It's 1943, the war is raging, and sleuthing scribe Ellery Queen wants to do his bit. After a tortuous cross-country drive, he takes a job writing scripts for a Hollywood propaganda house - twelve hours a day of hack work that quickly turns his mind to jelly. After a few weeks, he is so worn down that he can type nothing but gibberish, and he decides to drive home. The trouble starts as soon as he reaches the desert.

When mere accusation takes the place of evidence, freedom is in peril. What happens after the murder is the story of what Johnny Shinn—late of Army Intelligence and veteran of two wars—in spite of himself, does about it. The tense lynch trial that is the focus of the action is really the trial of Johnny Shinn as an American.

How could a man have been murdered when he was found alone in his study, a gun in his hand, and the door locked from the inside? It had to be suicide, the police figured. Although there was no suicide note, there was a letter proving conclusively that Roland Nelson, over the last several months, was being blackmailed. But to his daughter, Ann, whom he had seen only spasmodically since he had left her mother when Ann was a baby, there were unanswered questions.

In New York City in the early 1930s, a man is poisoned on a crowded streetcar during rush hour. Everyone sees Longstreet die - but no one sees the killer. Inspector Thumm's few clues all lead up a blind alley. He finally seeks the aid of Drury Lane - retired Shakespearean actor, master of disguise, and amateur sleuth. Seated amid the splendor of the vast medieval halls of his castle on the Hudson, Drury Lane hears the story from the inspector.

You are invited to a murder. That was how the invitations should have read when aged millionaire Hendrik Brass sent out his messages to six oddly assorted men and women who knew neither him nor each other. All arrived at the isolated Brass mansion, lured by the tantalizing promise of fabulous wealth. But from the moment the shining brass doors of the grotesquely constructed house swung shut behind them, they began to realize they had been enticed into playing parts in a monstrous joke - the joke of a twisted, brilliant mind…

Frightfully rich and awesomely respectable, the McKells had never been touched by scandal. At least, not until the handsome Dane McKell discovered his father's secret affair. Determined to protect his mother, he forced a meeting with the other woman.

But Dane didn't count on falling in love with her himself. Nor did he count on the front page murder that engulfed them all. Sheila, exotic young international leader of haute couture, is found murdered in her Park Avenue penthouse.

When Harry and Kat head south to the French Riviera, they look forward to dazzling parties, a shimmering sea, and wonderful food. But once they step off the legendary Paris-Nice train, Le Train Bleu, things start to be anything but restful. Asked to assist in a dangerous case of blackmail - they soon find that the streets and alleyways of the Cote d'Azur hide not only cafes and bistros ... but also secrets and danger of a most deadly sort.

Lukas Yoder, a novelist who has enjoyed a long, successful career, has finished what he believes to be his final work. Then a tragedy strikes in his community, and he becomes obsessed with writing about it. Meanwhile, Yoder's editor fights to preserve her integrity - and her author - as her firm becomes the target of a corporate takeover; a local critic who teaches literature struggles with his ambitions and with his feelings about Yoder's success; and a devoted reader holds the key to solving the mystery that haunts Yoder's hometown.

A grand treasure for fans of the grande dame of mystery, The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories brings together nine rare and brilliant Christie tales of murder and detection that span nearly half a century of her storytelling genius. In "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest," Hercule Poirot unravels the psychological conundrums that motivate a killer.... In "The Actress," a great star's shady past becomes the plaything of a blackmailer.... In "The Harlequin Tea Set," Mr. Harley Quin helps a man save his loved ones from the greedy hand of murder.

When someone makes a present of a fer-de-lance - the dreaded snake - to Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin knows he's close to solving two apparently unrelated murders. As for Wolfe, he's playing snake charmer in a case more deadly than a cobra and whistling a seductive tune he hopes will catch a killer with poison in his heart.

Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world's best-loved books, delighting audiences across the world. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, exploring in newly rich detail the relation of Fitzgerald's classic to the chaotic world he in which he lived. Fitzgerald set his novel in 1922, and Careless People carefully reconstructs the crucial months during which Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald returned to New York in the autumn of 1922.

Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.

From its birth in 1925 to the early days of the Cold War, The New Yorker slowly but surely took hold as the country's most prestigious, entertaining, and informative general-interest periodical. In Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerra paints a portrait of the magazine's cadre of charming, wisecracking, driven, troubled, and brilliant writers and editors. He introduces us to Wolcott Gibbs, theater critic, all-around wit, and author of an infamous 1936 parody of Time magazine.

In From Holmes to Sherlock, Mattias Boström re-creates the full story behind the legendary detective and his many incarnations - a real-life narrative of success, tragedy, and family secrets that has never previously been told in its entirety.

New York Times best-selling author and biographer Charles J. Shields crafts this fascinating portrait of literary icon Kurt Vonnegut. The first authorized biography of the influential American writer, And So It Goes examines Vonnegut’s life, from his childhood to his death in 2007, and explores how the author changed the conversation of American literature.