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.

Regarded as the first full-length locked room mystery, The Big Bow Mystery focuses on a murder that has occurred inside a locked room, with no clear indication as to the weapon used, the perpetrator of the horrendous crime, or a possible escape route. Scotland Yard is stumped. Yet the seemingly unsolvable case has, as Inspector Grodman says, "one sublimely simple solution" that is revealed in a final chapter full of revelations and a shocking denouement. The Big Bow Mystery has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films.

A murder in a crowded Broadway theater presents a full house of suspects--the first in this classic mystery series starring Ellery Queen Despite the dismal Broadway season, Gunplay continues to draw crowds. A gangland spectacle, it's packed to the gills with action, explosions, and gunfire. In fact, Gunplay is so loud that no one notices the killing of Monte Field. In a sold-out theater, Field is found dead partway through the second act, surrounded by empty seats. The police hold the crowd and call for the one man who can untangle this daring murder: Inspector Richard Queen. With the help of his son Ellery, a bibliophile and novelist whose imagination can solve any crime, the Inspector attacks this seemingly impenetrable mystery. Anyone in the theater could have killed the unscrupulous lawyer, and several had the motive. Only Ellery Queen, in his debut novel, can decipher the clue of the dead man's missing top hat.

In a playground in Brooklyn, Artie Cohen is led to a dead girl tiedup in duct tape on a children's swing. He soon realizes the killermurdered the wrong girl�the intended victim was his best friend TolyaSverdloff's daughter, who soon meets a similar fate. ArtieCohen�Russan-born New York police detective�is drawn inexorably from NewYork to London and ultimately to Moscow in pursuit of the killer. There,already in over his head, Artie uncovers a painful truth about his pastthat puts Tolya's life in the balance.

When a neighborhood dog is found injured, T.F. and his partner, Sara, set out to learn who would hurt the friendly mutt. Several people in the neighborhood dislike dogs, but T.F. and Sara have a hunch the dog was hurt after witnessing a crime.

Writer Garment uses his "contextual knowledge" of key Nixon insiders to arrive at the only likely candidate for the cigarette-smoking, Scotch-sipping informant. He also provides a fascinating look at the power dynamics within the Nixon administration and Washington. His search for Deep Throat's identity takes readers into the enigma of Richard Nixon, a leader whose tragic end still fascinates.

Detailed investigation of one of the world's oldest mysteries by the best investigative writer of the 20th Century.

A brand-new mystery series from one of the countryas best-known, best-loved writers: a new character, a new city, a new era. A new Walter Mosley. His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office: LEONID McGILL, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. Itas a name that takes a little explaining, but heas used to it. aDaddy was a communist and great-great- Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland. You know, the black manas family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story.a Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in cash and favors: McGillas an old-school P.I. working a city thatas gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always managed to get byakeep a roof over the head of his wife and kids, and still manage a little fun on the sideamostly because heas never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck. But like the city itself, McGill is turning over a new leaf, adecided to go from crooked to slightly bent.a New York City in the twenty-first century is a city full of secretsaand still a place that reacts when you know where to poke and which string to pull. Thatas exactly the kind of thing Leonid McGill knows how to do. As soon as "The Long Fall" begins, with McGill calling in old markers and greasing NYPD palms to unearth some seemingly harmless information for a high-paying client, he learns that even in this cleaned-up city, his commitment to the straight and narrow is going to be constantly tested. And we learn that with this protagonist, this city, this time, Mosley has tapped a rich new vein thatas inspiring his best work since the classic "Devil in a Blue Dress."

A mystery caller sends Leonid McGill to an uptown address 'just to check a girl's okay'. There's no explanation - just a name - Angelique - a reward, and the chilling knowledge that he's working for Rinaldo Alphonse, the most feared man in New York. What LT finds is a crime scene. A girl lies with her face blown off, her assassin felled by a knife. But the dead girl isn't the one LT was sent to find, and her killer's injuries don't make sense. The next day Alphonse comes calling: LT must find Angelique before the assassin's assassin tracks her down. Alphonse isn't the only one who wants a bit of LT's time - the NYPD, finding his appearance too convenient, think they can finally put away the thorn in their side. But why do so many people want a piece of the apparently normal, clean-living Angelique? And why is the mafia coming after McGill, linking his sons - shy Dmitri and streetwise Twill - to the escape of a sex trafficked Belarussian girl. As both plots career towards a thrilling finale, McGill must put his street know-how and book of lethal contacts to the test, while haunted by the re-appearance of a face from his crooked past and wife Katrina's continued infidelities (this time it's her son's best friend).

Crime is common ground for the twenty-one women writers in this extraordinary collection of contemporary mystery fiction, introduced and edited by Sara Paretsky The voices here include professional crime solvers who take you from the mean streets of V.I. Warshawski’s Chicago in a case of music and murder . . . to the California freeway where Kinsey Millhone's beloved VW skids into a shooting . . . to the gang-held turf of Sharon McCone’s San Francisco, where an eye witness to a slaying says mum’s the word. And then there are mothers, grandmothers, battered wives, and social workers—ordinary women in extraordinary situations whose voices reveal contemporary life as seen through a woman’s eye. From the opening tale of a girl down-and-out in London and what she steals from a corpse . . . to the final story of a summer vacation in the Berkshires, complete with romance and sudden death . . . this unique collection brings us great mystery writing that engages both our intellects and our hearts. This collection features stories from twenty-one authors, including: Sara Paretsky • Sue Grafton • Marica Muller • Susan Dunlap • Carolyn Hart • Antonia Fraser • Dorothy Salisbury Davis • Amanda Cross • Nancy Pickard • Dorothy B. Hughes • Faye Kellerman • Julie Smith • Barbara Wilson • Mary Wings • and more!

When Dr. Leo Liebenstein's wife disappears, she leaves behind a single, confounding clue: a woman who looks, talks, and behaves exactly like her--or "almost "exactly like her--and even audaciously claims to be her. While everyone else is fooled by this imposter, Leo knows better than to trust his senses in matters of the heart. Certain that the original Rema is alive and in hiding, Leo embarks on a quixotic journey to reclaim his lost love. With the help of his psychiatric patient Harvey--who believes himself to be a secret agent who can control the weather--Leo attempts to unravel the mystery of the spousal switch. His investigation leads him to the enigmatic guidance of the meteorologist Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, the secret workings of the Royal Academy of Meteorology in their cosmic conflict with the 49 Quantum Fathers, and the unwelcome conviction that somehow he--or maybe his wife, or maybe even Harvey--lies at the center of all these unfathomables. From the streets of New York to the southernmost reaches of Patagonia, Leo's erratic quest becomes a test of how far he is willing to take his struggle against the seemingly uncontestable truth he knows in his heart to be false. "Atmospheric Disturbances "is at once a moving love story, a dark comedy, a psychological thriller, and a deeply disturbing portrait of a fracturing mind. With tremendous compassion and dazzling literary sophistication, Rivka Galchen investigates the moment of crisis when you suddenly realize that the reality you insist upon is no longer one you can accept, and the person you love has become merely the person you live with. This highly inventive debut explores the mysterious nature of human relationships, and how wespend our lives trying to weather the storms of our own making.

"A suspenseful novel about a grieving woman who discovers the long-lost letters of novelist Victor Hugo, awakening a mystery that spans centuries" --

"A witty, entertaining mystery featuring a hilarious, sharp as a tack new amateur sleuth from the critically acclaimed author of The Invention of Murder. It's just another day at the office for book editor Samantha Clair. Checking jacket copy for howlers, wondering how to break it to her star novelist that her latest effort is utterly unpublishable, lunch scheduled with gossipy author Kit Lowell, whose new book will deliciously dish the dirt on the fashion industry. But little does she know how much trouble Kit's book is about to cause. Before it even goes to print. When police inspector Field turns up at the venerable offices of Timmins & Ross, asking questions about an undelivered package that was addressed to Sam, she knows something is wrong. The messenger sent to deliver the package was murdered, and then Kit goes missing. Suddenly, Sam's nine-to-five life is turned upside down and she is propelled into a criminal investigation. Someone doesn't want Kit's scandalous manuscript published and unless Sam can put the pieces together in time, they'll do anything to stop it. With her deliciously fun, cleverly written debut novel, acclaimed author Judith Flanders introduces readers to an enormously enjoyable, too-smart-for-her-own-good new amateur sleuth, as well as a colorful cast of characters including Sam's witty assistant, effortlessly glamorous mother, and the handsome inspector Field. A whip-smart, impeccably crafted mystery, this tremendously entertaining novel will have readers flying through the pages"--

The Strand's 42nd issue features short stories by Joseph Finder, Tennessee Williams, Michael Stanley and an interview with Lisa Unger. The Strand also has the latest book reviews of the latest mystery novels and audiobooks.

Piggins, the butler at the Reynard household, solves the mystery of the missing royal wedding band.

The Union Club Mysteries is a collection of mystery short stories by American author Isaac Asimov featuring his fictional mystery solver Griswold. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1983 and in paperback by the Fawcett Crest imprint of Ballantine Books in 1985.The book collects thirty stories by Asimov, most reprinted from magazines and a few previously unpublished, together with a foreword and afterword by the author. Each story is set at a club known as the Union Club, in which a conversation between three members prompts a fourth member, Griswold, to tell about a mystery he has solved. These are often tall stories, and often based on his time in US intelligence. The format is based on that utilized by P. G. Wodehouse in recounting his golf stories.

"David Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fiction."--Geoffrey O'Brien In Street of No Return, we meet the pathetic figure of Whitey. Once upon a time Whitey was a crooner with a million-dollar voice and a standing invitation from any woman who heard him use it. Until he had the bad luck to fall for Celia. And then nothing would ever be the same. In Street of No Return, David Goodis works the magic that made him one of the most distinctive voices in hard-boiled fiction, creating a claustrophobic universe in which wounded men and women collide with cataclysmic force.

On September 23, 1926, and Austrian experimental biologist named Dr. Paul Kammerer blew his brains out on a footpath in the Austrian mountains. His suicide was the climax of a great evolutionary controversy which his experiments had aroused. The battle was between the followers of Lamarck, who maintained that acquired characteristics could be inherited, and the neo-Darwinists, who upheld the theory of chance mutations preserved by natural selection. Dr. Kammerer's experiments with various amphibians, including salamanders and the midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans), lent much weight to the Lamarckian argument and drew upon him the full fury of the orthodox neo-Darwinists. Arthur Koestler had known about Dr. Kammerer's work when he himself was a student in Vienna, and he has always been interested in this tragic story. He gives a fascinating description of the venomous atmosphere in which the battle was fought and of the lengths to which apparently respectable scholars would go to discredit their opponents. Heading the attack on Kammerer was a British scientist, William Bateson, who hinted that the Viennese's experiments were fakes, but who failed to examine the evidence, including the so-called nuptial pads of Kammerer's last remaining specimen of the midwife toad. It was a young American scientist who delivered the coup de grace; on a visit to Vienna, he discovered that the discoloration of the nuptial pads was due not to natural causes but to the injection Indian ink. When his findings were published, Kammerer shot himself. Mr. Koestler, whose recent writings, in books such as The Act of Creation and The Ghost in the Machine, have been in part concerned with evolutionary theory, decided to investigate this old mystery. When he started on his researches, he expected to relate the tragedy of a man who had betrayed his calling, for Kammerer's suicide was accepted as a confession of guilt and his work was discredited from that day to this. Instead, as Mr. Koestler read the contemporary papers, corresponded with Kammerer's daughter, Bateson's son, and the surviving scientists who attended Kammerer's lecture in Cambridge, he found himself writing a vindication of a man who in all probability was himself betrayed. The story that emerges is, on one level, fascinating piece of scientific detection; on another, it is a moving and human narrative about a much abused, brilliant and lovable figure. Though no Lamarckian himself, Mr. Koestler ends the book with an appeal to biologists to repeat Kammerer's experiments with an open mind in order to verify or refute them. If Kammerer's claims were posthumously confirmed our outlook on evolution would be significantly changed. A superb intellectual thriller whose implications still reverberate today, The Case of the Midwife Toad is an entirely new kind of book for Mr. Koestler, and perhaps only he could have written it, for it required expert knowledge and familiarity with the academic world of science, combined with the creativity and imaginative insight of an outstanding novelist.

In this sequel to "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned", Socrates Fortlow is back in Watts, trying to leave prison in his past, and confronting the most dangerous emotion of all: hope.