Ever since a 1962 unsolved train robbery made it famous, people have flocked to the town of Trouble in California's gold country, searching for the booty that train robbers supposedly dumped off the Golden Rail Express in a botched heist. When the town's museum's watchman is murdered, Adrian Monk and his assistant, Natalie, are sent to investigate. But if Monk isn't careful, he'll learn that the town of Trouble can live up to its name.

At a convention for the cult science fiction show Beyond Earth , Adrian Monk meets fans as obsessive-compulsive as he is. Though he's not preoccupied with the program, Monk can understand the phenomenon. Who wouldn't want to live in an imaginary world? But there may be a killer in the Beyond Earth community: Someone in a starship uniform has gunned down the show's legendary creator. Could a fan be that furious at him for selling out to Hollywood? Or is more going on behind the scenes? Luckily, Monk's agoraphobic brother, Ambrose, is an expert on the TV series, and together they'll search the earth and beyond for the murderer. That is, if Ambrose can bring himself to leave the house. A new story starring Adrian Monk by Edgar(R) Award-nominated screenwriter Lee Goldberg. It's compulsive, page-turning fun. "Even if you aren't familiar with the TV series Monk , this book is too funny to not be read."-- The Weekly Journal

Mystery.

A stylish puzzle mystery from the author who "took the intellectual game that was the formal detective novel to greater heights than any American writer" ( The Weekly Standard ). The windows of French's department store are one of New York's great attractions. Year-round, their displays show off the finest in fashion, art, and home décor, and tourists and locals alike make a point of stopping to see what's on offer. One afternoon, as the board debates a merger upstairs, a salesgirl begins a demonstration in one of the windows, showing off French's new Murphy bed. A crowd gathers to watch the bed lower from the wall after a single touch of a button. But as the bed opens, people run screaming. Out tumbles a woman--crumpled, bloody, and dead. The victim was Mrs. French, wife of the company president, and finding her killer will turn this esteemed store upside down. Only one detective has the soft touch necessary--debonair intellectual Ellery Queen. As Queen and his police inspector father dig into French's secrets, they find their killer is more serious than any window shopper.

Death Valley lives up to its name when a murder draws Ellery Queen into the strange practices of a religious cult. It's 1943, the war is raging, and sleuthing scribe Ellery Queen wants to do his bit. After a tortuous cross-country drive, he takes a job writing scripts for a Hollywood propaganda house--twelve hours a day of hack work that quickly turns his mind to jelly. After a few weeks, he is so worn down that he can type nothing but gibberish, and he decides to drive home. The trouble starts as soon as he reaches the desert. His ancient roadster breaks down on the edge of Death Valley. Wandering in search of help, he is saved by a man known as the Teacher, who takes him to an oasis called Quenan. Here, Queen finds a bizarre, reclusive cult that seems to have come straight out of the ancient past. A murder has been committed in the desert, and the Quenanites plan on delivering some Old Testament justice. Queen is just the detective they've been waiting for.

The bestselling historical novel that exposes the less than honorable side of our Founding Fathers by the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. In this gripping and timely work, William Safire unveils the story behind the nation's first great political scandals. James Thomson Callender, the "scandalmonger" of the title, is an ambitious gossip-peddling editor secretly hired by Thomas Jefferson as a political weapon. After carefully damaging Alexander Hamilton's reputation, thereby paving the way for Jefferson's success, Callender is shunned by the very politicians on whose behalf he was jailed for sedition. Broke and betrayed, Callender seeks revenge by exposing an illicit affair between Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemmings, an accusation that ultimately cost Callender his career and would not be authenticated for two centuries. By using actual letters, records, and notes to re-create dialogue and events, Scandalmonger embodies historical fiction at its best, politics at its most intriguing, and our Founding Fathers at their most notorious. For those who think that Washington sex scandals and lurid journalism are recent developments, this novel will be a revelation, for Safire shows how media intrusiveness into private lives-and politicians' cool manipulation of the press-are practices as old as the Constitution.

Best known as the author of "Psycho", Robert Bloch is world-renowned for his stories of horror, mystery, fantasy, and science fiction. Many of the 25 stories in this first volume of "The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch" have been unavailable for decades. The stories are in his classic style of gripping suspense, science fiction and fantasy. As Bloch writes, "These stories in this collection have a common theme; they deal with monsters. Some of the monsters are human, some are not-- but all of them embody, in one way or another, the fears common to us in our dreams. We call these monsters by many names-- ghosts, vampires, extraterrestrials, changelings. But we recognize them for what they are; manifestations of the secret dreads and desires which lurk beneath the surface of consciousness." "Bloch has become a virtual fixture on the popular culture landscape." --Publishers Weekly "If you're not familiar with Bloch's short fiction, find someone to borrow this from; if you already are familiar, you know that you want to own these volumes." --Locus

This adventure pits Christopher Chance against the organized crime of the world! When he's tasked with protecting a highly placed informant and collecting damaging evidence throughout Europe, every assassin and goon from Paris to Prague will be gunning for the human target!

Howard Engel, an internationally published and award-winning mystery writer, takes dead aim, so to speak, at this fascination we all share, and produces a wonderfully wise and witty social history of the men and women who represent our agents of death, and have done our dirty work over the centuries. 60 photos and line drawings.

This novel explores the dark underbelly of city life. It is published here in its original form by the 'Dr' who risked his tail and talent to write this book.

The operating room was ready, the surgeon called for his patient. A door opened and the long, still form was wheeled in - dead! Abby Doorn had been murdered only a few minutes earlier and almost under their very eyes. This is one of the most baffling murder mysteries Ellery Queen ever had to solve.

"Fans of Hillerman will love this unique and quirky detective duo."-Leslie Glass, bestselling author of Tracking Time A Howard Moon Deer Mystery In San Geronimo, New Mexico, a bizarre murder unearths the ancient secrets of the Anasazi. And rumors of evil flesh-eating spirits run rampant....The murder of an esteemed archaeologist is fueling an already heated war between natives and the academics who excavate their land. And when the coroner confirms that the victim was cannibalized, the story takes a twisted turn.... Private eye Howard Moon Deer and ex-police chief Jack Wilder are on the case. The killing appears to be a modern mimicry of the Anasazi's rumored past-one the tribe thinks would be best left buried. But Howard and Jack must search for clues even if it means digging up sacred land. As they struggle to fight tribal politics, the killer strikes again. And now they must race to solve the crime before fear swallows the town whole.... "Westbrook...possesses a masterful sense of narration."-The Washington Post Book World "A racy and readable writer."-The New York Times Book Review

The second Hob Draconian novel finds the smart but lazy detective in a race for his life. The laziest PI in the world takes a job that should be like shooting fish in a barrel--except he ends up being the fish! "Mr. Sheckley . . . has an engagingly madcap manner all his own".--"The Wall Street Journal".

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Paris Review Staff Pick A January Pick by Salon , Town and Country, Southern Living, and LA Magazine New Orleans, 1918. The birth of jazz, the Spanish flu, an ax murderer on the loose. The lives of a traumatized cop, a conflicted Mafia matriarch, and a brilliant trumpeter converge—and the Crescent City gets the rich, dark, sweeping novel it so deserves. From one of the most inventive writers of his generation, King Zeno is a historical crime novel and a searching inquiry into man’s dreams of immortality. New Orleans, a century ago: a city determined to reshape its destiny and, with it, the nation’s. Downtown, a new American music is born. In Storyville, prostitution is outlawed and the police retake the streets with maximum violence. In the Ninth Ward, laborers break ground on a gigantic canal that will split the city, a work of staggering human ingenuity intended to restore New Orleans’s faded mercantile glory. The war is ending and a prosperous new age dawns. But everything is thrown into chaos by a series of murders committed by an ax-wielding maniac with a peculiar taste in music. The ax murders scramble the fates of three people from different corners of town. Detective William Bastrop is an army veteran haunted by an act of wartime cowardice, recklessly bent on redemption. Isadore Zeno is a jazz cornetist with a dangerous side hustle. Beatrice Vizzini is the widow of a crime boss who yearns to take the family business straight. Each nurtures private dreams of worldly glory and eternal life, their ambitions carrying them into dark territories of obsession, paranoia, and madness. In New Orleans, a city built on swamp, nothing stays buried long.

A Two-time Edgar Award NomineeHarvey Mapes is a twenty-nine-year-old security guard who spends his nights in a guard shack outside a gated community in Southern California, reading detective novels, watching TVLand reruns, and waiting for his life to finally start . . . which happens when Cyril Parkus, one of the wealthy residents, asks Harvey to follow his beautiful wife. The lowly security guard jumps at the chance to fulfill his private eye fantasies . . .Available only in Mystery 5.

When a billionaire heiress connects a recent high-profile murder to an unsolved killing from fifteen years earlier, LAPD lieutenant Peter Decker schedules an interview with a detective from the first case, only to learn of the man's suspicious suicide.

Based on the Sherlock Holmes film: Ellery Queen matches wits with the Baker Street sleuth to unmask Jack the Ripper. Ellery Queen is struggling over his latest book when a friend brings him a mystery. It is a journal, written by a Victorian doctor, of reports on the remarkable adventures of his close friend, a brilliant detective named Sherlock Holmes. Queen's surprise turns to amazement as he turns its pages and discovers the lost story of Sherlock Holmes's greatest case: the pursuit of Jack the Ripper. From the brothels and back alleys of fog-choked Whitechapel to the manor of one of England's greatest families, Holmes and Dr. Watson chase history's most fearsome killer. But it will take the brilliance of Ellery Queen to solve the case once and for all. Based on the Sherlock Holmes film A Study in Terror , this collaboration between two of the world's greatest detectives is one of the most original mystery novels of all time.

When four members of a wealthy household are killed in their suburban Chicago mansion, shock reverberates around the quiet community. The only witness is a small child, and with the obvious culprit soon behind bars, it seems like an open-and-shut case. Enter Cameron Winter. Winter -- a spy turned English professor -- has a unique knack for solving complicated crimes. Despite the lead detective blocking his involvement, Winter discovers this seemingly safe suburban paradise is concealing something dark, something that people want to keep hidden -- and he will do anything to bring the truth to light.

They are two sworn enemies with a single obsession: a woman on the run from them both. Scott Weiss is a private detective. John Foy is a professional killer. The woman is Julie Wyant, a hooker with the face of an angel. Julie spent one night with Foy--a night of psychopathic cruelty that Foy called love. Desperate to get away from him, she vanished without a trace. And Foy wants her back. There's only one man who can find her: Weiss, the best locate operative in the business. She's begged him not to look for her, fearing he'll bring the killer in his wake. But Weiss can't stay away. Now, from a town called Paradise, through a wilderness that feels like hell, Weiss searches for Julie--and the killer follows, waiting for his chance. They are two expert hunters matching move for move--until it ends on Damnation Street.