Showing results for "Best Of.." in Amateur Sleuths

When acclaimed mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers first began compiling anthologies of the best crime stories in the 1920s and ’30s, the genre was in the flush of its first golden age. While it is hard to imagine today - after every possible mystery plot has been told, retold, subverted, and played straight again by hundreds of writers over nearly a century - in Sayers’s day there were still twists that had never been seen, and machinations of crime that would shock even jaded Jazz Age fans.

Nora Best is the envy of her friends. She's just turned 50 and has traded in her home with The Perfect-Ass Husband for an Airstream trailer and an adventure of a lifetime across the US. But during their leaving party, Nora finds her husband in a compromising position with a friend. Storming out of the party, she jumps into her truck with no idea how to tow the Airstream or where she's going. Nora ends up in a campground in the mountains of Wyoming, drowning her sorrows with its managers, Brad and Miranda.

The beautifully presented villages of East and West Barton are fierce rivals in The Best Kept Village Competition. When wanton acts of vandalism to both villages mysteriously start to occur, suspicions begin to arise. As the hapless Sergeant Richards is reluctantly drafted in for a full police investigation, so the destruction gets ever more extreme. Mayhem ensues when both village committees, headed up respectively by the fiery Brigadier Faraday and the icy Cynthia Barrington-Smythe, decide to act.

The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths is the latest collection from legendary murder mystery editor and writer Maxim Jakubowski. Filled with impossible murders and puzzling plot twists that keep your brain on the mysteries until the last minute. Clever fictional crime stories. Some of mystery fiction's most inventive talents from the USA and UK offer a series of brand-new ingenious murder stories that will have you scratching your brow until the very last minute and delighting in Machiavellian solutions.

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

When an old college friend leading a religious tour in Assisi asks interpreter Rick Montoya to fill in for their guide who's gone missing, Rick is happy to oblige. He's looking forward to seeing his old friend, and the food and wine of Umbria sound like the perfect reward for a tense translation job he's just completed for the police in Palermo involving witness testimony against the mafia. But when the shady tour guide is found dead the next morning under suspicious circumstances, Rick's relaxing gig turns into an unofficial job assisting the local police inspector.

Professor Dr. Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, besser bekannt als „The Thinking Machine", ist kein gewöhnlicher Detektiv. Mit scharfem Verstand, eisiger Logik und einer gehörigen Portion Arroganz löst er selbst die verzwicktesten Rätsel. Ob scheinbar unlösbare Gefängnisausbrüche, mysteriöse Morde oder raffinierte Rätsel – Van Dusen beweist, dass jedes Problem lösbar ist, wenn man nur denkt.

Nora Best is done running. She’s heading to her hometown of Chateau, to the grand Quail House, to stay with her mother and claim the great American privilege of starting over. But she might find it is hard to start over when the past is catching up.... The night Nora arrives in Chateau, a White police officer shoots and kills Robert Evans, a young Black man. The officer in question is Nora’s school sweetheart, Alden Tydings. What really happened that night? Did Alden act in self-defense as he claims?

Amor Towles selects the best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Andrew Child, Jeffrey Deaver, and T. C. Boyle. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, New York Times bestseller Amor Towles has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

Amateur sleuth Geneva Pomolo is once again drawn into mystery when her investigating partner, Iris Reeves, signs up to read from her novel-in-progress during an open mic night at the local club. The proceedings are interrupted by a scuffle between best-selling young adult novelist William Miller and his former boss and fiancée, Ava Warner. Ava has been feeling salty toward William ever since he suddenly broke off the relationship. William was forced to file a restraining order when she began following him around hoping to humiliate him in public...