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Five thrilling tales of mystery, mayhem, and murder from an exceptional quintet of Edgar, CWA Dagger, and National Book Award winners. Crime and literature make strange and sinister bedfellows in this winning anthology of book-themed whodunits by five acclaimed masters of mystery and suspense. Multiple award-winning, bestselling authors provide the literary thrills and chills in this masterful collection of five ingeniously puzzling mysteries that belong in the library of every crime fiction aficionado.

It's murder most puzzling for a New England cop-turned-private-investigator and a crossword editor in the first three Crossword Mysteries. If there's a case too cryptic for the police to solve in the coastal town of Newcastle, Massachusetts, locals can always count on private investigator Rosco Polycrates and crossword editor Annabelle Graham to get things squared away ... The Crossword Murder: Thompson C. Briephs, a wealthy playboy and crossword editor for the Newcastle Herald, is found strangled in his bed.

From Hollywood's Golden Age to a rock 'n' roll tragedy, this pair of detective novels from two award-winning maestros of mystery hits all the right notes. From Edgar Award-winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky, Dancing in the Dark shines a light on the 1940s Los Angeles dancing scene. Paired with Ellery Queen Award-winning author Ed Gorman's "gripping, amusing, thoughtful and hugely entertaining" The Day the Music Died, these two kooky and delightful mysteries are now available in one volume (Dean Koontz). Dancing in the Dark by Stuart M.

From an Edgar and Agatha Award winner: A mystery writer must solve the puzzle of her past when she meets the South Carolina family she never knew existed. Popular mystery novelist Molly Hunt knows all about the twists and turns of fiction, but real life has thrown her for a loop. Raised by adoptive parents on Long Island, Molly has just made a stunning discovery: She's the daughter of South Carolina blue bloods and was kidnapped as an infant from their ancestral home in Charleston.

Three mysteries in the CWA Gold Dagger-winning series by a "master of the bizarre" (Louis Untermeyer). Scotland Yard detective James Pibble is known for accepting any case, no matter how strange. Taking him to every corner of England, his job throws him into the most curious circumstances. The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest: Detective Pibble is on the case when the revered elder of a New Guinea tribe is bludgeoned to death. All the suspects-including a real estate agent, a professional escort, and an anthropologist who married into the tribe-have alibis.

A barrister becomes a detective when his friend disappears at an English manor in this classic Victorian novel. Beautiful Lucy Graham charms every man she meets, including wealthy widower Sir Michael Audley. After they marry, he refurbishes his mansion to create a little palace for his new wife, where her future seems bright. Her past, however, is shrouded in darkness, and she'll do whatever it takes to keep it hidden. Then Sir Michael's nephew, Robert, a London barrister, comes for a visit with his good friend George Talboys for a week of fishing.

Literary legend Samuel Johnson and his biographer, James Boswell, solve mysteries in eighteenth-century London in this delightful story collection. A brilliant thinker and his trusted assistant sit in their drawing room, pondering a story in the newspaper, when the door opens and the subject of the article enters, begging for help. It's a classic scene from English detective fiction, set not at 221B Baker Street, but 1 Inner Temple Lane-the home of Dr. Samuel Johnson and his biographer, James Boswell.

James Boswell and Dr. Samuel Johnson team up to solve mysteries in this collection of brilliantly baffling historical crime stories. James Boswell is just twenty-two when he comes south from Scotland, determined to befriend Dr. Sam Johnson, the greatest thinker of the eighteenth century. But when he first goes to call on the legendary scholar, a hue and cry is raised throughout the neighborhood because a wealthy old invalid refuses to come to her door. It's barred from the inside, and when Johnson and Boswell break in, they find the woman dead.

Eight exquisite mystery stories set in London, starring Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest minds of the eighteenth century. In 1775, as the British Empire is about to be cracked by the earthquake of the American Revolution, twenty English families join in the ghoulish bargain known as a tontine. Each puts 5,000 into a common fund to be held in trust for their children with the terrible stipulation that the money will go to the last child left alive. Such a bargain should take seventy or eighty years to come to fruition, but there is a curse upon this tontine.

New York Times Bestseller: This "shocking" murder mystery addresses homophobia in the military during World War II (Richard Wright, author of Native Son). The men in the barracks, wrenched from the normal pursuits of life, are being molded into warriors in a battle against the "others." Isolated and fearful, they sometimes relieve their frustrations on the most disenfranchised civilians, namely homosexuals. But one weekend, one of them loses control and commits murder.