Download or read book The Quests of Simon Ark written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Overamstel Uitgevers. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When ancient evil emerges, it can only be stopped by a two-thousand-year-old sleuth Ten years ago, Douglas Zadig emerged from the mist on an English moor, his clothes tattered, his speech slurred, and his mind completely blank. Since then, he has reinvented himself as an expert on good and evil, publishing book after book of a philosophy that is entirely lifted from the ancient writings of Zoroaster. Zadig comes to Maine on the lecture circuit, and in the frigid northern winter, just as suddenly as he first appeared, he is killed. The case fascinates Simon Ark, a two-thousand-year-old Coptic priest on a ceaseless quest to hunt out the world’s ultimate evil. In “The Man from Nowhere” and the other stories in this volume, Ark flits from murder to murder, seeking supernatural explanations for the crimes. But as he knows all too well, no mystical force can compete with the evil inside the souls of men.
Download or read book The Quests of Simon Ark written by Edward D. Hoch and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked Room Mysteries written by Otto Penzler and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 962 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Most Complete Collection of Impossible Crime Stories Ever Assembled, with puzzling mysteries by Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many, many more THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES: An empty desert, a lonely ski slope, a gentleman’s study, an elevator car—nowhere is a crime completely impossible. Edgar Award–winning editor Otto Penzler has collected sixty-eight of the all-time best impossible-crime stories from almost two hundred years of the genre. In addition to the many classic examples of the form—a case of murder in a locked room or otherwise inaccessible place, solved by a brilliant sleuth—this collection expands the definition of the locked room to include tales of unbelievable thefts and incredible disappearances. Among these pages you’ll find stories with evocative titles like “The Flying Death”, “The Man From Nowhere”, “A Terribly Strange Bed”, and “The Theft of the Bermuda Penny”, not to mention appearances by some of the cleverest characters in all of crime, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, and many more. Featuring • Unconventional means of murder • Pilfered jewels • Shocking solutions Includes • Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the first detective story and the first locked-room mystery • Masters of the short story form: Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen, Carter Dickson, and Stanley Ellin A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL
Download or read book Dark Detectives An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries written by Stephen Jones and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CRIMES OF TERROR AND DARKNESS In the battle between good and evil, the supernatural investigators form the first line of defense against the unexplainable. Here are eighteen pulse-pounding tales featuring uncanny sleuths battling against the weird, written by Clive Barker R. Chetwynd-Hayes Basil Copper Neil Gaiman William Hope Hodgson Brian Lumley Brian Mooney Kim Newman Jay Russell Peter Tremayne Manly Wade Wellman Featuring the entire ‘’Seven Stars” saga by Kim Newman, pitting the Diogenes Club against an occult object with the power to ultimately annihilate mankind!
Download or read book The Future Is Ours The Collected Science Fiction of Edward D Hoch written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward D. Hoch was and is the undisputed master of the mystery short story. His total output of published short fiction hovers just under 1,000 stories (estimates are in the neighborhood of 960 stories). Hoch (pronounced "Hoke") is best remembered for his fair-play and impossible crime short stories, particularly the series featuring Dr. Sam Hawthorne, a small-town physician who unraveled seemingly impossible "problems" in 1920s New England. His other popular series characters included British Intelligence codebreaker Jeffrey Rand and thief-for-hire Nick Velvet. While a vast majority of Ed Hoch's stories were mysteries, he enjoyed horror and science fiction. Of his nine-hundred-plus output, he wrote several handfuls of horror and science fiction stories that appeared in various magazines and anthologies. It could be argued that his first published story, "Village of the Dead" (which appeared in the December 1955 issue of the pulp magazine Famous Detective Stories), is as much horror as it is a mystery. In that story, the mass suicide of an entire village is investigated by Simon Ark, a mysterious—possibly two-thousand year old—Coptic Priest. Here, then, are 31 tales of the future, the fantastic, and the improbable by a master of the craft: Edward D. Hoch, writer extraordinaire!
Download or read book The Night My Friend written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Overamstel Uitgevers. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incredible assortment of stories from one of history’s masters of short fiction On the morning of the merger, fog shrouds the offices of Jupiter Steel. On the twenty-first floor, the board of directors gathers to follow the commands of Billy Calm, an unequaled titan of finance. But a few minutes before the meeting, Calm jumps out a window. The chief of security rushes to the street, but where there should be a body, he sees only slush; Billy Calm has vanished into the fog. “The Long Way Down” is a classic Edward D. Hoch story—elegantly baffling, with prose that will please even the most hard-boiled fans. But this collection contains much more than puzzles. Here are the odds and ends of Hoch’s early work, covering espionage, boxing, and every shade of noir—as beautiful as the fog, and as chilling as the first step off the ledge.
Download or read book The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures written by Mike Ashley and published by C & R Crime. This book was released on 2009-05-28 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biggest collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle laid down his pen - nearly 200,000 words of superb fiction featuring the Great Detective by masters of historical crime, including Stephen Baxter, H. R. F. Keating, Michael Moorcock and Amy Myers. Almost all the stories here are specially written; the cases presented in the order in which Holmes solved them. The result is a new life of Sherlock Holmes, with a continuous narrative alongside the stories that identifies the 'gaps' in the canon and places the new and hitherto unrecorded cases in sequence. Plus an invaluable complete Holmes chronology.
Download or read book Mammoth Books presents Vittoria the Circus Belle written by Edward D. Hoch and published by C & R Crime. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holmes is visited by a young girl from the circus industry. She fears for her life and is deeply troubled that two attempts on her life have already been made. Vittoria believes it is Edith Everage, an acrobat who desires to be the circus belle who is attempting to kill her. Holmes sets out to investigate her claims, only to find his efforts may be too little, too late.
Download or read book Cornucopia of Crime written by Francis M. Nevins and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010-07 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the decades Francis M. Nevins has written dozens of articles and essays on the major influences of crime literature and here he collects them in 450+ pages. Coupled with some current essays on people he's known this makes for a book that any mystery fan will cherish and use as a reference book.
Download or read book Leopold s Way written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Edgar Award–winning author: A collection of short detective stories featuring baffling crimes and the brilliant sleuthing of Captain Leopold. On his way to the circus, a young boy named Tommy pauses for fifteen minutes in a grassy vacant lot. It begins to rain, and by the time the storm has passed, Tommy is dead in the tall grass, strangled with a strong piece of rope. Police suspicion falls on a shifty ex-con employed by the circus, but Captain Leopold isn’t satisfied with this too-simple solution. Something strange happened in that vacant lot, and it will take a moment of brilliance to divine what it was. Luckily, Captain Leopold has brilliance to spare. In these stories, he confronts dozens of fiendish puzzles, each murder more astonishing than the last. He is a lonely man, and his city is a cruel one, but only Leopold has the wit to find out the truth.
Download or read book City of Brass written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIVThree stories starring Simon Ark—one of history’s most unusual detectives/divDIV In a college in upstate New York, a professor is carrying out devilish experiments. At Grand Central Station, a student named Cathy Clark corners a friend of her sister’s who runs a large publishing company. She tells him of the evil at Baine University, but he dismisses her panic as undergraduate paranoia, so Cathy vows to take matters into her own hands. A few weeks later, she appears in the paper: gunned down on the side of the road./divDIV The only man fit to unravel the mystery is Simon Ark, a friend of the publisher and an aficionado of the peculiar. A two-thousand-year-old Coptic priest, cursed at the Crucifixion to spend eternity wandering the earth, Ark has seen all that the world has to offer. But in these three stories, he will encounter things that even he could never have imagined./divDIV/div/div
Download or read book The Supernatural and Fantastic in Short Detective Fiction written by Laird R. Blackwell and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-10-30 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although fantasy and supernatural literature have long and celebrated histories, many critics contend that the fantastic and the supernatural have no place in the logical, rational, world of the detective story. This book is the first extensive study of the fantastic in detective fiction and it explores the highly debated question of whether detective fiction and the fantastic can comfortably coexist. The "locked room" mystery--which often uses the fantastic as a red herring to eventually be debunked by reason and logic--has long been among the most popular subgenres of detective fiction. This book also explores stories featuring almost supernaturally gifted detectives, stories where the supernatural is truly encountered, and stories with ambiguous endings. Close to 500 detective stories from 1841 to 2000, in which the fantastic or supernatural plays a central role, are discussed and analyzed. Although not all the stories are judged to be successful as detective tales, in the great majority, the fantastic enlivens the tale and deepens the mystery without weakening the detective elements.
Download or read book The Night People written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIVTwenty tales of deceit, murder, and madness from the king of short mysteries/divDIV They find the third body facedown in the wet grass, its head nearly split in half by the axe. The psychopath has claimed three in twenty-four hours—a sickening toll that forces the police department to let the aging Inspector Fleming stave off retirement for one more case. The cop races to catch the axe maniac before he kills again, lest this final assignment become the one that ruins his career./divDIV There are killers in many of the stories in this collection, and a few great detectives, too. There is a gang of old war buddies who have decided to pick up their guns again, a scientist murdered in the wilds of Canada, two hundred miles from civilization, and a young office worker convinced she’s being followed by a man with bushy eyebrows. Edward D. Hoch understands crime, and knows that evil often lurks behind the kindest smiles./divDIV/div/div
Download or read book The Thefts of Nick Velvet written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen stories of outrageous heists starring one smooth thief from the Edgar Award–winning author of The Shattered Raven. The dictator of the island of Jabali wants a baseball team, and he doesn’t care how he gets it. He has assembled nine of the finest players on the island, and is about to hire Nick Velvet to steal him some competition. Ordinary thieves might not be up to pinching a whole ball club, but Velvet specializes in lifting seemingly worthless items, and in this year’s National League, there is nothing more worthless than the hapless Beavers. He steals them easily—but will the island’s ruler be satisfied with a last-place team? In these charming stories starring one of Edward D. Hoch’s most popular characters, everything is up for grabs. Velvet steals sea serpents, garbage, cats, and toy mice—all with his trademark low-key style. In Nick Velvet’s underworld, there is nothing he won’t steal, so long as it’s priceless, worthless, or just plain crazy.
Download or read book The Spy Who Read Latin And Other Stories written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIVIn the thick of the Cold War, a British spy will do anything to keep the peace/divDIV Father Howard steps off the plane in Albania, relieved to be out of China at last, but knowing that until he reaches Paris, he is not safe from the Communists. As he makes his way across the tarmac, two bullets strike him in the back of the head. The missionary is no more. The incident prompts an unprecedented meeting between C. Jeffery Rand, fixer for the British secret service, and his counterpart inside Soviet Russia. Seeking an ally to fight a common enemy, Russia enlists Rand’s help in its clash against the Chinese. Rand will do all he can to avenge the murdered priest—but how much can he trust the Soviet agent?/divDIV In these stories, Rand lives with the daily threat of betrayal. He knows two things are true: There is no honor among spies, and the safest agent is the one who trusts no one./divDIV/div/div
Download or read book The Spy and the Thief written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIVA double-barreled collection—two of Edward D. Hoch’s most ingenious creations/divDIV In the headquarters of Britain’s Foreign Office, a secretary spies a television actor making a copy of a top-secret key. In an island republic, an intelligence operative is murdered just minutes before exposing a Communist mole. And in a bustling eastern city, the Cold War reaches a turning point over a piece of film the size of a pinhead. These are cases for C. Jeffery Rand, the fixer inside Britain’s secret service. He is bright, ruthless, and smart enough never to be surprised by the depths to which an enemy spy might sink./divDIV Where Jeffery Rand is hard-nosed, Nick Velvet has a supple touch. A master thief, Velvet has a particular skill for stealing unusual items. Where ordinary thieves might be content with jewels or bank notes, Velvet pilfers rare tigers, water from swimming pools, and the letters on a company sign./divDIV In this collection, you will find seven stories of Rand and seven of Velvet—two brilliant men, one on either side of the law, each with a knack for doing the impossible./divDIV/div/div
Download or read book The Shattered Raven written by Edward D. Hoch and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIVAt a gathering of the nation’s foremost mystery authors, death takes the stage/divDIV Dozens die each year for the sake of the annual Mystery Writers of America banquet. Heiresses are poisoned, captains of industry are stabbed, and private detectives are gunned down in the street. To mystery authors, these fictional murders are nothing but good fun. But at the annual presentation of the MWA’s prestigious Edgar and Raven awards, real-life death is about to intrude./divDIV Ross Craigthorn’s nightly news program has made him one of the most well-respected men in the country, but deep in his past lies a terrible secret—one he shares with only a few others. They have done their best to forget their long-ago crime, but when Craigthorn decides to come clean, his old accomplice knows that the time has come for murder. When a room full of mystery authors witnesses a killing, which of them will have the nerve to play detective?/divDIV/div/div
