A collection of suspense stories, puzzle stories, whodunits and tricky whydunits involving police detectives, private eyes, talented and sometimes lucky amateurs, armchair detectives, and ethnic detectives

Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph. In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.) Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best

A collection of 21 crime stories by women writers, including Sara Paretsky, Amanda Cross, Liza Cody and Gillian Slovo. The stories include old favourites such as V.I. Warshawski, Jemima Shore and Kate Fansler

Traumatized by a recent life-or-death investigation, Sharon McCone flees to her ranch in California's high desert country to contemplate her future. Deep depression shadows her days and nights, and a chance encounter with a troubled, highly secretive Native American woman begins to haunt her dreams. Even though she is determined not to investigate anything during her stay-and perhaps not ever again-McCone is drawn into the plight of the young woman and her dysfunctional family. A murder and traces of violence at a deserted resort lead her across the desert and into Nevada, and finally to a remote and isolated ranch, where danger lies closer that she expects and where her future and life itself may hang in the balance

A collection of stories In this Spur Award-winning story, a Pinkerton detective, a couple on the run, a wanted man, and a traveling salesman with mysterious wares all converge on the banks of Crucifixion River to take shelter from an impending storm

In Double, the “Nameless Detective” and Sharon McCone — reunited at a private eye convention in sunny San Diego — team up to tangle with kinky lifestyles, double dealing and multiple murder. When Elaine Picard, head of security at the posh Casa del Rey hotel and an old friend of Sharon’s, falls to her death from a hotel tower, “Nameless” is a distant witness. And when McCone’s zealous pursuit of clues lands her in jail, it’s “Nameless” who posts bail. While Sharon continues to risk her life trying to unravel the mystery of Elaine’s death, “Nameless” puts his own on the line investigating the odd disappearance of a little boy and his mother who’ve vanished from the Casa del Rey without a trace. The two detectives are swiftly drawn into a treacherous maze of past duplicity and present danger. The action races from the Casa del Rey to an ominous menagerie in the hills outside of town, a pornographic curio shop, a political campaign headquarters, a villa on the Mexican seacoast, and an isolated desert mansion with a strange history that belies its even more bizarre current goings on. Double is a crackling and complex thriller from two premier mystery writers

A Sharon McCone mystery, in which the detective is hired by a reclusive photographer to find his missing roommate, and when she is found dead, McCone has to confront numerous suspects

Shot in the head by an unknown assailant, San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone finds herself trapped by locked-in syndrome: almost total paralysis but an alert, conscious mind. Since the late-night attack occurred at her agency's offices, the natural conclusion was that it was connected to one of the firm's cases. As Sharon lies in her hospital bed, furiously trying to break out of her body's prison and discover her attacker's identity, all the members of her agency fan out to find the reason why she was assaulted. Meanwhile, Sharon becomes a locked-in detective, evaluating the clues from her staff's separate investigations and discovering unsettling truths that could put her life in jeopardy again. As the case draws to a surprising and even shocking conclusion, Sharon's husband, Hy, must decide whether or not to surrender to his own violent past and exact fatal vengeance when the person responsible is identified

Creator of the modern female private eye story, Marcia Muller has been writing novels and short stories about Sharon McCone since 1977. In the process McCone has gained a host of associates and formed her own detective agency. Some seven years ago, Marcia Muller decided to show readers different views of her sleuth by relating cases through the eyes of McCone's colleagues. McCone and Friends contains three stories told by McCone herself, as well as a novella and a short story narrated by the agency's investigator Rae Kelleher, a story from the viewpoint of its office manager Ted Smalley, an investigation conducted by McCone's nephew Mick Savage, and one by her long-term lover Hy Ripinsky. The settings range from small planes to a sweatshop which puts Asian women into virtual slavery, and the mysteries surround a 1950's jukebox in a rundown hotel, a sculpture welded together by a long-missing and now very-dead artist. In perhaps the most moving story of all, a teenage girl has vanished leaving as a clue only a collage on her wall. The McCone Files shows why Marcia Muller is one of the greatest mystery writers of our generation

Dashiell Hammett and William Vollmann are just two treats in this stellar sequel to the smash-hit original volume of San Francisco Noir, which captures the dark mythology of a world-class locale

Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown’s opium dens. For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client’s husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee. Meanwhile, his partner, Sabina Carpenter, unsure of the dark secrets her suitor might be concealing, searches for the corpse of a millionaire, stolen from a sealed family crypt and currently being held for ransom. With the threat of a tong war hanging over the city (a war perhaps being spurred on by corrupt officials), Carpenter and Quincannon have no time to lose in solving their cases. Is there a connection between the two body snatchers? Or is simple greed the answer to this one? And why is the enigmatic Englishman who calls himself Sherlock Holmes watching so carefully from the shadows?

In this first of a new series of spirited historical mysteries set in 1890s San Francisco, former Pinkerton operative Sabina Carpenter and her partner, ex-Secret Service agent John Quincannon, undertake two apparently unrelated investigations. Sabina's case involves the hunt for a ruthless pickpocket who uses fiendish means to relieve her victims of their valuables. She strikes most often at an amusement park, in a torchlit pitchman’s bazaar, and among the crowds along the evening Cocktail Route. Quincannon is after a slippery housebreaker who targets the homes of the city’s wealthy residents. Following the trail leads Quincannon to the infamous Barbary Coast, an oyster pirate’s lair, and a Tenderloin house of joy. The cast of characters also includes a pair of receivers of stolen merchandise, a retired lady “dip,” an alcoholic lawyer and his wife, a mysterious carriage driver — and a man claiming to be Sherlock Holmes. The two cases eventually connect in surprising fashion, but not before matters are complicated by two murders, assorted felonies, and the constant interference of the bughouse Sherlock — a shrewd “crackbrain” who hinders, exasperates, and nearly outshines both Sabina and Quincannon with clever detective work of his own

For the firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, stopping extortionists is not only grand, but excitingly lucrative. A pleasant afternoon’s bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention. The questions her partner John Quincannon has to unravel are not difficult: Wrixton, a wealthy banker, has met his extortionist’s first demand, but the order to pay another five thousand dollars is too much to face. The banker’s real problem is something he doesn’t want to reveal. That’s was fine with the detective — all he needs to know is that some private letters were involved and Wrixton absolutely needed them back. As with so many of San Francisco’s elite, the bedroom doors never seemed to stay shut. Far more difficult is the matter of the dead courier, murdered most foully in a locked room within a locked room, creating a trail that will take John Quincannon through most of San Francisco’s less savory places and end with a riverboat trip that is anything but a relaxing cruise

Anticipating a peaceful and relaxing year in which to write and illustrate a book, college professor Jan Ryerson and his artist wife Alix move to the isolated Cape Despair Lighthouse on a desolate stretch of Oregon coast. But their well-laid plans are twisted awry shortly after their arrival. Jan experiences several terrifying blackouts, but conceals them from his wife, fearing that she will leave him if she knows that he will soon be blind. The villagers, suspicious of the couple from the start, become increasingly hostile and resentful. And when the murdered body of a young woman is discovered, they are quick to blame the stranger in town… “…one of America’s Fines writers of any genre. Muller is must reading for all mystery fans.” “Pronzini makes people and events so real that you're living those explosive days of terror.” “Pronzini is the master of the shivery, spine-tingling it-could-happen suspense story.”

We now live in enlightened times that reassure us that, far from being a lower form of literature, pulp fiction is the term for what the best storytelling provides — pyrotechnic thrills, shocks galore and excitement by the bucketload! From cops, both straight and crooked, to ruthless bigshots, shady operators, femmes fatales and damsels in distress. Including gangsters, drifters, common crooks, shady attorneys to molls with a heart of gold, enjoy a rollercoaster ride through popular literature’s best pulp writers. The MBO of Pulp Action includes the talents of Charles Willeford, Ed McBain, Bill Pronzini, Ed Gorman, Lawrence Block, John D. Macdonald, William Campbell Gault, Bruno Fischer, Mark Timlin, Joe R. Lansdale and many of the classic Black Mask magazine

Hillerman, author of the Joe Leaphorn mysteries, and Herbert, editor of The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, trace this short-story genre from its beginnings in the hands of Edgar Allen Poe through its development by the likes of Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Roberts Rinehart and Anthony Boucher to its current practice by such masters as Marcia Muller. Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which established a great many of the whodunit conventions, is indispensable to such an overview. Raymond Chandler's "I'll be Waiting" emits a doom-laden atmosphere right from the first line; William Faulkner shows unexpected economy of language?and a transparent plot?in "An Error in Chemistry." Ed McBain scores high marks in "Small Homicide," in which the tiny details of a baby's untimely death resonate uncomfortably. As represented in this competent, unstartling collection, Linda Barnes ("Lucky Penny") easily outsasses Sue Grafton ("The Parker Shotgun"). Hillerman makes a solid appearance with "Chee's Witch," and in "Benny's Space" Muller captures the full subtle force of her novel-length vision

Sabina Carpenter and John Quinncannon are no stranger to mysteries. In the five years since they opened Carpenter and Quinncannon, Professional Detective Services, they have solved dozens, but one has eluded even them: Sherlock Holmes or, rather, the madman claiming his identity, who keeps showing up with a frustrating (though admittedly useful) knack for solving difficult cases. Roland W. Fairchild, recently arrived from Chicago, claims Holmes is his first cousin, Charles P. Fairchild III. Now, with his father dead, Charles stands to inherit an estate of over three million dollars-if Sabina can find him, and if he can be proved sane. Sabina is uncertain of Roland’s motives, but agrees to take the case. John, meanwhile, has been hired by the owner of the Golden State brewery to investigate the “accidental” death of the head brewmaster, who drowned in a vat of his own beer. When a second murder occurs, and the murderer escapes from under his nose, John finds himself on the trail not just of the criminals, but of his reputation for catching them. But while John is certain he can catch his quarry, Sabina is less certain she wants to catch hers. Holmes has been frustrating, but useful, even kind. She is quite certain he is mad, and quite uncertain what will happen when he is confronted with the truth. Does every mystery need to be solved?

Hot-tempered curator Elena Oliverez threatens to kill her boss, Frank DePalma, when he orders her to put a particularly hideous piece of sculpture-donated by a wealthy patron of the new Museum of Mexican Arts-on display for the museum opening. So when someone kills Frank with the sculpture, Elena must conduct her own investigation to clear her name-or die trying

When a former sixties radical is murdered during a string of random sniper attacks, the All Souls Legal Cooperative must settle his surprisingly large estate. Then private investigator Sharon McCone comes across a new will, made just days before he died, that disinherits his two children in favor of four unknown and unconnected parties. McCone sifts through Perry Hilderly's belongings, but finds little to explain this puzzling change – until she uncovers a.357 with the serial number burned off. As McCone tracks down the new beneficiaries she discover that the shootings aren't so random after all and that the dead man isn't the only one with a lurid past. To link the heirs to the killings, she must follow a treacherous trail of evidence that travels from the Vietnam years to the present. But along the way the elusive sniper waits in a homicidal rage and takes aim – this time at All Souls and Sharon McCone

In the latest installment in this critically acclaimed series, McCone is hired to investigate one of San Luis Obispo County’s most puzzling cold cases. A generation ago, Laurel Greenwood, a housewife and artist, inexplicably vanished, leaving her young daughter alone. Now, new evidence suggests that the missing woman may have led a strange double life. But before McCone can penetrate the tangled mystery, she must first solve a second disappearance – that of her client, the now grown daughter of Laurel Greenwood. The case, which forces Sharon to explore the darker sides of two marriages, comes uncomfortably close on the heels of her own marriage to Hy Ripinsky, and she begins to doubt the wisdom of her impulsive trip to the Reno wedding chapel