Otto Penzler

Vynikající sbírka povídek na upírské téma od autorů, jakými jsou Bram Stoker, Stephen King, Clive Barker, H.P. Lovercraft a mnoho dalších.

Fascinujúce príbehy z pera majstrov napínavého čítania, ktorí dali dokopy celý hárem nebezpečných žien každého druhu. Publishers Weekly Ani Hitchcock by nezostavil lepší výber. Times Literary Supplement Najnebezpečnejšie ženy sú tie neodolateľné. Niekedy si žena svoju moc jasne uvedomuje, inokedy nemá o nej ani tušenia. Jedna ju použije ako nabrúsenú zbraň, druhá ako záchranný pás. Nebezpečné ženy s nami boli od úsvitu čias. Muži kvôli nim zabíjajú, zrádzajú vlasť, vzdávajú sa trónu a berú si život. No niekedy za to tieto ženy stoja. Mnohí detektívi vedia o nebezpečných ženách svoje. Ale ani Sherlock Holmes, ani Nero Wolfe nikdy nestretli nebezpečné ženy, aké sa vyskytujú na stránkach tejto knihy. Boli by z nich zhrození, ale dozaista aj fascinovaní. Autori zastúpení v tejto zbierke príbehov dokázali, že aj oni vedia ponúknuť širokú škálu typov femme fatale.

Co dělá ženu nebezpečnou? Krása, osobní kouzlo, inteligence? Anebo prostě nedefinovatelná moc, kterou některé ženy užívají k vlastní obraně, zatímco jiné jako ostrou čepel? Ať tak či onak, následky bývají zničující. `Co takhle někoho zabít?` nadhodí konverzačním tónem hrdinka úvodní povídky nad sklenkou vína, zatímco její kolegyně o pár stránek dál se bez servítků dožaduje: `Dejte mi své srdce, doktore!` a ani v nejmenším to nemyslí obrazně. Před nebezpečnými ženami není úniku. Mysleli byste, že válka ve vietnamské džungli je čistě mužská záležitost? Ale kdeže. Voják na průzkumu, spisovatel, právník či protřelý nájemný vrah - žádný nevyvázne.

Vynikající sbírka povídek na upírské téma od autorů, jakými jsou Bram Stoker, Stephen King, Clive Barker, H.P. Lovercraft a mnoho dalších.

O životech hlavních hrdinů detektivek Jak vznikli někteří z nejpopulárnějších literárních detektivů současnosti? Které místo nebo okamžik v životě inspirovaly dvojici Prestona & Childa ke stvoření tajemného agenta Pendegrasta? Proč je Jack Reacher takový chlapák a proč z něj Lee Child udělal ztroskotance? Jeffery Deaver představí geniálního ochrnutého detektiva Lincolna Rhymea. V této knize odhalují někteří z nejlepších spisovatelů detektivek dneška tajemství zrodu svých nezapomenutelných hrdinů – nebo za sebe v některých případech nechají mluvit hrdiny samotné.

The biggest collection of Sherlock Holmes stories ever assembled! Arguably no other character in history has been so enduringly popular as Sherlock Holmes.Ever since his first appearance, in Arthur Conan Doyle s 1887 novella "A Study in Scarlet," readers have loved reading about him almost as much as writers have loved writing about him. Here, Otto Penzler collects eighty-three wonderful stories about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, published over a span of more than a hundred years. Featuring pitch-perfect cases by acclaimed modern-day Sherlockians Leslie S. Klinger, Laurie R. King, Lyndsay Faye and Daniel Stashower; pastiches by literary luminaries both classic (P. G. Wodehouse, Dorothy B. Hughes, Kingsley Amis) and current (Anne Perry, Stephen King, Colin Dexter); and parodies by Conan Doyle s contemporaries A. A. Milne, James M. Barrie, and O. Henry, not to mention genre-bending cases by science-fiction greats Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock. No matter if your favorite Holmes is Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Robert Downey, Jr., or Benedict Cumberbatch, whether you are a lifelong fan or only recently acquainted with the Great Detective, readers of all ages are sure to enjoy "The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories." Including - Over a century s worth of cases, from Conan Doyle s 1890s parodies of his own creation to Neil Gaiman s The Case of Death and Honey (2011) - Appearances by those other great detectives Hercule Poirot and C. Auguste Dupin - 15 Edgar Award winning authors and 5 Mystery Writers of America Grand Masters - Stories by Laurie R. King, Colin Dexter, Anthony Burgess, Anne Perry, Stephen King, P.G. Wodehouse, Kingsley Amis, and many, many more."

The offices of foreign literature publisher and renowned stamp collector Donald Kirk are often host to strange activities, but the most recent occurrence---the murder of an unknown caller, found dead in an empty waiting room--is unlike any that has come before. Nobody, it seems, entered or exited the room, and yet the crime scene clearly has been manipulated, leaving everything in the room turned backwards and upside down. Stuck through the back of the corpse's shirt are two long spears--and a tangerine is missing from the fruit bowl. Enter amateur sleuth Ellery Queen, who arrives just in time to witness the discovery of the body, only to be immediately drawn into a complex case in which no clue is too minor or too glaring to warrant careful consideration. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, The Chinese Orange Mystery is revered to this day for its challenging conceit and inventive solution. The book is a "fair-play" mystery in which readers have all the clues needed to solve the crime. In 1981, the novel was selected as one of the top ten locked room mysteries of all time by a panel of mystery-world luminaries that included Julian Symons, Edward D. Hoch, Howard Haycraft, and Otto Penzler.

Now retired from the tour circuit on which he made his name, master magician The Great Merlini spends his days running a magic shop in New York's Times Square and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. The cops call him when faced with crimes so impossible that they can only be comprehended by a magician's mind. In the most recent case, two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing to have been murdered under similar circumstances. The list of suspects includes an escape artist, a professional medium, and a ventriloquist, so it's clear that the crimes took place in a realm that Merlini knows well. But in the end it will take his logical skills, and not his magical ones, to apprehend the killer. Reprinted for the first time in over twenty years, Death from a Top Hat is an ingeniously-plotted puzzle set in the world of New York stage magic, which was at its pinnacle in the early twentieth century. In 1981, the novel was selected as one of the top ten locked room mysteries of all time by a panel of mystery-world luminaries that included Julian Symons, Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen's co-creator Frederic Dannay, and Otto Penzler.

Unoccupied and unsupervised while mother is working, the children of widowed crime writer Marion Carstairs find diversion wherever they can. So when the kids hear gunshots at the house next door, they jump at the chance to launch their own amateur investigation--and after all, why shouldn't they? They know everything the cops do about crime scenes, having read about them in mother's novels. They know what her literary detectives would do in such a situation, how they would interpret the clues and handle witnesses. Plus, if the children solve the puzzle before the cops, it will do wonders for the sales of mother's novels. But this crime scene isn't a game at all; the murder is real, and when its details prove more twisted than anything in mother's fiction, they'll have to enlist Marion's help to sort them out. Or is that just part of their plan to hook her up with the lead detective on the case? The basis for the 1946 film with the same name, Home Sweet Homicide is the novel that launched Craig Rice to literary fame. The book, a comedic crime story that pokes fun at the conventions of the genre, finds "the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction" at her most entertaining.

Hildegarde Withers is just your average school teacher--with above-average skills in the art of deduction. The New Yorker often finds herself investigating crimes led only by her own meddlesome curiosity, though her friends on the NYPD don't mind when she solves their cases for them. After plans for a grand tour of Europe are interrupted by Germany's invasion of Poland, Miss Withers heads to sunny Los Angeles instead, where her vacation finds her working as a technical advisor on the set of a film adaptation of the Lizzie Borden story. The producer has plans for an epic retelling of the historical killer's patricidal spree--plans which are derailed when a screenwriter turns up dead. While the local authorities quickly deem his death accidental, Withers suspects otherwise and calls up a detective back home for advice. The two soon team up to catch a wily killer. At once a pleasantly complex locked room mystery and a hilarious look at the foibles of Hollywood, The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan finds Palmer, a screenwriter himself, at his most perceptive. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, this riotously funny novel shows why Hildegarde Withers was among the most beloved detectives of the Golden Age American mystery novel.

An all-around skeptic when it comes to the supernatural, literature professor William Porter gives no credence to claims that Twin Towers, the seaside manor he's just inherited, might be haunted. He finds nothing mysterious about the conditions in which his Uncle Horace died, leaving the property behind; it was a simple case of cardiac arrest, nothing more. So, though his wife, more attuned to spiritual disturbance, refuses to occupy the main house, Porter convinces her to spend a summer at the estate and stay in the lodge elsewhere on the grounds. But not long after they arrive, Porter sees the evidence of haunting that the townspeople speak of: a shadowy figure illuminated by the red light of Horace's writing lamp, the very light that shone on the scene of his death. And though he isn't convinced that it is a spirit and not a man, Porter knows that, whichever it is, the figure is responsible for the rash of murders--first of sheep, then of people--that breaks out across the countryside. Somehow, though, the suspect eludes him every time and, in his pursuit, Porter risks implicating himself in the very crimes he hopes to solve. Written with atmospheric prose and tension that rises with every page, The Red Lamp is a hybrid of murder mystery and gothic romance that shows the "American Agatha Christie" at the height of her powers.

Christmas whodunits starring Poirot, Marple, Rebus, More, Rumpole, Sherlock, Cadfael and many many more. Festive felonies, unscrupulous santas, deadly puddings, and misdemeanors under the mistletoe... From Victorian detective stories to modern mysteries, police procedurals to pulp fiction, comic gems to cozy crime, there's something for every festive mood in this must-read collection starring sixty of the world's favourite detectives. Featuring an all-star cast of authors including Isaac Asimov, Mary Higgins Clark, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Colin Dexter, Thomas Hardy, H.R.F. Keating, Ngaio Marsh, John Mortimer, Ellis Peters, Sara Paretsky, Robert Louis Stevenson and - of course - Agatha Christie, this is the biggest and best Christmas crime anthology in print today.

'What treats you have in store!' IAN RANKIN. Who knew literature could be so lethal? Here are 20 specially commissioned stories about deadly books from the world's best crime writers. By turns hair-raising and playful, packed with twists and turns, literary references and bookish conundrums, this is a treasure chest of bloodthirsty bibliophilia. Death Sentences has stories to die for from: Ian Rankin, Jeffery Deaver, Denise Mina, C.J. Box, Anne Perry, Peter Robinson, Stephen Hunter, Ken Bruen, Laura Lippman, F. Paul Wilson, Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Lovesey, Megan Abbott, R. L. Stine, Andrew Taylor, Joe R. Lansdale, John Connolly, Christopher Fowler and Nelson DeMille.

O životech hlavních hrdinů detektivek Jak vznikli někteří z nejpopulárnějších literárních detektivů současnosti? Které místo nebo okamžik v životě inspirovaly dvojici Prestona & Childa ke stvoření tajemného agenta Pendegrasta? Proč je Jack Reacher takový chlapák a proč z něj Lee Child udělal ztroskotance? Jeffery Deaver představí geniálního ochrnutého detektiva Lincolna Rhymea. V této knize odhalují někteří z nejlepších spisovatelů detektivek dneška tajemství zrodu svých nezapomenutelných hrdinů – nebo za sebe v některých případech nechají mluvit hrdiny samotné.