Twenty-one, passionate and headstrong, Ann Veronica Stanley is determined to live her own life. When her father forbids her attending a fashionable ball, she decides she has no choice but to leave her family home and make a fresh start in London. There, she finds a world of intellectuals, socialists and suffragettes — a place where, as a student in biology at Imperial College, she can be truly free. But when she meets the brilliant Capes, a married academic, and quickly falls in love, she soon finds that freedom comes at a price.

A fascinating description of the women's suffrage movement, Ann Veronica offers an optimistic depiction of one woman's sexual awakening and search for independence.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s selection of twenty-six stories showcases Wells’s genius and reintroduces readers to his singular talent for making the unbelievable seem utterly plausible. His originality and inventiveness are fully on display in this essential collection.

Otto Penzler rounds up the most cunning, ruthless, criminals in mystery fiction.

The best mysteries — whether detective, historical, police procedural, cozy, or comedy-have one thing in common: a memorable culprit. For all the heroes in earnest pursuit, there are malefactors on the loose, determined to outfox their efforts and sow trouble in their wake. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations, but they often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect (and, as we shall see, some even moonlight as detectives or do-gooders themselves). The seventy-two handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the miscreants who have schemed and slashed their way through the mystery canon over the past hundred and fifty years, captivating and confounding readers in the process.

MEET DELINQUENT PSYCHES OF ALL STRIPES, INCLUDING

gentleman thieves, calculating crooks, fearsome body snatchers, masters of disguise, morally-challenged lawyers, deceitful doctors, heinous hit men. charismatic con men, amoral adventurers, supernatural suspects, deviant detectives, vile villainesses, and cold-blooded killers

IN UNFORGETTABLE TALES BY

Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Jack London, L. T. Meade, 0. Henry, Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward 0. Hoch, David Morrell, Loren D. Estleman, and countless others.

CONTENTS

The Door in the Wall

The Star

A Dream of Armageddon

The Cone

A Moonlight Fable

The Diamond Maker

The Lord of the Dynamos

The Country of the Blind