Books published by publisher MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

A daring debutante solves the crimes of upper-crust Manhattan in this groundbreaking story collection from the queen of American mystery Violet Strange has a secret. A vivacious socialite, she is one of the most sought-after women in New York—as a private investigator. Between well-heeled excursions to the opera and fabulous dinner parties, Violet uses her lively charms to investigate the dark side of Gilded Age society. From the daughter of an important businessman accused of theft on a grand scale, to the suspected murder-suicide of the husband and child of a society woman, to the lost will of a financier whose death greatly affected the money market, Violet expertly sleuths out hidden clues, all the while protecting her secret identity. But the greatest puzzle of all may be what compels Miss Strange to undertake this outlandish work in the first place, and what it may afford—or cost—her in the end. Originally published in 1915, The Golden Slipper is the debut entry in the Violet Strange series, often credited as first in the famed “girl detectives” mystery genre. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

A wealthy man’s murder draws Inspector Heimrich into a high-class conspiracy in this mystery from the coauthor of the “excellent” Mr. and Mrs. North series (The New Yorker). Inspector M. L. Heimrich of the New York State Police may not have the flash of hard-boiled city detectives, but there’s no lead the intrepid investigator won’t follow until his every hunch is satisfied . . . A simple man, Inspector Heimrich is not particularly fond of large parties. Still, when he and his wife, Susan, receive an invitation to a black-tie event thrown by a wealthy local resident, Heimrich finds himself agreeing to attend the fete at his wife’s behest. No sooner does elderly Arthur Jameson announce his engagement to Dorothy Selby—his much younger assistant—than someone decides to make sure the wedding will never occur. With an arrow to the throat, Jameson’s happily ever after has shifted into the great hereafter. There are many who might want to take aim at a man like Arthur Jameson, but few who could pull off such a pointed attack. Now, Heimrich must sift through the clues to catch the vicious killer and solve yet another upper-crust caper. Not I, Said the Sparrow is the 21st book in the Captain Heimrich Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. “Inspector Heimrich (N.Y. State Police) is as reliable and reassuring a presence as ever.” —Kirkus Reviews

On the home front, two wartime lovers reunite under a cloud of paranoia in this thriller from Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Ross Macdonald In 1937 Munich, an American must be careful when he smokes his pipe. Robert Branch, a careless academic, makes the mistake of lighting up when the Führer is about to begin a procession, and nearly gets pummeled for his mistake. Only the timely intervention of Ruth Esch, a flame-haired actress, saves him. So begins a month-long romance between East and West—a torrid affair that ends when the lovers make the mistake of defending a Jew, earning Branch a beating and Esch a trip to a concentration camp. Six years later, Esch escapes to Vichy and makes her way to Detroit. To her surprise, Branch is waiting for her. He is a professor, working for the war effort, and his paranoia about a spy inside the Motor City war board sours their reunion. Once again, a dangerous net is encircling these lovers—a reminder that, in this war, love always comes second to death.

A man is endangered by his family’s long-ago Nazi ties in this “riveting” thriller by a New York Times–bestselling author (Rolling Stone). His marriage destroyed by drinking, John Cooper returns to Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to recapture the joy he felt as an undergraduate in Harvard University’s sacred halls. He is just beginning to piece his life together when he gets a telegram calling him home to Minnesota. The message comes from Buenos Aires, and with Cooper’s family history, that can mean only one thing: The Nazis are staging a comeback. To John and his brother, their grandfather was a kind, distinguished old man. But to the American people, he was the worst kind of traitor. An industrialist who spent the 1930s in business with Fascists, he became infamous as “America’s Number One Nazi.” When Hitler’s old lieutenants decide to get together a Fourth Reich, the Coopers are the first family they call. John hasn’t even made it to Minnesota when the first attempt on his life comes—a message that if he isn’t ready to honor his family legacy, he will die for it.

An ex-spy and his sidekick hunt for a rogue assassin of Nazi war criminals—“Thomas is without peer in American suspense” (Los Angeles Times). Nicolae Polscaru, a three-and-a-half-foot-tall dwarf, is tossed into a Hollywood swimming pool by four drunken screenwriters, who take bets on how long he can tread water. Minor Jackson, his OSS training still fresh a year after World War II’s end, beats the bullies senseless and pulls Nicolae from the water. A friendship is born. Jackson is broke, his spying days over, and Nicolae offers him a job. A former spy himself, the globetrotting Romanian has a commission to find Kurt Oppenheimer, an expert assassin of high-ranking Nazis. Kurt won’t stop killing, no matter what the bloodshed will do to the fragile world peace, and the Soviets, the British, and the remains of the Nazi High Command all want his head. Jackson will beat them all to finding Kurt—unless his new friend betrays him first.

A strange container is found on the London docks, and its contents point to murder The cask from Paris is bigger than the rest, its sides reinforced to hold the extraordinary weight within. As the longshoremen are bringing it onto the London docks, the cask slips, cracks, and spills some of its treasure: a wealth of gold sovereigns. As the workmen cram the spilled gold into their pockets, an official digs through the opened box, which is supposed to contain a statue. Beneath the gold he finds a woman’s hand—as cold as marble, but made of flesh. He reports the body to his superiors, but when he returns, the cask has vanished. The case is given to Inspector Burnley, a methodical detective of Scotland Yard, who will confront a baffling array of clues and red herrings, alibis and outright lies as he attempts to identify the woman in the cask—and catch the man who killed her. This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

A Manhattan lawyer turns to master detective Fleming Stone to prove his beautiful neighbor innocent of murder in this classic locked-room mystery A respectable young attorney in New York City, Otis Landon has barely settled into his new living quarters when an incident occurs in a neighboring apartment that he cannot, in good conscience, ignore. Robert Pembroke, a vicious, miserly man, has been murdered behind locked doors. The only people who had access to the victim were his servant and his niece. The latter, Miss Janet Pembroke, seems the suspect most likely to have eliminated her uncle with a hatpin, but her obvious distress and gentle demeanor convince Landon she is innocent. Besides, he may be falling in love with her. Obsessed with proving Miss Pembroke’s innocence, Landon follows a perplexing chain of evidence that includes a railroad schedule, a key to a safe deposit box, ticket stubs to a music hall performance, and a monogrammed handkerchief. But with time running out and no solution in sight, he must turn to Fleming Stone, the only detective smart enough to make sense of it all. This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

An heiress has been murdered, and only Fleming Stone can see the vital evidence Madeleine Van Norman is the most eligible young woman in the state, a beautiful young lady who is soon to come into her fortune. From her countless suitors, she makes a peculiar choice, agreeing to marry a stuffy man who loves someone else. On the eve of the wedding, Madeleine shuts herself away in a locked room to think about what she is about to do—and in the morning, she is found gruesomely murdered. Every member of the household is a suspect, but no one understands how the killer could have slipped through the locked doors of Madeleine’s bedroom. As the town whirls into a tailspin of suspicion and fear, it falls to the brilliant detective Fleming Stone to pick out the person who stabbed Madeleine to death—a baffling mystery that hinges on the discovery of a single, all-important clue. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

A 1940s Hollywood gumshoe heads to San Francisco to foil a very real phantom of the opera in this “believable and entertaining” mystery (Publishers Weekly). 1942 is a dangerous year to stage Madama Butterfly. Although Puccini’s masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension a year after Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house door, threatening violence against cast and crew. But someone is doing more than making idle threats—a self-styled phantom of the opera. When a workman on the opera house renovation is killed, the maestro, Leopold Stokowski, the conductor who starred in Disney’s Fantasia, calls Hollywood PI Toby Peters to catch a madman. With two days to go before opening night, the attacks are building to a crescendo. As Peters hunts for the phantom, he falls for one of the company starlets. But they must tread lightly, or face a finale far more tragic than anything dreamed of by Puccini. “Hardly a pause separates the frightful, madly comic and nostalgic incidents made believable and entertaining in Kaminsky’s artful handling” (Publishers Weekly).

A master of mystery brings nightmares to life in this classic collection of horror stories The creator of Sherlock Holmes invites readers into the darkest corners of his imagination with these spooky and suspenseful tales meant to be read “round the fire” on a winter’s night. Grotesque characters, bizarre phenomena, diabolical deeds, and terrifying twists of fate abound in mysteries such as “The Club-Footed Grocer,” “The Brazilian Cat,” “The Sealed Room,” and “The Brown Hand.” From the supernatural to the sinister, the hair-raising to the spine-tingling, this creepy collection is a must-read for fans of the world’s greatest detective and his inimitable creator. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Two nurses investigate a millionaire’ s suspicious gunshot wound in this “absorbing” mystery by a Special Edgar Award–winning author (The New York Times). It takes a compound fracture to bring Craig Brent and Drue Cable together. A millionaire injured in an auto accident, Craig falls quickly for his nurse, wedding Drue as soon as his arm is mended. Craig’s father, disgusted to see his son marrying below his station, pressures him into a divorce, and the whirlwind marriage dies in Reno. A year later, the young lovers are given a second chance, when a bullet shatters Craig’s shoulder. The family insists Craig shot himself while cleaning his gun, but Drue has never known a man to clean his gun at eleven o’clock at night. She calls on Sarah Keate, whose nursing skill is matched only by her deductive reasoning, to unravel the mystery. When Sarah arrives at the Brent house, Craig is in a drugged sleep. If he is ever to awake, the nurses must unmask the killer in his family.

A groundbreaking detective story by the celebrated author of The Moonstone When Valeria Brinton marries Eustace Woodville, both families object strongly. Before long, Valeria realizes that they may have been right to voice their concerns. Eustace, it seems, is living under an assumed name. This alone would be enough to rouse his new bride’s suspicions, but worse still, she discovers that he stood trial for the murder of his 1st wife! Although Eustace was not found guilty, the court was unable to find sufficient evidence to exonerate him. Determined to clear her husband’s name and prove—to herself and everyone else—that he is innocent, Valeria takes the sleuthing into her own hands. Widely considered to be the 1st story featuring a female detective, The Law and the Lady is an intricate and classic tale. This ebook features a new introduction from Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.