When her husband is murdered using a method from one of her books, a screenwriter becomes the main suspect A successful writer and a B-movie director seem like the perfect match in the Hollywood Hills and, with him working to produce her novel for an upcoming film, the pair’s recent marriage isn’t the only way that they’re connected. When the husband is found murdered on the wife’s birthday using a method of poisoning that was described in one of her books, Victoria suddenly becomes the main suspect as her new happy life comes crashing down around her. The case appears straightforward from the outside but the LAPD investigator on the scene finds the truth to be anything but. Though all the signs point to Victoria, there’s no motive to be found. Now, to solve the mystery of whodunnit, he’ll have to dig beneath the veneer of the household and reveal its inner workings, and to understand the deadly drama that unfolded just beneath the surface. Reprinted for the first time in over half a century, The Birthday Murder is a beautifully written and psychologically astute Golden Age mystery set in old Los Angeles. It will appeal to fans of vintage whodunnits and of standout domestic suspense authors from the era such as Dorothy B. Hughes, Charlotte Armstrong, and Margaret Millar.

From the “grand dame of mystery mixed with screwball comedy”: The children of a widowed mystery writer play amateur sleuths and matchmakers (Ed Gorman, Ellery Queen Award–winning author). When your mom’s a mystery writer, a talent for detection is only natural. So when the three children of prolific whodunit author Marion Carstairs become material witnesses in a neighborhood murder, they launch their own investigation. And why not? They know everything about baffling mysteries from reading their mother’s books, the publicity could do wonders for her sales, and then she and a handsome detective could fall in love. It’s too perfect for words. Marion’s too busy wrapping up the loose ends of her latest book for the inconvenience of a real crime. But what’s surfacing in the shadows of the house next door is not quite as predictable as fiction: accusations of racketeering, kidnapping and blackmail; a slain stripper; a grieving but slippery husband; a wily French artist; a panicky movie star; and a cop who’s working Marion’s last nerve. If the kids are game, Marion decides she is too—in between chapters, at least. Besides, this whole dangerous bloody mess could turn out to be a source of inspiration! This stand-alone mystery was the basis for the classic 1946 comedy starring Randolph Scott and Peggy Ann Garner and “makes clear why Craig Rice remains one of the best writers of mystery fiction” (Jeffery Marks, author of Who Was That Lady?).

From award-winning mystery writer Robert Barnard comes a classic British whodunit about a bestselling author who is murdered—and his latest unpublished manuscript has gone missing. Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs, overweight and overbearing, collapses and dies at his birthday party while indulging his taste for rare liquors. He had promised his daughter he would be polite and charitable for the entire day, but the strain of such exemplary behavior was obviously too great. He leaves a family relieved to be rid of him, and he also leaves a fortune, earned as a bestselling mystery author. But the manuscript of the unpublished volume left to Sir Oliver’s wife, a posthumous “last case” that might be worth millions, has disappeared. And Sir Oliver’s death is beginning to look less than natural.

Fourteen impossible crimes from the American masters of the form For devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period’s purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues, and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. During the years between the two world wars, the best writers in the genre strove to outdo one another with unfathomable crime scenes and brilliant explanations, and the puzzling and clever tales they produced in those brief decades remain unmatched to this day. Among the Americans, some of these authors are still household names, inextricably linked to the locked room mysteries they devised: John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Clayton Rawson, Stuart Palmer. Others, associated with different styles of crime fiction, also produced great works—authors including Fredric Brown, MacKinlay Kantor, Craig Rice, and Cornell Woolrich. All of these and more can be found in Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries, selected by Edgar Award-winning mystery expert and anthologist Otto Penzler. Featuring a delightful mix of well-known writers and unjustly-forgotten masters, the fourteen tales included herein highlight the best of the American impossible crime story, promising hours of entertainment for armchair sleuths young and old.

The thrilling 1st installment in Pulitzer Prize–winning author John P. Marquand’s classic espionage series featuring Imperial Japan’s most skillful spy Capitalizing on his heroic career as a World War I flying ace, Casey Lee agrees to pilot a plane across the Pacific as a publicity stunt for an American tobacco company. But his future as a goodwill ambassador between East and West takes a nosedive when the flight is abruptly canceled. Stranded in Tokyo, his bank account rapidly dwindling, Casey is approached by Mr. Moto, a secret agent with a job to offer. The work entails a matter of grave international importance—and it pays well. Casey accepts the proposition and boards a steamship bound for Shanghai, where his mission will begin. His fellow passengers include Mr. Moto and Sonya, a beautiful exile from White Russia with her own private agenda. When a Chinese man turns up dead in Casey’s stateroom, the trio is caught up in a dangerous game of intrigue and deceit, the outcome of which might just determine the fate of their nations. First serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, John P. Marquand’s popular and acclaimed Mr. Moto Novels were the inspiration for 8 films starring Peter Lorre.