Rose and Antonia had a good war. As WAAF plotters, they had all the excitement and independence of a difficult and dangerous job, and all the fun of being two women on an RAF base. Peacetime is a disappointment. There is rationing, shortages, and nothing to do. Rosie’s war-hero husband has turned brutal lout: Antonia, bored with her rich manufacturer, wants to move to America with her lover. Neither can afford a divorce. But what are plotters for, if not to plot? And Antonia’s ruthless scheme would give them both what they want. If Rosie doesn’t lose her nerve, they could get away with murder...

Have yourself a crooked little Christmas with The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories — many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey...

OVER 40 NEW STORIES FROM BRITAIN’S LEADING CRIME WRITERS Leading editor and reviewer Maxim Jakubowski has compiled another beguiling collection of the year’s best new short crime fiction from the UK. Ian Rankin’s perennially popular Edinburgh cop, Inspector Rebus, makes an unexpected comeback in a short, but intriguing story, ‘The Very Last Drop’, and the collection closes with another Rankin story, ‘Driven’. Making their first appearance in the series are many luminaries such as Kate Atkinson, Louise Welsh, Stephen Booth, Christopher Brookmyre, Colin Bateman, A. L. Kennedy, Sheila Quigley, Lin Anderson, Simon Kernick and David Hewson. Also represented are exciting up-and-coming...

The Washington Post described Peter Lovesey’s crime fiction as “ingenious... irresistible... wickedly clever.” In “The Sedgemoor Strangler,” a serial killer leaves a naked corpse among the reeds, and a young waitress gradually comes to suspect that she is the next victim. Another serial killer terrifies a nineteenth-century housewife in the shocking, twisting tale of “Dr Death.” Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate the stealing of the Christmas Star in “The Four Wise Men.” “The Amorous Corpse” is one of the finest recent impossible crime detective stories — a robbery is committed by a man proven by unimpeachable evidence to have been dead several hours earlier. In “The Problem of...

Featuring the best from the modern masters of detective, intrigue, suspense, and mystery fiction.

A nightmare discovery in the boot of a stolen BMW plunges car thief Danny Stapleton into the worst trouble of his life. What links his misfortune to the mysterious disappearance of an art teacher at a private school for girls in Chichester? Orders from above push Peter Diamond of Bath CID into investigating a police corruption case in the Chichester force, and he soon finds himself reluctantly dealing with spirited schoolgirls, eccentric artists and his formidable old colleague, Hen Mallin.