The Mammoth Book Of Vintage Whodunnits

Hidden gems from the earliest days of mystery fiction. The years 1850-1905 represent the pre-Golden Age of crime writing. Drawn exclusively from those earliest days of mystery fiction, this revealing anthology includes a surprising number of authors not commonly associated today with crime fiction - names like Alexander Dumas, Alexander Pushkin, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stephenson, Arnold Bennett, Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling. Over three-quarters of the stories in this fascinating volume have not been reproduced since the 1950s. They include: Guy de Maupassant's "The Hand"; Charles Dickens's "Hunted Down"; Maurice LeBlanc's gentleman-burglar Arsene Lupin; Conan Doyle's "The Adventures of the Three Students"; Robert Louis Stephenson's "Markheim"; Edgar Poe's Chevaller Auguste Dupin, the first genuine fictional detective; Baroness Orczy's "Old Man in the Corner"; and EW Hornung's immensely popular thief Raffles.

Divided into three main sections, "The Ancient World", "The Middle Ages" and "Regency and Gaslight", The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits includes: · The Thief versus Rhampsinitus by Herodotus - probably the earliest detective story ever written. · The Locked Tomb Mystery, set in ancient Egypt, by Elizabeth Peters. · A new story by John Maddox Roberts featuring the young Roman detective Decius Metellus. · Robert van Gulik's ingenious He Came With the Rain featuring Judge Dee, a real-life character who lived inseventh-century China. · A new story by Peter Tremayne, set in seventh-century Ireland and featuring Sister Fidelma. · Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael story The Price of Light. · Paul Harding's The Confession of Brother Athelstan. · A classic locked-room mystery featuring Lillian de la Torre's popular detective Sam Johnson. · A story by Michael Harrison featuring August Dupin, the detective created by Edgar Allan Poe and the inspiration behind Sherlock Holmes. · John Dickson Carr's acclaimed The Gentleman from Paris. ...and many more!

The biggest collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle laid down his pen - nearly 200,000 words of superb fiction featuring the Great Detective by masters of historical crime, including Stephen Baxter, H. R. F. Keating, Michael Moorcock and Amy Myers. Almost all the stories here are specially written; the cases presented in the order in which Holmes solved them. The result is a new life of Sherlock Holmes, with a continuous narrative alongside the stories that identifies the 'gaps' in the canon and places the new and hitherto unrecorded cases in sequence. Plus an invaluable complete Holmes chronology.

Leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski presents this year's must-have collection of British crime fiction. This latest volume of the acclaimed annual collection presents over 20 short stories of murder mystery, selected from the very cream of new British crime fiction. Contributors include Lee Child, Colin Dexter, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Len Deighton, John Harvey, and many more. This is an ideal present for anyone who has ever enjoyed a good murder-mystery. A page-turning compendium of British talent to capture the imagination of readers around the world.

Mike Ashley's brilliant new collection of whodunnits presents stories that reflect all the excitement, escapism and eccentricity of the 1920s. The Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the Age of Wonderful Nonsense - this was a decade when everyone went a little bit crazy. It was also a decade that saw wonderful detective fiction from the likes of Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and others. Contributions range from Cornell Woolrich's story of murder at a jazz party set aboard a steamboat on the Mississippi, to Grenville Robbins's impossible homicide committed on the radio, live on air, and Mat Coward's tale of death at a house party hosting the inaugural meeting of the British Communist Party.

Many readers are attracted to science fiction for that singular moment when a story expands your imagination, enabling you to see something in a new light. Not all SF works this way! This volume collects the very best of it that does, with 25 of the finest examples of mind-expanding and awe-inspiring science fiction. The storylines range from a discovery on the Moon that opens up vistas across all time to a moment in which distances across the Earth suddenly increase and people vanish. These are tales to take you from the other side of now to the very end of time - from today's top-name contributors including Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, Robert Silverberg, Gregory Benford and Robert Reed.

A superb collection of stories of magic and adventure from the golden age of Arthurian legend by bestselling writers. Enter into the darker realms of the age of the Knights of the Round Table, when magic held sway and Merlin vied with Arthur's heroic new world. Included are: Jane Yolen on Merlin's youth and coming of age; Marion Zimmer Bradley on Nimuë, Merlin's lover and doom; Charles de Lint on Merlin's influence through the centuries; Darrell Schweitzer on the legends of Merlin's birth; plus stories by Tanith Lee, Peter Tremayne, Phyllis Ann Karr, Jennifer Roberson, and many others. There is also a detailed introduction by Mike Ashley on the mystery and magic of Merlin and his world.

Leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski presents this year's must-have collection of British mystery fiction. This latest volume of the acclaimed annual collection presents 35 short stories of murder mystery, selected from the very cream of new British crime fiction. Contributors include John Mortimer, Alexander McCall Smith, Colin Dexter, Christopher Fowler, Robert Barnard, Anne Perry, Peter Lovesey, Ken Bruen, and many more. It's ideal for anyone who has ever enjoyed a good murder-mystery. A page-turning compendium of British talent to capture the imagination of readers around the world.