4.5
Mistletoe Mysteries
By Charlotte MacLeod & John Lutz &Publisher Description
Have yourself a mysterious little Christmas with fifteen whodunits from New York Times–bestselling authors Sharyn McCrumb, Mary Higgins Clark, and more!
Peace on Earth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in Charlotte MacLeod’s “A Cozy for Christmas.”
Peter Lovesey’s “The Haunted Crescent” delivers a holiday ghost story with a twist.
A training session for department-store Santas turns up Saint Nicks who are anything but angels in Isaac Asimov’s “Ho, Ho, Ho.”
Marcia Muller’s “Silent Night” finds a tough private investigator searching San Francisco’s Tenderloin district—and discovering something unexpected.
A long-married couple’s ship finally comes in—only to spring a mysterious leak—in Mary Higgins Clark’s “That’s the Ticket.”
Scottish superstition catches up with a cat burglar in Sharyn McCrumb’s “A Wee Doch and Doris.”
These and many more stories will keep you turning pages and gathering evidence of yuletide mayhem. So when holiday shopping brings out your inner Grinch, hunker down with a hot toddy—and leave the murder to the experts.
This festive collection includes stories by Charlotte MacLeod, Peter Lovesey, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Eric Wright, John Lutz, Howard Engel, Mary Higgins Clark, Bill Pronzini, Sharyn McCrumb, Henry Slesar, Edward D. Hoch, Aaron Elkins, Susan Dunlap, Isaac Asimov, and Marcia Muller.
Peace on Earth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in Charlotte MacLeod’s “A Cozy for Christmas.”
Peter Lovesey’s “The Haunted Crescent” delivers a holiday ghost story with a twist.
A training session for department-store Santas turns up Saint Nicks who are anything but angels in Isaac Asimov’s “Ho, Ho, Ho.”
Marcia Muller’s “Silent Night” finds a tough private investigator searching San Francisco’s Tenderloin district—and discovering something unexpected.
A long-married couple’s ship finally comes in—only to spring a mysterious leak—in Mary Higgins Clark’s “That’s the Ticket.”
Scottish superstition catches up with a cat burglar in Sharyn McCrumb’s “A Wee Doch and Doris.”
These and many more stories will keep you turning pages and gathering evidence of yuletide mayhem. So when holiday shopping brings out your inner Grinch, hunker down with a hot toddy—and leave the murder to the experts.
This festive collection includes stories by Charlotte MacLeod, Peter Lovesey, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Eric Wright, John Lutz, Howard Engel, Mary Higgins Clark, Bill Pronzini, Sharyn McCrumb, Henry Slesar, Edward D. Hoch, Aaron Elkins, Susan Dunlap, Isaac Asimov, and Marcia Muller.
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4.5
Meghan Barrett Welch
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Roberta
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About Charlotte MacLeod
Charlotte MacLeod (1922–2005) was an international bestselling author of cozy mysteries. Born in Canada, she moved to Boston as a child and lived in New England most of her life. After graduating from college, she made a career in advertising, writing copy for the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company before moving on to Boston firm N. H. Miller & Co., where she rose to the rank of vice president. In her spare time, MacLeod wrote short stories, and in 1964 published her first novel, a children’s book called Mystery of the White Knight.
In Rest You Merry (1978), MacLeod introduced Professor Peter Shandy, a horticulturist and amateur sleuth whose adventures she would chronicle for two decades. The Family Vault (1979) marked the first appearance of her other best-known characters: the husband and wife sleuthing team Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn, whom she followed until her last novel, The Balloon Man, in 1998.
Other books by Charlotte MacLeod
John Lutz
For over forty years, John Lutz (b. 1939) has been one of the premier voices in contemporary hard-boiled fiction, producing dozens of novels and over 250 short stories. His earliest success came with the Alo Nudger series, set in his hometown of St. Louis. Tropical Heat introduced Fred Carver, a Florida detective whom Lutz followed in ten novels. More recently, he has produced five books in the Frank Quinn serial killer series. Lutz is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America, and his many honors include lifetime achievement awards from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and the Private Eye Writers of America. He lives in St. Louis.
Other books by John Lutz
Susan Dunlap
Susan Dunlap (b. 1943) is a prolific author of mystery novels. Born in the suburbs of New York, Dunlap majored in English at Bucknell College and earned a masters in teaching from the University of North Carolina. She was a social worker before an Agatha Christie novel inspired her to try her hand writing mysteries. Five attempts and five years later, she published Karma (1981), which began a ten book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith.
Other books by Susan Dunlap
Edward D. Hoch
Edward D. Hoch (1930–2008) was a master of the mystery short story. Born in Rochester, New York, he sold his first story, “The Village of the Dead,” to Famous Detective Stories, then one of the last remaining old-time pulps. The tale introduced Simon Ark, a two-thousand-year-old Coptic priest who became one of Hoch’s many series characters. Others included small-town doctor Sam Hawthorne, police detective Captain Leopold, and Revolutionary War secret agent Alexander Swift. By rotating through his stable of characters, most of whom aged with time, Hoch was able to achieve extreme productivity, selling stories to Argosy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which published a story of his in every issue from 1973 until his death.
In all, Hoch wrote nearly one thousand short tales, making him one of the most prolific story writers of the twentieth century. He was awarded the 1968 Edgar Award for “The Oblong Room,” and in 2001 became the first short story writer to be named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
Other books by Edward D. Hoch
Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Mysteries and the Julie Hayes Mysteries; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.
Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.
Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.
Other books by Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Bill Pronzini
Bill Pronzini has published seventy-nine novels, thirty-eight of which feature the Nameless Detective, Americas longest-running PI series, begun in 1971. He is also the author of four nonfiction books and three hundred fifty short stories, and the editor of numerous anthologies. Among his many awards is the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, presented in 2008—a distinction he shares with his wife, crime novelist Marcia Muller, the 2005 Grand Master recipient. The couple lives in Northern California.
Other books by Bill Pronzini
Aaron Elkins
Aaron Elkins is a former anthropologist and professor who has been writing mysteries and thrillers since 1982. His major continuing series features forensic anthropologist‑detective Gideon Oliver, “the Skeleton Detective.” There are fifteen published titles to date in the series. The Gideon Oliver books have been (roughly) translated into a major ABC‑TV series and have been selections of the Book‑of‑the‑Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the Readers Digest Condensed Mystery Series. His work has been published in a dozen languages.
Mr. Elkins won the 1988 Edgar Award for best mystery of the year for Old Bones, the fourth book in the Gideon Oliver Series. He and his cowriter and wife, Charlotte, also won an Agatha Award, and he has also won a Nero Wolfe Award. Mr. Elkins lives on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula with Charlotte.
Mr. Elkins won the 1988 Edgar Award for best mystery of the year for Old Bones, the fourth book in the Gideon Oliver Series. He and his cowriter and wife, Charlotte, also won an Agatha Award, and he has also won a Nero Wolfe Award. Mr. Elkins lives on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula with Charlotte.
Other books by Aaron Elkins
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was a Russian‑born American writer and the author of nearly five hundred books. He is credited as one of the finest writers of science fiction in the twentieth century. Many, however, believe Asimov’s greatest talent was for, as he called it, “translating” science, making it understandable and interesting for the average reader.
Other books by Isaac Asimov
Howard Engel
Howard Engel (1931–2019) was born in St. Catharines, Ontario. He was a producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before emerging as a prolific, award-winning, and much-loved mystery writer, best known for the Benny Cooperman detective novels. After suffering a stroke, Engel developed alexia sine agraphia in 2000, a condition that prevented him from reading without great effort. This, however, did not inhibit his ability to write, and he later penned a memoir about the experience and his recovery called The Man Who Forgot How to Read. Engel was a founder of Crime Writers of Canada, and in 2014, he was the recipient of the organization’s first Grand Master Award. He passed away in 2019 at the age of eighty-eight.
Other books by Howard Engel
Sharyn McCrumb
Sharyn McCrumb is an award-winning Southern writer, best known for her Appalachian “Ballad” novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Ballad of Tom Dooley and The Ballad of Frankie Silver. Ghost Riders won the Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature from the East Tennessee Historical Society and the Audie Award for Best Recorded Book.
Named a Virginia Woman of History by the Library of Virginia and a Woman of the Arts by the Daughters of the American Revolution, McCrumb was awarded a merit award by the West Virginia Library Association in 2017 and the Mary Hobson Prize for Arts & Letters in 2014. Her books have been named New York Times and Los Angeles Times Notable Books.
Named a Virginia Woman of History by the Library of Virginia and a Woman of the Arts by the Daughters of the American Revolution, McCrumb was awarded a merit award by the West Virginia Library Association in 2017 and the Mary Hobson Prize for Arts & Letters in 2014. Her books have been named New York Times and Los Angeles Times Notable Books.
Other books by Sharyn McCrumb
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