Jack Collins’s business trip to Las Vegas is anything but fun and games. Why? Because his boss is Merlin the Magician—and Jack’s job is saving the modern world from ancient dark forces.A centuries-old legend, the Old Man of the Mountain, has returned with a vengeance. This time he has science on his side—a vial of biological plague germs as deadly as any black magic—and he plans to sell it to the highest bidder. The winner could be demon, devil, or demigod. Either way, the loser is humanity. But a new gambler is vying for a piece of the action: Jack Collins. And he’s packing a weapon that strikes fear in the hearts of humans and nonhumans alike: advanced mathematics…

When Jack Collins answers an ad asking for a young man with a background in mathematics and fantastic literature, he finds himself working for the legendary Merlin and battling an evil computer hacker who has summoned an ancient demon to terrorize Chicago.

When Jack Collins answers an ad asking for a young man with a background in mathematics and fantastic literature, he finds himself working for the legendary Merlin and battling an evil computer hacker who has summoned an ancient demon to terrorize Chicago.

An anthology of storiesA new anthology of twenty-nine short stories features an array of baffling locked-room mysteries by Michael Collins, Bill Pronzini, Susanna Gregory, H. R. F. Keating, Peter Lovesey, Kate Ellis, and Lawrence Block, among others.

An anthology of stories edited by Mike AshleyMarianne is an important fictional formulation of Sand's thinking on the role of women and the nature of democracy. This edition includes a long biographical preface which quotes extensively from her correspondences.

From the likes of Robert Randisi, Peter Crowther, and Max Rittenberg, these 30 stories of bizarre and impossible crimes will fascinate and intrigue the reader who grapples with their intricate puzzles. A man alone in an all-glass phone booth, visible on CCTV and with no one near him, is killed by an ice pick. A man sitting alone in a room is shot by a bullet fired only once – over 200 years ago. A man enters a cable-car alone, and is visible for the entire journey, only to be found dead when he reaches the bottom. A man receives mail in response to letters apparently written by him – after his death. The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries is a stunning collection of brand new and previously unpublished stories, as well as many stories from rare mystery journals appearing for the first time in book form.