Best-selling author Scott Turow takes the helm for the tenth edition of this annual, featuring twenty-one of the past year’s most distinguished tales of mystery, crime, and suspense.

Elmore Leonard tells the tale of a young woman who’s fled home with a convicted bank robber. Walter Mosley describes an over-the-hill private detective and his new client, a woman named Karma. C. J. Box explores the fate of two Czech immigrants stranded by the side of the road in Yellowstone Park. Ed McBain begins his story on role-playing with the line “ ‘Why don’t we kill somebody?’ she suggested.” Wendy Hornsby tells of a wild motorcycle chase through the canyons outside Las Vegas. Laura Lippman describes the “Crack Cocaine Diet.” And James Lee Burke writes of a young boy who may have been a close friend of Bugsy Siegel.

As Scott Turow notes in his introduction, these stories are “about crime — its commission, its aftermath, its anxieties, its effect on character.” The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 is a powerful collection for all readers who enjoy fiction that deals with the extremes of human passion and its dark consequences.

#1 New York Times best-selling author of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels, Louise Penny brings her “nerve and skill—as well as heart” (Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post) to selecting the best short mystery and crime fiction of the year.

A collection of the year’s best mystery short fiction selected by New York Times best-selling and Edgar Award — winning author C. J. Box.