Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.In his introduction to this year's collection, James Ellroy explores the differences between the novel and the short story. Included here are experts at both forms. Featuring renowned novelists like Stuart Kaminsky, Michael Connelly, Joe Gores, and Robert B. Parker, as well as veterans of this series like Brendan DuBois, Michael Downs, Joyce Carol Oates, and Clark Howard, this edition will delight readers with its wide variety and peerless quality.

In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Detective Harry Bosch and his rookie partner investigate a cold case that gets very hot . . . very fast.In the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit, not many murder victims die a decade after the crime. So when a man succumbs to complications from being shot by a stray bullet ten years earlier, Bosch catches a case in which the body is still fresh, but any other clues are virtually nonexistent. Even a veteran cop would find this one tough going, but Bosch's new partner, Detective Lucia Soto, has no homicide experience. A young star in the department, Soto has been assigned to Bosch so that he can pass on to her his hard-won expertise.Now Bosch and Soto are tasked with solving a murder that turns out to be highly charged and politically sensitive. Beginning with the bullet that has been lodged for years in the victim's spine, they must pull new leads from years-old evidence, and these soon reveal that the shooting was anything but random.As their investigation picks up speed, it leads to another unsolved case with even greater stakes: the deaths of several children in a fire that occurred twenty years ago. But when their work starts to threaten careers and lives, Bosch and Soto must decide whether it is worth risking everything to find the truth, or if it's safer to let some secrets stay buried.In a swiftly-moving novel as relentless and compelling as its hero, Michael Connelly shows once again why Harry Bosch is "one of the most popular and enduring figures in American crime fiction" (Chicago Tribune).

This hefty noir anthology, from legendary small-press publisher McMillan, offers 23 original stories by many of the best writers in the field today James Crumley, Bill Pronzini, Michael Connelly, Gary Phillips, James Sallis, George P. Pelecanos, A.A. Attanasio plus an unpublished tale by the late Charles Willeford and an unproduced screenplay by the late Howard Browne, "The Violent World of Jake Lingle," which is mainly of academic interest.Mostly set in the '30s, the stories largely involve lowlifes adrift in their shadowy worlds. The mood is dark, but not all of the characters are losers. Some win, turning the tables on their adversaries. Willeford's "Heathscapes," about a retired businessman with an odd idea of art and commerce, provides a real chill, as does Craig Miles Miller's "Dog." James Sallis's "Drive" is a small work of art about a man who "just drives," but God help anyone who gets in his way. In Scott Phillips's "Sockdolager," an older woman teaches an adolescent entrepreneur a thing or two. Equally saucy is Rick DeMarinis's "Horse Dealer's Lover." Michael Connelly gives a fresh spin to the crooked card game theme in his excellent and atypical "Cahoots."At least another half-dozen stories are as good as these. The eye-catching dust jacket, featuring an old-fashioned medicine bottle with the contributors' names on the label, perfectly complements this quality package.

When an LAPD narcotics officer is found with a fatal bullet wound and a suicide note, Detective Harry Bosch follows a bloody trail of drug murders across the Mexico border.Working the case, LAPD detective Harry Bosch is reminded of the primal police rule he learned long ago: Don't look for the facts, but the glue that holds them together. Soon Harry's making some very dangerous connections, starting with a dead cop and leading to a bloody string of murders that wind from Hollywood Boulevard to the back alleys south of the border. Now this battle-scarred veteran will find himself in the center of a complex and deadly game-one in which he may be the next and likeliest victim.

What actions must a boy take to become a man? One might use a razor to clear his first growth of beard, while another could employ it as a weapon -- both actions might be a fitting rite of passage.In these dazzling works of fiction, seventeen masters of crime and suspense explore what it means to be a son, what it means to be a father, what it means to be a man. Spanning continents and decades, the stories are set in interconnected worlds both instantly recognizable and astonishingly believable, from long stretches on a dry Texas highway to a bleak London alley, from the claustrophobic confines of an after-hours backroom poker game to a rundown jazz joint in Manhattan.Amid card sharks, revolvers, and shallow graves, the characters who inhabit these stories strive to discover what is right, what will give them dignity, what will earn them respect. Whether at the age of ten or thirty-five, all will come face-to-face with a situation that will brutally separate the men from the boys.

In his fierce search for a new case, Detective Harry Bosch discovers a killer hiding behind suspicious DNA evidence -- and a political conspiracy that could destroy the Los Angeles Police Department.DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab's DNA cases currently in court.Then Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving's son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch's longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation.Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.

A little league bench warmer who saw more time in the dugout than in the game suddenly dies of a rattlesnake bite. His team was getting ready for the game that would decide who would go to Williamsport for the Little League World Series. His coaches and managers were fiercely competitive. What happened? A midget is hired by Bill Veeck as a pinch-hitter for his team. His presence in the Major Leque Baseball becomes a source of confusion eventually leading to his banishment from the game. Then he ends up dead. Who did it? And why? The perfect baseball dad ends up in a scrap with an abusive parent. Unfortunately he is in the government witness protection program, and about to testify against a huge mobster.He is warned to keep his nose clean or he will be sent to live the life of a pig farmer in Nebraska. Does he?A pitcher is getting rich extorting money from players. His pitch is lethal.

Prepare to meet the most seductively female and the most shockingly fatal of femmes fatales, brought to you by seventeen of today's finest authors of mystery and suspense fiction. Award-winning editor Otto Penzler presents a collection of short and sizzling masterpieces of kisses and kiss-offs, gams and gats, published for the first time anywhere. In "Third Party," Jay McInerney takes you on a wild ride through the Paris night with a party girl built for speed and sin..."Rendezvous," Nelson DeMille's first short story in twenty-five years, plunges you into a Vietnam jungle where the bloodiest scourge of this man's army is no man at all...back in the U.S.A. of "Louly and Pretty Boy," Elmore Leonard introduces a Depression-era teenage gun moll who loves Pretty Boy Floyd more than she likes knocking off filling stations...and Michael Connelly's colorful and ironic "Cielo Azul" shows how a nameless woman left dead on a Los Angeles hillside can be the most lethal prey of all. These and a bevy of other very bad girls cast their criminal spells through the powerful voices of Lorenzo Carcaterra, Joyce Carol Oates, John Connolly, Thomas H. Cook, Jeffery Deaver, J. A. Jance, Andrew Klavan, Laura Lippman, Ed McBain, Walter Mosley, Anne Perry, Ian Rankin, and S. J. Rozan in stories as irresistible as the antiheroines that blaze through their pages.

After what seems like a routine murder investigation, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch finds himself in Hong Kong facing the highest-stakes case of his life: bringing his kidnapped daughter home. Harry Bosch is assigned a homicide call in South L.A. that takes him to Fortune Liquors, where the Chinese owner has been shot to death behind the counter in an apparent robbery.Joined by members of the department's Asian Crime Unit, Bosch relentlessly investigates the killing and soon identifies a suspect, a Los Angeles member of a Hong Kong triad. But before Harry can close in, he gets the word that his young daughter Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong with her mother, is missing.Bosch drops everything to journey across the Pacific to find his daughter. Could her disappearance and the case be connected? With the stakes of the investigation so high and so personal, Bosch is up against the clock in a new city, where nothing is at it seems.

Suspended from his job with the LAPD, Harry Bosch must face the darkest parts of his past to track down his mother's killer . . . even if it costs him his life. Harry attacked his commanding officer and is suspended indefinitely, pending a psychiatric evaluation. At first he resists the LAPD shrink, but finally recognizes that something is troubling him and has for a long time. In 1961, when Harry was twelve, his mother, a prostitute, was brutally murdered, and no one has ever been accused of the crime.With the spare time a suspension brings, Harry opens up the thirty-year-old file on the case and is irresistibly drawn into a past he has always avoided. It's clear that the case was fumbled and the smell of a cover-up is unmistakable. Someone powerful was able to divert justice and Harry vows to uncover the truth. As he relentlessly follows the broken pieces of the case, the stirred interest causes new murders and pushes Harry to the edge of his job... and his life.

Centering around the tempermental world of jazz, from New York City to New Orleans, a smooth, finger-snapping collection of mystery stories features contributions by Michael Connelly, Peter Robinson, Ed Gorman, Julie Smith, Robert Ferrigno, Laura Lippman, John Lutz, and Max Allan Collins, among others. Original.

If ever a subject begged to be associated with crime it is gambling, writes Otto Penzler in his introduction to this collection of short stories set at the poker table and beyond. In Walter Mosley’s Mister In-Between, a bagman is sent to collect from a rigged poker game, but soon begins to wonder who the real mark is. In One Dollar Jackpot, Michael Connelly’s detective Harry Bosch finds himself looking for tells when facing off against a professional poker player in the interrogation room. And a young woman learns how to bluff the hard way in Hardly Knew Her, by Laura Lippman. In these and others stories, aces of the mystery-writing world—including Joyce Carol Oates, Alexander McCall Smith, Jeffery Deaver, John Lescroart, and others—combine to form a winning hand.

These New York Times-bestselling writers are joined by a prodigious group of veterans and newcomers who promise to intrigue and delight. So sit back and relax in the company of some of the world's finest writers, gathered here to give you many nights of pleasure and thrills. In the past ten years, it's become obvious that crime and mystery fiction has become the most popular form of entertainment for literary and television audiences alike. And as more readers are discovering, mystery fiction isn't limited to the longer forms. Some of the most enjoyable, startling, and memorable crime and mystery fiction can be found in the shorter lengths.

“A must-read for anyone who cares about crime stories.”—BooklistThe award-winning author and Emmy-nominated television writer George Pelecanos serves as editor of the twelfth installment of this genre-expanding anthology, featuring twenty of the past year’s most enthralling, suspenseful, and slyly illuminating mystery stories.A cut-and-dried case for a wily crime-scene reconstructionist is turned on its head in Michael Connelly’s “Mulholland Dive.” A terrible secret shared between two childhood friends resurfaces decades later as one of them lies on her deathbed in Alice Munro’s masterful “Child’s Play.” James Lee Burke tells the haunting tale of a Hurricane Katrina evacuee who unexpectedly finds comfort from an unimaginable loss in “Mist.” And in Holly Goddard Jones’s “Proof of God,” a young man’s car is repeatedly vandalized as proof that someone knows about the truths he’d never willingly reveal.As Pelecanos notes in his introduction, the twenty “original and unique voices” in this collection pay homage to the genre’s forebears by taking crime fiction into a thrilling new direction. “But make no mistake,” he says, “we are all standing on the shoulders of writers who came before us and left an indelible mark on literature through craftsmanship, care, and the desire to leave something of worth behind.”

A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger. But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from?What was the real-life location that inspired Michael Connelly to make Harry Bosch a Vietnam vet tunnel rat? Why is Jack Reacher a drifter? How did a brief encounter in Botswana inspire Alexander McCall Smith to create Precious Ramotswe? In THE LINEUP, some of the top mystery writers in the world tell about the genesis of their most beloved characters--or, in some cases, let their creations do the talking.

In the follow-up to the nationally bestselling A Study in Sherlock, a stunning new volume of original stories from award-winning Sherlockians Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger.The Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were recently voted as the top mystery series of all time, and they have enthralled generations of readers—and writers!Now, Laurie R. King, author of the New York Times-bestselling Mary Russell series (in which Holmes plays a co-starring role), and Leslie S. Klinger, editor of the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, have assembled a stellar group of contemporary authors from a variety of genres and asked them to create new stories inspired by that canon. Readers will find Holmes in times and places previously unimagined, as well as characters who have themselves been affected by the tales of Sherlock Holmes.The resulting volume is an absolute delight for Holmes fans both new and old, with contributions from Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Michael Dirda, Harlan Ellison, Denise Hamilton, Nancy Holder, John Lescroart, Sara Paretsky, Michael Sims, and more. The game is afoot—again!

A truly unprecedented literary achievement by author and editor Lawrence Block, a newly-commissioned anthology of seventeen superbly-crafted stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper, including Jeffery Deaver, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Lee Child, and Robert Olen Butler, among many others."Edward Hopper is surely the greatest American narrative painter. His work bears special resonance for writers and readers, and yet his paintings never tell a story so much as they invite viewers to find for themselves the untold stories within."So says Lawrence Block, who has invited seventeen outstanding writers to join him in an unprecedented anthology of brand-new stories: In Sunlight or In Shadow. The results are remarkable and range across all genres, wedding literary excellence to storytelling savvy.Contributors include Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Craig Ferguson, Nicholas Christopher, Jill D. Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Justin Scott, Kris Nelscott, Warren Moore, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, and Lawrence Block himself. Even Gail Levin, Hopper’s biographer and compiler of his catalogue raisonée, appears with her own first work of fiction, providing a true account of art theft on a grand scale and told in the voice of the country preacher who perpetrated the crime.

Thrilling crime stories about cars, driving, and the road from the world's bestselling and critically acclaimed writers.Like fiction, cars take us into a different world: from the tony enclaves of upper crust society to the lowliest barrio; from muscle car-driving con men to hardscrabble kids on the road during the Great Depression; from a psychotic traveling salesman to a Mexican drug lord who drives a tricked-out VW Bus. We all share the roads, and our cars link us together.Including entirely new stories from Michael Connelly, C.J. Box, George Pelecanos, Diana Gabaldon, James Sallis, Ace Atkins, Luis Alberto Urrea, Sara Gran, Ben H. Winters, and Joe Lansdale, The Highway Kind is a street-level look at modern America, as seen through one of its national obsessions.

ANTHONY AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST ANTHOLOGYIncluding NYT bestselling author Michael Connelly’s story “Avalon,” soon to be adapted for television by David E. Kelley."The very best of what crime fiction should deliver." -New York Journal of BooksThe latest Mystery Writers of America story collection, featuring surprising, page-turning twists on the genrefrom some of the top bestsellers and award winners in crime fictionIt’s been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there’s something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water.No matter how or where they appear, strangers are walking mysteries, complete unknowns in once-familiar territories who disrupt our lives with unease and wonder. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers such as Michael Connelly, Dean Koontz and Joe Hill.

Sara Paretsky selects the twenty best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Michael Connelly, Jo Nesbo, Joyce Carol Oates, Colson Whitehead, and more!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.Includes stories by: Doug Allyn Colin Barrett Jerome Charyn Michael Connelly Susan Frith Tom Larsen Sean Marciniak Stefon Mears Kieth Lee Morris Gwen Mullins Jo Nesbo Joyce Carol Oates Annie Reed Kristen Kathryn Rusch Anna Scotti Ginny Swart Ellen Tremiti Joseph S. Walker Colson Whitehead Michael WileyPlus a bonus vintage story from the annals of mystery fiction, written over a century in the past.