International bestselling author 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 in this crime connoisseur's collection.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. The classic mystery tale will be familiar to aficionados and casual readers it was invented by Edgar Allen Poe, popularised by Arthur Conan Doyle, and perfected by Agatha Christie. WIthin a few pages, a clue can be discovered, divulged, and its significance all else is mere embellishment.Featuring stories Doug Allyn, Colin Barrett, Jerome Charyn, Michael Connelly, Susan Frith, Tom Larsen, Sean Marciniak, Stefon Mears, Keith Lee Morris, Gwen Mullins, Jo Nesbo, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Reed, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Anna Scotti, Ginny Swart, Ellen Tremiti, Joseph S. Walker, Colson Whitehead, and Michael Wiley – plus a bonus vintage story from the annals of mystery fiction, written over a century in the past.
Otto Penzler is an editor of mystery fiction in the United States, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, where he lives.
Otto Penzler founded The Mysteriour Press in 1975 and was the publisher of The Armchair Detective, the Edgar-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction, for seventeen years.
Penzler has won two Edgar Awards, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection in 1977, and The Lineup in 2010. The Mystery Writers of America awarded him the prestigious Ellery Queen Award in 1994, and the Raven--the group's highest non-writing award--in 2003.
Found a few of these stories quite difficult to get into for some reason. I actually only like two of them,one by Michael Connelly and another by Gwen Mullins. Not sure I would read Volume 1. This just was not to my taste.