“Well worth its impressive weight in gold, it would be a crime not to have this seminal masterpiece in your collection.”—New York Journal of BooksIn his introduction to The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, “Noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It’s the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It’s the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad.” Offering the best examples of literary sure things gone bad, this collection ensures that nowhere else can readers find a darker, more thorough distillation of American noir fiction.James Ellroy and Otto Penzler mined writings of the past century to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories. From noir’s twenties-era infancy come gems like James M. Cain’s “Pastorale,” and its postwar heyday boasts giants like Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter. Packing an undeniable punch, diverse contemporary incarnations include Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, and William Gay, with many page-turners appearing from the past decade.“Delightfully devilish . . . A strange trek through the years that includes stories from household names in the hard-boiled genre to lesser-known authors who nonetheless can hold their own with the legends.”—Associated PressJames Ellroy is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. trilogy—American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s a Rover—and the L.A. Quartet novels, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. He is also the author of The Hillicker Curse, a memoir.Otto Penzler is the founder of the Mysterious Bookshop and Mysterious Press, has won two Edgar Allan Poe Awards, and is series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories.

Ex-spy, English professor, and sleuth Cameron Winter finds his past and present colliding as he tracks his first love in the newest entry in the USA Today bestselling series. Cameron Winter can’t stop thinking about the first girl he ever loved, Charlotte. His unresolved feelings for her have prevented him from truly moving forward with anyone new even all of these decades later. In an effort to distract himself―and his therapist―from his romantic struggles, Cameron instead begins to recount a story from his time as a CIA operative when he was sent on a mission to find a missing colleague last seen at the villa of a notorious Turkish sex trafficker. It has been years since he traveled the world for the government, but he is still troubled by this particular case. Now working as an English professor, Winter seeks a quiet life―except when his “strange habit of mind,” his penchant for sleuthing, leads him to investigate crimes whose complexity excites his curiosity.When a mysterious visitor turns Winter’s attention to a book that appears to detail what happened to Charlotte he realizes he might be able to find and save her. The dark tale, filled with White Nationalist rhetoric, disturbing characters, and cold-blooded murder has him worried for her life. But how much of this story is true? Why does someone want him to investigate? And what is it about this current investigation that has him thinking about that missing spy those many years ago? In his most personal case yet, Winter must delve deep into his past to confront a dangerous threat lurking in his present.Like previous entries featuring this “complex and determined” series character (BookReporter), A Woman Underground harnesses multiple Edgar Award-winning author Andrew Klavan’s crime writing expertise to explore some of the biggest issues facing us today. The result is a poignant page turner with an intricate plot, shot through with high stakes action and unflinching humanity.

Instant USA Today BestsellerIn the newest entry in the bestselling Cameron Winter series, the ex-spy-turned-English professor defies accepted narratives and corrupt local authorities to investigate the murder of a wealthy family in the Chicago suburbs.Cameron Winter is known for having a sense about crime. His background as a spy trained his mind―and his body―for action, and his current role as an English professor gives him a sharp understanding of human nature. But beyond that, he was born with a "strange habit of mind"―the ability to recreate detailed crime scenes in his imagination and dissect the motives and encounters that produced them. And after reading a puzzling news story about a wealthy family killed in a small town in the Chicago suburbs, he can't resist the chance to apply this deductive power in the pursuit of justice for the victims.Three members of the family, along with their live-in nanny, were pulled from their burning mansion, already dead from gunshot wounds. The only survivor is a young boy whose memory of the event raises more questions than answers. The police seem happy to settle on a simple explanation and arrest the most obvious suspect―but Winter knows that obvious solutions are seldom the correct ones, and all too often hide a darker truth.While Winter’s investigation is welcomed by many who knew the victims, the lead detective makes it clear he not only wants Winters to stop looking for answers, but to stay out of his town altogether. Winter begins to understand why as he slowly uncovers crimes and unsavory behavior that had been ignored long before the killings, and in the process grows increasingly determined to find the real killer and expose the rot beneath the town’s sanitized façade. And as the inquiry brings all-too-familiar sins to the surface, he’ll have to confront his own inner demons once and for all.Insightful and atmospheric, The House of Love and Death is a penetrating mystery with a plot that cuts straight to the dark heart of some of modern America’s most pressing issues.

What do you do when a mission trip suddenly leaves you caught in the middle of a revolution?Will Peterson is part of a mission team that has traveled to Costa Verde to rebuild the wall of a school. It's been a great trip-until a revolution breaks out just before they board their plane to go home.But then it becomesa desperate race to escape: from a firing squad, from savage animals in the depths of the jungle, from prison cells andrevolutionaries with machine guns.One of the girls is showing Will amazing things about what it means to be truly fearless. And one of the guys has the makings of a real hero. None of them will go home the same. If they only survive.

Over a thousand pages of haunted—and haunting—ghost tales: the most complete collection of uncanny, spooky, creepy tales ever published! Edited and with an introduction by Otto Penzler. Including stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Rudyanrd Kipling, Isaac Asimov, James MacCreigh, and many more! Featuring eerie vintage ghost illustrations.The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon.These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight.Including such classics as “The Monkey’s Paw” and “The Open Window” and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!

Do Right, Fear Nothing.Sam Hopkins is a good kid who has fallen in with the wrong crowd. Hanging around with car thieves and thugs, Sam knows it’s only a matter of time before he makes one bad decision too many and gets into real trouble.But one day, Sam sees these friends harassing an eccentric schoolmate named Jennifer. Finding the courage to face the bullies down, Sam loses a bad set of friends and acquires a very strange new one.Jennifer is not just eccentric. To Sam, she seems downright crazy. She has terrifying hallucinations involving demons, the devil, and death. And here’s the really crazy part: Sam is beginning to suspect that these visions may actually be prophecies—prophecies of something terrible that’s going to happen very soon. Unless he can stop it.With no one to believe him, with no one to help him, Sam is all alone in a race against time. Finding the truth before disaster strikes is going to be both crazy and very, very dangerous.“The adrenaline-charged action will keep you totally immersed.” —RT Book Reviews

USA Today bestsellerEnglish professor and ex-spy Cameron Winter confronts a Big Tech billionaire to solve the suspicious suicide of a former studentThe world of Big Tech is full of eccentric characters, but shamanic billionaire Gerald Byrne may be the strangest of the bunch. The founder of Byrner, a global social media platform, Byrne is known for speaking with vague profundity and for dabbling in esoteric spiritual practices; he wears his hair in a long black ponytail to reveal a large flower tattooed on his neck; he’s universally admired as a visionary, a philanthropist, and a devoted husband and father. And every person who gets in the way of his good work seems to die.When a former student commits suicide, English professor and ex-spy Cameron Winter takes it upon himself to understand why. The young man was expelled from the university in an unfortunate episode that left Winter sympathetic to his plight; after a prolonged silence, he reached out to his teacher with two words just before taking the fatal plunge from the roof of his San Francisco apartment: “Help me.”Winter has what he calls “a strange habit of mind”―the ability to imagine himself into a crime scene, to reconstruct it mentally and play through various possible causes and outcomes to understand exactly what took place. When he applies this exercise to Adam Kemp’s desperate final moments, he discovers a troubling inconsistency. And when he learns that Kemp was in a tumultuous relationship with Gerald Byrne’s niece, he begins to suspect that the suicide was the result of a carefully-engineered plot, put in motion by the powerful businessman.Featuring the tough-but-learned protagonist from 2021’s When Christmas Comes, A Strange Habit of Mind is a thrilling mystery set in the cutthroat world of tech money and tech influence, where unchecked fortunes produce unstoppable power for a lawless few.

The acclaimed collection of fantastic fiction features entries from established authors and talented newcomers--including Scott Bradfield, Charles de Lint, Nancy Kress, Tanith Lee, and Nicholas Royle--along with editors' summations of the year in fantasy and horror.

Zach Adams is one of the best detectives in the country. Nicknamed Cowboy, he’s a soft-spoken homicide detective known for his integrity and courage under fire. He serves on a federal task force that has a single mission: to hunt down Dominic Abend, a European gangster who has taken over the American underworld.After a brutal murder gives them a lead, Zach and his tough guy NYPD partner Martin Goulart are finally on Abend’s trail. But things get complicated — and very, very weird. Goulart’s on-the-job enemies are accusing him of corruption. And Zach is beginning to suspect that Abend’s evil goes beyond crime—perhaps to the edge of the supernatural. As his investigation continues in Germany, Zach finds himself lured into the impossible. In a centuries-old forest under a full moon, a beast assaults him, cursing him forever. In the aftermath, Zach is transformed into something horrible —something deadly.Now, the good cop has innocent blood on his hands. He has killed—and will kill again—in the form of a beast who can’t be controlled or stopped. Before he can free himself, he’s going to have to solve the greatest mystery of all: How can you defeat evil when the evil is inside you?