The Ehrengraf Nostrum is the eighth of ten stories about the determined and resourceful attorney, Martin H. Ehrengraf.Ehrengraf’s cases, while refashioned by the perverse imagination of his biographer, sometimes draw their inspiration from the real world. Such is clearly the case in the present instance, and readers with good memories will surely recall the rash of pointless deaths that have burdened us to this day with containers of patent medicine that only a child can open.But I digress...

This is the sixth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, diminutive attorney who represents criminal defendants on a contingency basis. In earlier appearances, the little lawyer has quoted William Blake, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Thomas Hood, and Andrew Marvell, so it’s clear that he sees poetry as a sacred calling.However vile the crime, however damning the evidence, Ehrengraf knows with utter certainty that young William Telliford is innocent. And nothing can keep him from establishing that innocence beyond dispute.Then again, circumstances alter cases, don’t they?

When I finished writing The Ehrengraf Defense in 1976, I knew I had found a character I’d like to revisit. But it was Frederic Dannay’s immediate enthusiasm for Ehrengraf that made me write one story after another about the diminutive attorney. Fred, of course, was one of the pair of cousins who wrote the Ellery Queen mysteries, and it was Fred who edited Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and he snapped up the stories as quickly as I wrote them.Ehrengraf’s debut grew out of a plot device; in the course of my writing the story, Martin Ehrengraf came into being. In his second appearance, we see him more fully realized, tailoring his approach to the case to suit circumstances, and altering them to his purposes.“The Ehrengraf Presumption. Any client of Martin H. Ehrengraf is presumed by Ehrengraf to be innocent, which presumption is invariably confirmed in due course, the preconceptions of the client himself notwithstanding.”Words to live by...

The Ehrengraf Reverse is the last of ten stories about the dapper little defense attorney who rarely sees the inside of a courtroom because he never is encumbered with a guilty client. It was requested by Otto Penzler for an anthology of football stories; for all the weekend afternoons I spend in front of the TV, this would seem to be the only story of mine with a gridiron setting.The difficulty, with Ehrengraf, is finding appropriate variations on the theme. I’m pleased with the one that shaped up for this story, and hope you enjoy it.

This, the fifth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, presents the criminous criminal lawyer with a different sort of problem. He’s engaged to defend a man who anticipates being charged with homicide. But no one has been murdered.Yet.In the beleaguered but resourceful Ethan Crowe, Ehrengraf has a client who sees the wisdom of hedging his bets before he places them. In Terence Reginald Mayhew, the little lawyer has an adversary with the terrifying power of madness housed in the body of a housebound cripple.Ehrengraf, a great fan of poetry, has cited William Blake and Winthrop Mackworth Praed in earlier stories; in Riposte he finds the opportunity to quote two of his favorites, Christopher Smart and Thomas Hood.

Arthur Conway had committed murder — a perfect murder. Even the cops assured him that the evidence clearly proved he could not have done it.An abridged version of this novel has appeared in The American Magazine Oct 1950 under the title “Design for Death” andprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [v59 #5, #342, May 1972] under the title “All According to Plan”.

"Seconds passed; minutes. She could hear movement now in the waiting room she had just left…it was the metal magazine rack she was sure, that crashed to the tile floor. Then quiet. She strained to hear in the darkness. Nothing more, and then… The air moved in the room and she knew. He was here."As a young psychology student, Hailey Dean's world explodes when Will, her fiancé, is murdered just weeks before their wedding. Reeling, she fights back the only way she knows how: In court, prosecuting violent crime…putting away the bad guys one rapist, doper, and killer at a time. But dedicating her life to justice takes a toll after years of courtroom battles and the endless tide of victims calling out from crime scene photos and autopsy tables. Just as she grows truly weary, a serial killer unlike any other she's encountered begins to stalk the city of Atlanta, targeting young prostitutes, each horrific murder bearing his own unique mark. This courtroom battle will be her last.Hailey heads for Manhattan to pick up the pieces of the life she had before Will's murder, training as a therapist. In a vibrant new world, she finally leaves her ghosts behind. But then her own clients are brutally murdered one by one by a copycat using the same M.O. as the Atlanta killer she hunted down years before. As the body count rises across Manhattan, Hailey is forced to match wits not only against a killer, but the famed NYPD.Unless she returns to her former life and solves the case, still more innocent people will die at the hands of a killer who plans to get her, before she can get him!

Imagine this. Great Britain in 1985 is close to being a police state. The Crimean War has dragged on for more than 130 years and Wales is self-governing. The only recognizable thing about this England is her citizens’ enduring love of literature. And the Third Most Wanted criminal, Acheron Hades, is stealing characters from England’s cherished literary heritage and holding them for ransom. Bibliophiles will be enchanted, but not surprised, to learn that stealing a character from a book only changes that one book, but Hades has escalated his thievery. He has begun attacking the original manuscripts, thus changing all copies in print and enraging the reading public. That’s why Special Operations Network has a Literary Division, and it is why one of its operatives, Thursday Next, is on the case.Thursday is utterly delightful. She is vulnerable, smart, and, above all, literate. She has been trying to trace Hades ever since he stole Mr. Quaverley from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and killed him. You will only remember Mr. Quaverley if you read Martin Chuzzlewit prior to 1985. But now Hades has set his sights on one of the plums of literature, Jane Eyre, and he must be stopped.How Thursday achieves this and manages to preserve one of the great books of the Western canon makes for delightfully hilarious reading. You do not have to be an English major to be pulled into this story. You’ll be rooting for Thursday, Jane, Mr. Rochester—and a familiar ending.

‘Call your mother.’‘What do I say?’‘Say goodbye.’This is how it begins.Lone women terrorized and their helpless mothers forced to watch – in a sick game where only one player knows the rules. And when those rules change, the new game is Murder.Living with her parents in the dank beach community of Limeburn, ten-year-old Ruby Trick has her own fears. Bullies on the school bus, the forest crowding her house into the sea, and the threat of divorce.Helping her daddy to catch the killer might be the key to keeping him close.As long as the killer doesn’t catch her first…

Something sinister is going on in Baronville. The rust belt town has seen four bizarre murders in the space of two weeks. Cryptic clues left at the scenes — obscure bible verses, odd symbols — have the police stumped.

Amos Decker and his FBI colleague Alex Jamison are in Baronville visiting Alex’s sister and her family. It’s a bleak place: a former mill and mining town with a crumbling economy and rampant opioid addiction. Decker has only been there a few hours when he stumbles on a horrific double murder scene.

Then the next killing hits sickeningly close to home. And with the lives of people he cares about suddenly hanging in the balance, Decker begins to realize that the recent string of deaths may be only one small piece of a much larger scheme — with consequences that will reach far beyond Baronville.

Decker, with his singular talents, may be the only one who can crack this bizarre case. Only this time — when one mistake could cost him everything — Decker finds that his previously infallible memory may not be so trustworthy after all...

Sarah Grayson owns Second Chance, a shop that sells lovingly refurbished items, in thecharming town of North Harbor, Maine. But she couldn't run the store without the help of her right-hand man, Mac--or herт dashing rescue cat, Elvis. Mac's life before North Harbor has always been a little bit mysterious, but it becomes a lot more intriguing when a woman

from his past shows up in town, and then turns up dead. Suspicion falls on Mac, but Sarah--and Elvis--know he can't be the killer, and they hope they can prove his innocence quick as a whisker.

Mr. Wong is a feng shui consultant in Singapore, but his cases tend to involve a lot more than just interior decoration. You see, Wong specializes in a certain type of problem premises: crime scenes. His latest case involves a mysterious young woman and a deadly psychic reading that ultimately leads him to Sydney where the story climaxes at the Opera House, a building known for its appalling feng shui. A delightful combination of crafty plotting, quirky humor, and Asian philosophy, the Feng Shui Detective is an investigator like no other!

It was a long way from the million-dollar Foothill Club to Pelly Street, where grudges were settled in blood and Spanish and a stolen diamond ring landed a girl in jail. Defense lawyer Bill Gunnarson was making the trip – fast. He already knew a kidnapping at the club was tied to the girl's hot rock, and he suspected that a missing Hollywood starlet was the key to a busy crime ring. But while Gunnarson made his way through a storm of deception, money, drugs, and passions, he couldn't guess how some big shots and small-timers would all end up with murder in common…

Dagger Awards (nominee)Milo Milogragovitch is trying to find his feet in Texas, earning a living as a bar owner and a PI on the side. But then a tedious job tracking down a runaway wife takes a violent turn when he finds himself in a bar with ex-con Enos Walker, who's out for revenge on the partners who turned him in.

And then all at once they were in the dark together, for the moon went out suddenly like a blown candle. She had dropped into a bank of clouds that rose from the clouding west. The wind blew a little chill, and as suddenly as the light had gone, David, too, was gone. One moment, so near-touching her in the darkness-and the next, gone-gone noiselessly, leaving her shaking, quivering.

Hard to believe, but there was a time when the word "lawyer" wasn't synonymous with "criminal," and the idea of a law firm controlled by the Mafia was an outlandish proposition. This intelligent, ensnaring story came out of nowhere--Oxford, Mississippi, where Grisham was a small-town lawyer--and quickly catapulted to the top of the bestseller list, with good reason. Mitch McDeere, the appealing hero, is a poor kid whose only assets are a first-class mind, a Harvard law degree, and a beautiful, loving wife. When a Memphis law firm makes him an offer he really can't refuse, he trades his old Nissan for a new BMW, his cramped apartment for a house in the best part of town, and puts in long hours finding tax shelters for Texans who'd rather pay a lawyer than the IRS. Nothing criminal about that. He'd be set for life, if only associates at the firm didn't have a funny habit of dying, and the FBI wasn't trying to get Mitch to turn his colleagues in. The tempo and pacing are brilliant, the thrills keep coming, and the finish has a wonderful ironic flourish. It's not hard to see why Grisham changed the genre permanently with this one, and few of his colleagues in a very crowded field come close to equaling him

On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, is strolling home through a silent moonlit park when she is viciously attacked.When she awakes in the hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. But then slowly, painfully, details reveal themselves – dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her; snatches of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand…In another part of the country, Martha Browne arrives in a Yorkshire seaside town, posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety. Who is she hunting with such deadly determination? And why?The First Cut is a vivid and compelling psychological thriller, from the author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Banks series.

Beginning in the 1950s, Flora wrote a string of 20 great novels — mysteries, suspense, plus three pseudonymously as “Ellery Queen.” He also published more than 160 short stories in the top mystery magazines. In his day, he was among the top of his field. This volume collects 26 of his classic mystery and crime tales for your reading pleasure.

In the painting, the Duke of Flanders and his knight are locked in a game of chess, and a dark lady lurks mysteriously in the background. Julia is determined to solve the five-hundred-year-old murder, but as she begins to look for clues, several of her friends in the art world are brutally murdered in quick succession. Messages left with the bodies suggest a crucial connection between the chess game in the painting, the knight's murder, the sordid underside of the contemporary art world, and the latest deaths. Just when all of the players in the mystery seem to be pawns themselves, events race toward a shocking conclusion. A thriller like no other, The Flanders Panel presents a tantalizing puzzle for any connoisseur of mystery, chess, art, and history.

Before The Godfather and The Last Don, there was Puzo’s classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell’s Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, and with a new preface by the author, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best.