When neither the cops nor their insurance company believes a wealthy gay couple’s valuable art collection was stolen, they hire Chanse MacLeod to track down the thieves and the missing art. Chanse isn’t entirely sure he believes the couple, either—especially when it turns out some of the art may have been forgeries. The trail of the art leads him to a new gallery on Julia Street in the Arts District opened by a couple new to town that seem to have no past. When one of them turns up dead and the other vanishes, it’s now up to Chanse to find not only the missing art, but a ruthless murderer who will kill anyone who gets in the way.

'People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed - a knife - a purse - and a dark lane...' In this provocative and blackly funny essay, Thomas de Quincey considers murder in a purely aesthetic light and explains how practically every philosopher over the past two hundred years has been murdered - 'insomuch, that if a man calls himself a philosopher, and never had his life attempted, rest assured there is nothing in him'. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859). Thomas de Quincey's Confessions and an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings is available in Penguin Classics.

Miles Morgan is recruited out of the Soho art district in New York, via Santa Fe, to the director of the new 16.5 million dollar art museum on the campus of Arizona State University. Morgan is attractive, single, middle-aged, an art pro, but all is not good: She doesn't like the museum building; it is dark and ominous. She has been stalked since she left Santa Fe, and there is a serial rapist operating on campus. Executives at the university, three men and one woman, do not want her on campus. She might discover their embezzlement of nearly four million dollars during the construction of the museum. Morgan has walked into a complicated game of hide-and-seek, double-crosses, evasive tactics, and sheer terror. But she must tend to business-get the museum up and running, a first exhibit confirmed. She accidentally uncovered the embezzlement and identifies the thieving executives with an ingenious sting. But before they are arrested, two of the culprits are brutally murdered, and Morgan is a suspect. The first exhibit is a hit but Morgan is still being stalked. The campus rapist attacks Morgan on the night of the opening show-attempts to rape her-but she escapes. The rapist is arrested only to murdered while out on bail. Morgan's guilt looks stronger, but then the police arrest a man-DNA identifies him as the murdered of the rapist and the two executives. He escapes jail and it appears he commits suicide. Morgan is safe; it is all over. It is the second show of the season, Morgan is closing the museum, but someone is in the shadows. The unknown stalker, the murdered who fakes his suicide, is in the darkened museum. He is Morgan's former lover from New York, and he can't have her in Arizona, but he's trying. He had stalked Morgan and killed anyone who he thought was threatening her, hoping she would come back to him. A chase through the museum ends when the man is killed by a friend who has returned to the museum. The story ends with Morgan standing outside the museum planning a re-paint of the ugly gray exterior.

Murder—a dark, shameful deed, the last resort of the desperate or a vile tool of the greedy. And a very strange obsession. But where did this fixation develop? And what does it tell us about ourselves?Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism. At a point during the birth of the modern era, murder entered the popular psyche, and it’s been a part of us ever since.The Art of the English Murder is a unique exploration of the art of crime—and a riveting investigation into the English criminal soul by one of our finest historians.

Author, amateur sleuth, and bookstore owner Samantha Washington finds herself on a tragical mystery tour while visiting the land of Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes in the sixth Mystery Bookshop Series installment from V.M. Burns. Sam joins Nana Jo and her Shady Acres Retirement Village friends Irma, Dorothy, and Ruby Mae on a weeklong trip to London, England, to experience the Peabody Mystery Lovers Tour. The chance to see the sights and walk the streets that inspired Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a dream come true for Sam--and a perfect way to celebrate her new publishing contract as a mystery author. But between visits to Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel district and 221B Baker Street, Major Horace Peabody is found dead, supposedly of natural causes. Despite his employer's unfortunate demise, the tour guide insists on keeping calm and carrying on--until another tourist on their trip also dies under mysterious circumstances. Now it's up to Sam and the Shady Acres ladies to mix and mingle among their fellow mystery lovers, find a motive, and turn up a murderer...

A life drawing class at the Brooklyn Community Arts School ends in tragedy when John Sunderland, the handsome male model, doesn't get up from his position on stage. He's been shot through the head with a bolt from a crossbow. An impossible shot through an unbroken window. And why didn't any of the attending would-be artists see a thing?Emily Stone, who was assisting the drawing class, and feels responsible for what happened to John, is soon asked by the young man's sister to solve what appears to be the perfect crime. The only problem is: Emily is a budding artist herself, and a temp. Solving crime is not what she does. When the police prove baffled, though, she reluctantly accepts to take on this mysterious case, and soon discovers that John Sunderland was not who he said he was...

THE STORY: In a remote estate in the countryside of Connecticut, Jack Brooks, one of the most accomplished and eccentric painters of his generation, awaits the imminent arrival of his art dealer. But the visit is not a standard one, for Jack feels