” —Publishers Weekly When a New York banker is discovered dead from an apparent morphine overdose in a Chicago hotel, the circumstances surrounding his untimely end are suspicious to say the least. The dead man had switched rooms the night before with a stranger he met and drank with in the hotel bar. And before that, he’d registered under a fake name at the hotel, told his drinking companion a fake story about his visit to the Windy City, and seemingly made no effort to contact the actress, performing in a local show, to whom he was married. All of which is more than enough to raise eyebrows among those who discovered the body. Enter theatre critic and amateur sleuth Riley Blackwood, a friend of the hotel’s owner, who endeavors to untangle this puzzling tale as discreetly as possible. But when another detective working the case, whose patron is unknown, is thrown from a yacht deck during a party by an equally unknown assailant, the investigation makes a splash among Chicago society. And then several of the possible suspects skip town, leaving Blackwood struggling to determine their guilt or innocence―and their whereabouts. Reissued for the first time in over eighty years, The Great Hotel Murder is a devilishly complex whodunnit with a classical aristocratic setting, sure to please Golden Age mystery fans of all stripes. In 1935, the story was adapted for a film of the same name. “An ingenious plot with enough complications to keep the reader guessing . . . The Great Hotel Murder makes good reading.” —The New York Times

This new edition of Antique Trader Book Collector's Price Guide provides readers with the information and values to carve a niche for themselves in a market where rare first editions of Jane Austen's Emma and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone recently sold at auction for 254,610 dollars and 40,355 dollars respectively. Organized in 13 categories, including Americana, banned, paranormal and mystery, this guide discusses identifying and grading books, and provides collectors with details for identifying and assessing books in 8,000 listings.

The study of semiotics underwent a gradual but radical paradigm shift during the past century, from a glottocentric (language-centered) enterprise to one that encompasses the whole terrestrial biosphere. In this collection of 17 essays, Thomas A. Sebeok, one of the seminal thinkers in the field, shows how this progression took place. His wide-ranging discussion of the evolution of the field covers many facets, including discussions of biosemiotics, semiotics as a bridge between the humanities and natural sciences, semiosis, nonverbal communication, cat and horse behavior, the semiotic self, and women in semiotics. This thorough account will appeal to seasoned scholars and neophytes alike.