Mystery Mayhem Murder

Murder Mystery & Mayhem is a collection of the dark, the fear-inducing and the mysterious, written by the ingenious writers of Creative Quills Creative Writing Group. Some of the stories may be true, and some are not. Can you guess which are truth and which are lies? Who can tell?

Enthralling children's fiction for everyone who loves Robin Steven's Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries and Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree. Twelve mysteries. Twelve authors. One challenge: can YOU solve the crimes before the heroes of the stories? These are twelve brand-new short stories from twelve of the best children's crime writers writing today. These creepy, hilarious, brain-boggling, heart-pounding mysteries feature daring, brilliant young detectives, and this anthology is a must for fans of crime fiction and detection, especially the Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries, The Roman Mysteries and The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow. The Crime Club are twelve UK-based authors who are mad about crime fiction. Clementine Beauvais, Elen Caldecott, Susie Day, Julia Golding, Frances Hardinge, Caroline Lawrence, Helen Moss, Sally Nicholls, Kate Pankhurst, Robin Stevens, Harriet Whitehorn and Katherine Woodfine can be found anywhere there is a mystery to be solved, a puzzle to be cracked or a bun to be eaten, and they are always ready for the next puzzling case.

From murder and matchstick men to all-consuming fires, painted women, and Great Lakes disasters--and the wide-eyed public who could not help but gawk at it all--"Milwaukee Mayhem" uncovers the little-remembered and rarely told history of the underbelly of a Midwestern metropolis. "Milwaukee Mayhem" offers a new perspective on Milwaukee's early years, forgoing the major historical signposts found in traditional histories and focusing instead on the strange and brutal tales of mystery, vice, murder, and disaster that were born of the city's transformation from lakeside settlement to American metropolis. Author Matthew J. Prigge presents these stories as they were recounted to the public in the newspapers of the era, using the vivid and often grim language of the times to create an engaging and occasionally chilling narrative of a forgotten Milwaukee. Through his thoughtful introduction, Prigge gives the work context, eschewing assumptions about "simpler times" and highlighting the mayhem that the growth and rise of a city can bring about. These stories are the orphans of Milwaukee's history, too unusual to register in broad historic narratives, too strange to qualify as nostalgia, but nevertheless essential to our understanding of this American city.

Nail-biting suspense, spectacular thrills, plus an entire evening of unbridled laughter are all combined in Mr. Parish's new one-set comedy triumph. When domineering Juliet Brighton suddenly decides to have their town house done over and informs her meek, mild-mannered husband, Boniface, they will open their summer home to escape the mess made by the workmen, Boniface rebels, but, as usual, he has to give in to Juliet. The latter sends their charming young daughter, Wendy, on ahead to open up the house. But when Mr. and Mrs. Brighton get off the train in the country Wendy is not there to meet them. They go on to their summer home and wait for Wendy. When she does arrive she is brought in by a stranger--Verne Early. He claims he found her in front of a house up the road and that she was unconscious. When Wendy comes to she is very evasive about what happened. The Brightons settle down in their country place and that is when baffling and mysterious things begin to happen. Loud, mocking luughter is heard coming from upstairs when there isn't supposed to be anybody up there. A woman's body is discovered sitting in a high-backed chair in the living room. She has been murdered! Suddenly the lights go out and when they flash on again the dead woman's body has disappeared! Is Verne Early the head of a band of crooks? Why did Wendy Brighton draw a large sum of money from the bank without telling her parents? Who kidnapped Boniface and will he ever be seen alive again? All these questions make for a high-powered evening of spine-tingling thrills! Hundreds of laughs!

Today's Charlotte is a fast-growing and well-respected city. but the Charlotte of yesteryear is rife with tales of the macabre, tragic and simply unexplainable. Prepare to be surprised and unnerved as the dark side of Charlotte is brought to life by native and long-time writer David Aaron Moore. Learn about Nellie Freeman, who nearly decapitated her husband with a straight razor in 1926. Discover how the ghosts of Camp Green infantrymen, the doughboys of World War I, still scream in the Southern night. Read about the seventy-one passengers who lost their lives as Eastern Airlines Flight 212 fell to the earth one foggy night in 1974. Come along and experience the grisly past of the City of Churches.

“[A] fast-paced novel full of suspense” featuring the ultra-organized military wife and sleuth from the USA Today bestselling author (Fresh Fiction). For Ellie Avery, “a smart crime solver who successfully navigates the challenges of military life,” the hardest thing about hosting a reunion of her husband Mitch's extended Southern family is remembering everyone's name (Publishers Weekly). But this summer, the festivities are cut short by news that Mitch's Air Force squadron commander has been strangled. Then Mitch's look-alike cousin narrowly misses being shot during his daily workout, and Ellie realizes that someone wants to ground Mitch—permanently. Between her kids and her organizing business, she must unravel a perplexing mystery—or Mitch's afternoon jog may be a run for his life . . . Don't miss Ellie Avery's great tips for busy, budget-minded moms! Praise for the Ellie Avery Mystery series “A fun debut for an appealing young heroine.” —Carolyn Hart, New York Times bestselling author “Crackles with intrigue, keeps you turning pages.” —Alesia Holliday, New York Times bestselling author “Sharp writing, tight plotting, a fascinating peek into the world of military wives. Jump in!” —Cynthia Baxter, author of the Lickety Splits Mysteries “Mystery with a 'mommy lit' flavor. A fun read.” —Armchair Interviews

First published in 1850, New York by Gas-Light explores the seamy side of the newly emerging metropolis: "the festivities of prostitution, the orgies of pauperism, the haunts of theft and murder, the scenes of drunkenness and beastly debauch, and all the sad realities that go to make up the lower stratum—the underground story—of life in New York!" The author of this lively and fascinating little book, which both attracted and offended large numbers of readers in Victorian America, was George G. Foster, reporter for Horace Greeley's influential New York Tribune, social commentator, poet, and man about town. Foster drew on his daily and nightly rambles through the city's streets and among the characters of the urban demi-monde to produce a sensationalized but extraordinarily revealing portrait of New York at the moment it was emerging as a major metropolis. Reprinted here with sketches from two of Foster's other books, New York by Gas-Light will be welcomed by students of urban social history, popular culture, literature, and journalism. Editor Stuart M. Blumin has provided a penetrating introductory essay that sets Foster's life and work in the contexts of the growing city, the development of the mass-distribution publishing industry, the evolving literary genre of urban sensationalism, and the wider culture of Victorian America. This is an important reintroduction to a significant but neglected work, a prologue to the urban realism that would flourish later in the fiction of Stephen Crane, the painting of George Bellows, and the journalism of Jacob Riis.

Orange Pulp is an anthology of crime, of heroes and villains, and it celebrates the murder mystery. The writers, creators of the genre sometimes called "American noir" - including John D. MacDonald and Charles Willeford - helped Florida become a serious contender for the title of crime fiction captial of America.