Stories from the Edgar Award–winning author of the famous locked-room mystery, Death of a Top Hat, “a cornerstone of detective fiction” (The New York Times). The Great Merlini waits impatiently at the door of the Hotel Astor. Inspector Church is late for his meeting with the famed magician, with whom he consults when homicide cases venture outside the realm of the possible. A ventriloquist has attempted suicide in the wake of his wife’s mysterious strangulation. Among the suspects are a snake charmer, a nine-foot giant, a tattooed man, and a gaggle of crap players—and this is one of Merlini’s simple cases. He will pick out the killer, with no more effort than he might a rabbit in a top hat. In these twelve short stories, all originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, cofounder of Mystery Writers of America and Special Edgar Award winner Clayton Rawson’s greatest detective confronts puzzles that would leave a lesser magician’s head spinning. From vanishing blackmailers to murderous mediums, no cosmic crime can baffle the Great Merlini.

Foreword by Neil Gaiman The world’s leading Arthurian authority reimagines one of the most beloved and influential legends—the story of King Arthur and his Knights—for a new century in this gorgeous keepsake edition, illustrated with luminous full-color paintings and drawings by internationally acclaimed Tolkien artist John Howe. The stories of King Arthur and Merlin, Lancelot and Guinevere, Galahad, Gawain, Tristan and the rest of the Knights of the Roundtable, and the search for the Holy Grail have been beloved for centuries and are the inspiration of many modern fantasy novels, films, and shows. These legends began when an obscure Celtic hero named Arthur stepped on to the stage of history sometime in the sixth century, generating a host of oral tales that would be inscribed some 900 years later by Thomas Malory in his classic Morte D’Arthur (The Death of Arthur). The Great Book of King Arthur brings these legends into the modern age, using accessible prose for contemporary readers for the first time. In addition to the stories in Morte D’Arthur, John Matthews includes many tales of Arthur and his knights either unknown to Malory or written in other languages, such as the story of Avenable, the girl brought up as a boy who becomes a famous knight; Morien, whose adventures are as fantastic and exciting as any found in Malory’s work; and a retelling of the life of Round Table favorite Gawain, from his strange birth to his upbringing among the poor to his ascension to the highest position—Emperor of Rome. In addition, there are some of the earliest tales of Arthur, deriving from the tradition of Celtic storytelling. The epic hero is represented in such powerful stories as “The Adventures of Eagle-boy” and “The Coming of Merlin,” which is based on the early medieval text Vita Merlini and tells a completely new version of the great enchanter’s story. The Great Book of King Arthur includes 15 full-color paintings and 25 pencil drawings.

A clever magician tries to solve the case of a locked-room murder that only a talented escape artist could have committed. Freelance scribe Ross Harte is working on an essay about the sad state of the modern mystery novel when a scream comes from the hallway: “There is death in that room!” Harte finds a trio of conjurers trying to get into the apartment of his neighbor, the mysterious Dr. Cesare Sabbat, famed occultist and, for the past few minutes, a corpse. They break down the door to find Sabbat lying in a pentagram, face twisted from the agonies of strangulation, but with no bruises on his neck. All the doors were locked, and the windows drop straight down to the river below. Only an escape artist could get out of that room, and Sabbat knew quite a few. To make sense of this misdirected muddle, the police bring in the Great Merlini, an illusionist whose specialty is making mysteries disappear.

When Major Hannum, the owner of the circus, is killed in a suspicious car accident, Merlini the magician decides to investigate.

For every pithy conceptualization of complex events, there are additional lenses through which to examine them. One of the several virtues of this book is precisely that it brings different perspectives to bear on the complexity, diversity, and uncertainty of recent and current events in the Arab world. The thirteen authors concentrate on the critical social forces shaping the region—demography, religion, gender, telecommunication connectivity, and economic structures—and they are painstakingly analyzed and evaluated.—from the foreword by Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution The Arab Spring will be remembered as a period of great change for the Arab states of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Facing fundamental transitions in governance, these countries are also undergoing profound social, cultural, and religious changes. The European Union and the United States, caught unprepared by the uprisings, now must address the inescapable challenges of those changes. How will the West respond to these new realities, particularly in light of international economic uncertainty, EU ambivalence toward a "cohesive foreign policy," and declining U.S. influence abroad? Arab Society in Revolt explains and interprets the societal transformations occurring in the Arab Muslim world, their ramifications for the West, and possible policy options for dealing with this new world. Arab Society in Revolt examines areas of change particularly relevant in the southern Mediterranean: demography and migration, Islamic revival and democracy, rapidly changing roles of women in Arab society, the Internet in Arab societies, commercial and social entrepreneurship as change factors, and the economics of Arab transitions. The book then looks at those cultural and religious as well as political and economic factors that have influenced the Western response, or lack of it, to the Arab Spring as well as the policy options that remain open.