Dashiell Hammett, the bestselling creator of Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man, was one of America’s most influential and entertaining authors. In spite of his popularity, many Hammett stories — including some of his best — have been out of the reach of anyone but a handful of scholars and collectors — until now.

This collection rescues non-series and long-lost Hammett stories, all either never published in an anthology or unavailable for decades. Stories range from the first fiction Hammett ever wrote to his last. All stories have been restored to their initial texts, replacing often-wholesale cuts with the original versions for the first time.

Readers of Hammett’s famous mysteries will he surprised by the variety of stories here. They include Hammett’s first detective fiction, humorous satires, adventure yarns, a sensitive autobiographical piece, a Thin Man story told with photos, and a crime tale that Ellery Queen promises “is one of the most startling stories you have ever read.”

Archie Goodwin attempts to help two scared illegal immigrants only to learn that they are prime suspects in the murder of a policeman. The man nearly breaks Archie’s back in trying to get away from Nero Wolfe’s before homicide cops come for him. A star-struck girl gets bopped with a bottle and tries to frame Sgt. Purley Stebbins, but Wolfe solves the case as he gets his hair cut.

Millionaires were that hunter’s only game, and when he’d bagged them he sewed their lips up tight for he knew that even dead men sometimes talk. But Paul Pry, professional opportunist, was a tailor of sorts himself, with a needle as sharp and deadly as the cross-stitch killer’s—an avenging sword cane to darn living flesh!

Take two luscious redheads... add green-eyed blonde, mysterious burglary, and a bewildered fiancée... stir in a good measure of that unscrupulous attorney Alphonse Baker Carr... season with murder, and no wonder...“You’ve got to break an egg to make an omelet,” said Doug Selby, D.A. of Madison County, and he only hoped it would be one that old A. B. C. couldn’t digest.Plenty was on the fire, and Selby knew the only way to solve the case and save his reputation was to act faster than he ever had before... That was when he went to call on A. B. C.Sylvia Martin and Sheriff Rex Brandon do yeoman service as Doug smashes through to bring his most perplexing case to a triumphant conclusion.

Crippen & Landru is proud to publish a collection of never previously reprinted stories from pulps, slicks and digests by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) the great creator of Perry Mason. Here we meet such Gardner characters as Snowy Shane, an unorthodox P.I.; Slicker Williams, an ex-convict who uses the tricks of crookery to rescue a damsel in distress; Major Copely Brane, a freelance diplomat; George Brokay, wealthy man-about-town, who becomes a gentleman burglar — with unanticipated results; and others who show Gardner’s mastery of unusual situations, lighting-paced prose, and ingenious gimmicks and plot twists.

Alan Grant, Scotland Yard Inspector (who appears in five other novels by the same author) is confined to bed in hospital with a broken leg. Bored and restless, he becomes intrigued by a portrait of King Richard III brought to him by a friend. He prides himself on being able to read a person’s character from his face, and King Richard seems to him a gentle and kind and wise man. Why is everyone so sure that he was a cruel murderer?

Dr. Paul Prye’s wedding was dramatically interrupted when Jane Stevens, a bridesmaid, became ill in the church vestibule. Some thought it was a convulsion. Prye knew it was poison. Jane’s brother Duncan, a smooth bully, didn’t care what it was. Duncan fancied himself as a great gentleman and a superior wit. Hence, it satisfied many people when he was found under most humiliating circumstances.With one poisoning, one bashed several hysterical women, and a most amusing inebriated divorcée, THE DEVIL LOVES ME is completely suave and subtle. The appeal of Margaret Millar’s books is compounded of plot, humor, and characterization. This particular one is tops.

An exotic movie actress, the swivel-hipped blonde, Winni Moon, and her scented chimpanzee; a murder which, already precious, became a managing editor’s dream; Pink, who came from Flatbush, Brooklyn; Solly Spaeth who was spawned in New York...

These are only some slight hints of what you will find in THE DEVIL TO PAY and it is fair to say that here again is evidence that for ingenuity, surprise and original setting no mystery writer today can equal Ellery Queen. He never has failed to play fair with his reader. The amazing deductions of his stories are always in accord with the science of the streamlined murder.

If crime is the subject of reader interest no mystery fan can commit a greater crime than to neglect the two-to-three-hour revel which THE DEVIL TO PAY provides.

Police Captain Bartholdi sometimes indulged himself in a harmless fantasy. His thoughts, he would imagine, were irresponsible imps that wriggled out of his head and scampered around with an abandon that was often embarrassing.

A woman had been kidnapped. That woman was dead.

Bartholdi was convinced that a murderer was at that moment having a grim laugh at his expense. He knew who the murderer was. He would have bet his pension and his sacred soul that he knew. But he could not, knowing, prove what he knew. He needed confirmation on one critical point.

From among his antic imps he culled the three that had directed his mind to its present state:

One newspaper too many.

A girl who slept too soundly.

And, most important of all, a ragout with too many onions.

The only one of Sayers' twelve major crime novels not to feature Lord Peter Wimsey, her most famous detective character, written in collaboration with Robert Eustace. This is an epistolary novel, told primarily in the form of letters between some of the characters. This collection of documents — hence the novel's title — is explained as a dossier of evidence collected by the victim's son as part of his campaign to obtain justice for his father.

The blind man was unwittingly enmeshed in the slimy schemes of a ruthless dope ring. How could he clear his name, with no aid except that of the faithful canine companion who was his “seeing eye,” when he was up against a sinister set-up that had defied the whole narcotic squad?

In THE DOOR BETWEEN Ellery Queen again achieves this apparently impossible and produces something entirely new in the mystery field. The weapon he was in the most deadly, most universal and the head known among all the wide variety of weapons ever employed by criminals and murderers. The subject and the theme of THE DOOR BETWEEN give the thousands of Queen readers yet another kind of trill. The skill and brilliance Queen’s writing show in each succeeding Queen novel the steady growth of a master hand.

This is, in the considered opinion of his publishers, the finest detective story ever written by Rex Stout and therefore one of the very best ever written by anyone. As a new peak for the old master, it provides an occasion to celebrate an outstanding career, as well as a new challenge to the wits of his fans.

A very rich woman comes to Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, claiming that she is being harassed by the FBI. She reports that agents are following her and members of her family, her wires are being tapped, and her privacy is being otherwise invaded. She demands that Wolfe help her to find relief and offers him the largest retainer he has ever seen.

Wolfe, with some hesitation, takes the case and quickly encounters a murder about which members of the FBI may know more than is apparent. He also soon finds himself in a direct encounter with FBI agents under highly questionable circumstances.

Never before has Rex Stout written a book more perfectly plotted or one with a denouement so skillfully arrived at.

Ellery Queen has now opened his own detective agency, Ellery Queen, Inc., on Times Square, New York, and his very first case develops into a complex and spell-binding tale of crime, intrigue, and extraordinary deduction. In its telling, the author has returned to the style and method of such earlier great successes as THE DUTCH SHOE MYSTERY, THE SIAMESE TWIN MYSTERY, etc. Here again we meet Inspector Queen, Sergeant Velie and other earlier favorites and again Ellery Queen applies his analytical deductive methods to one of the most puzzling murder plots ever uncovered in the annals of crime.

Six months after paying Ellery a handsome retainer, a retired munitions magnate, worth many millions, dies on his yacht in the Caribbean. Peculiar circumstances! An important man is quickly buried at sea with no medical certificate and no autopsy! Crew quickly dispersed before they can be questioned! Only Ellery’s diamond sharp wits could cut through the web of tangled events and arrive at the dramatic solution.