Featuring twenty of the year’s standout crime short stories handpicked by one of the world’s best thriller writers, Best American Mystery Stories 2010 showcases not only the very best of the crime genre, but the best of American writing full stop. Within its pages, literary legends rub shoulders with the hottest new talent. Contributors in the past have included James Lee Burke, Jeffrey Deaver, Michael Connelly, Alice Munro and Joyce Carol Oates. This year’s guest editor is Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher and a simultaneous bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.

Brand-new stories by: Thomas Adcock, Kevin Baker, Thomas Bentil, Lawrence Block, Jerome Charyn, Suzanne Chazin, Terrence Cheng, Ed Dee, Joanne Dobson, Robert Hughes, Marlon James, Sandra Kitt, Rita Laken, Miles Marshall Lewis, Pat Picciarelli, Abraham Rodriguez Jr., S.J. Rozan, Steven Torres, and Joe Wallace. As any Bronxite will tell you, being from Da Bronx is a permanent condition, no matter where you end up... For a time in the '70s and '80s, the name was synonymous (to non-Bronxites) with a vast urban maelstrom of lawlessness and decay. But the place was always more complicated than that. There's the Bronx Zoo, the Botanical Garden, universities, Yankee Stadium, grand estates,...

Nuclear brinksmanship. Psychological warfare. Spies, double agents, femme fatales, and dead drops. The Cold War—a terrifying time when nuclear war between the world’s two superpowers was an ever-present threat, an all-too-real possibility that could be set off at the touch of a button—provides a chilling backdrop to this collection of all-new short stories from today’s most celebrated mystery writers. Bestselling authors Jeffery Deaver and Raymond Benson—the only American writers to be commissioned to pen official James Bond novels—have joined forces to bring us twenty masterful tales of paranoia, espionage, and psychological drama. In Joseph Finder’s “Police Report,” the seemingly...

Nuclear brinksmanship. Psychological warfare. Spies, double agents, femme fatales, and dead drops. The Cold War ― a terrifying time when nuclear war between the world's two superpowers was an ever-present threat, an all-too-real possibility that could be set off at the touch of a button ― provides a chilling backdrop to this collection of all-new short stories from today's most celebrated mystery writers. Bestselling authors Jeffery Deaver and Raymond Benson ― the only American writers to be commissioned to pen official James Bond novels ― have joined forces to bring us twenty masterful tales of paranoia, espionage, and psychological drama. In Joseph Finder's "Police Report," the...