Presents a collection of the genre's best short stories that have been published in the United States or Canada during the year.

Scooby-Doo and his friends from Mystery, Inc. attempt to prevent a mysterious cactus creature from interfering with the filming of a music video in a desert.

Four detective stories featuring the indomitable detective Hercule Poirot.

For the first time, John Sampson is on his own. The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington, DC's, Metro PD and the FBI has a proven MO: Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them. When military-style attacks erupt, brutally sidelining Cross, Sampson is sent reeling. The patterns are too random--Sampson's friend, his partner, his brother--have told him. Don't trust anyone. As a shadow force advances on the nation's...

The placid village of Lymstock seems the perfect place for Jerry Burton to recuperate from his accident under the care of his sister, Joanna. But soon a series of vicious poison-pen letters destroys the village's quiet charm, eventually causing one recipient to commit suicide. The vicar, the doctor, the servants -- all are on the verge of accusing one another when help arrives from an unexpected quarter. The vicar's houseguest happens to be none other...

Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, and his widow gives Bosch a murder book, one Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD twenty years before-the unsolved killing of a troubled young man. Bosch takes the murder book to Detective Renée Ballard and asks her...

Susan Ryeland is a London book editor who has just received the latest manuscript from one of her most irascible authors, Alan Conway. But the manuscript?s ending appears to be missing and she learns that Conway has committed suicide. As Ryeland learns more about his death, she starts to question whether a murder has occurred and begins to investigate.

"In the latest book in David Housewright's modern nioir series, Rushmore McKenzie has been shot and lies in a coma, while the police and his friends desperately try to find out what McKenzie was doing and who tried to kill him ..."--

In 1980s Hollywood, the beautiful star of a hit TV cop show is being sent strange letters. At first, Sarah Broughton dismisses the letters as the ramblings of a lonely fan. But when the letters take on a disturbing tone and Sarah discovers a body in the sand outside her Malibu beach house, the experts are brought in. Working as a detective in the LAPD Threat Management Unit, Arvo Hughes has seen it all before: stalkers, love obsessionals, erotomaniacs...

As the holidays approach, Detective Lindsay Boxer and her friends in the Women's Murder Club have much to celebrate. Crime is down. The medical examiner's office is quiet. Even the courts are showing some Christmas spirit. And the news cycle is so slow that journalist Cindy Thomas is on assignment to tell a story about the true meaning of the season for San Francisco. Then a fearsome criminal known only as "Loman" seizes control of the headlines....