The Big Book Of Victorian Mysteries

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler—“detective fiction’s best editor and champion” (The Washington Post)—returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horsedrawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. With his latest title in the Big Book series, Otto Penzler is cracking cases and serving up the most thrilling, suspenseful Victorian mysteries. This collection brings together incredible stories from Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Guy de Maupassant among other legendary writers of the grand era of the British Empire. So brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler—“detective fiction’s best editor and champion” (The Washington Post)—returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants Behind the velvet curtains of horsedrawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. With his latest title in the Big Book series, Otto Penzler is cracking cases and serving up the most thrilling, suspenseful Victorian mysteries. This collection brings together incredible stories from Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Guy de Maupassant among other legendary writers of the grand era of the British Empire. So brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries. A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL

The Edgar Award-winning editor collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories—from Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy, to Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain. • “Anyone who cares about the best mystery writing of the past century and beyond would be lucky to receive this thick volume during the holidays." —The Washington Post This collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for--suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural—can be found in these pages. FEATURING: - Unscrupulous Santas - Crimes of Christmases Past and Present - Festive felonies - Deadly puddings - Misdemeanors under the mistletoe - Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, resourceful, and brilliant female sleuths in mystery fiction. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original. For the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the most iconic women of the detective canon over the past 150 years, captivating and surprising readers in equal measure. The 74 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most determined of gumshoe gals, from debutant detectives like Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange to spinster sleuths like Mary Roberts Rinehart's Hilda Adams, from groundbreaking female cops like Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly to contemporary crime-fighting P.I.s like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, and include indelible tales from Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells, Edgar Wallace, L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Linda Barnes, Laura Lippman, and many more.

Award-winning author Laura Joh Rowland is back with the fourth in her critically acclaimed Victorian mysteries where the case of a mutilated "Sleeping Beauty" washes ashore in London. London, June 1890. Sarah Bain and her friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly are crime scene photographers for the Daily World newspaper. After solving a sensational murder, they're under pressure to deliver another big story. On a foggy summer night, they're called to the bank of the river Thames. The murder victim is an unidentified woman whose face has been slashed. But as Sarah takes photographs, she discovers that the woman is still alive. The case of "Sleeping Beauty" becomes a public sensation, and three parties quickly come forward to identify her: a rich, sinister artist who claims she's his wife; a mother and her two daughters who co-own a nursing home and claim she's their stepdaughter/sister; and a precocious little girl who claims Sleeping Beauty is her mother. Which party is Sleeping Beauty's rightful kin? Is someone among them her would-be killer? Then Sleeping Beauty awakens--with a severe case of amnesia. She's forgotten her name and everything else about herself. But she recognizes one of the people who've claimed her. Sarah is delighted to reunite a family and send Sleeping Beauty home--until one of the claimants is murdered. Suddenly, Sarah, her motley crew of friends, and her fiancé Detective Sergeant Barrett are on the wrong side of the law. Now they must identify the killer before they find themselves headed for the gallows.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler is back with a new anthology that has gathered the intel on the world's greatest secret agents, declassified in these pages for the first time. Statesecrets. Double agents. Leaks. Otto Penzler brings you all this and more with his latest title in the Big Book series. No need to wait for the government to release redacted information, Otto is ready to declassify confidential matters. Great stories from Lee Child and Charles McCarry are pulled from the shadows and into the light. So pull your fedora down, adjust your fake moustache, and get ready to settle in with some of the greats.

The arrival of an unexpected guest means trouble ahead for the residents of Thorncroft House in this deftly-plotted Victorian mystery. On a freezing winter’s night, with the household in mourning following the death of the dowager Lady Croft, the residents of Thorncroft House are roused from their beds by the arrival of an unexpected visitor. Although Lady Stanton seems reluctant to explain the reasons for her visit, housekeeper Harriet Rowsley would never turn a stranger from the door; she offers Lady Stanton and her servants all the hospitality at her disposal, however secretive and arrogant the new guest might be. But tensions arise over the following days, with both visitors and servants trapped indoors by the snow, and Lady Stanton proving a difficult and demanding guest. The situation worsens on the discovery of the body of a young housemaid lying crumpled at the foot of the stairs. A tragic accident … or something more sinister? Who exactly is Lady Stanton, and why has she come to Thorncroft? Has her arrival anything to do with the housemaid’s death? As the household remains trapped and tensions escalate, Harriet and her husband Matthew are forced to face the fact that they may be harbouring a murderer in their midst …

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology rolls out the red carpet for the stories that Hollywood is made of. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original. Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. There's the W. Somerset Maugham short story that inspired Hitchcock's Secret Agent; Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; Sir Ian Fleming's "From a View to a Kill," later one of Roger Moore's greatest Bond films; and "Cyclists' Raid," the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One. Otto Penzler delivers the director's cut on these classic short stories and the films they gave rise to. So grab your Sno-Caps and a jumbo box of popcorn and curl up with these cinematic tales from the likes of Agatha Christie, Dennis Lehane, Joyce Carol Oates, Dashiell Hammett, O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle.