This annual anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a short novel by Christianna Brand. Mystery stories have been around for centuries—there are whodunits, whydunits and howdunits, including locked-room puzzles, detective stories without detectives, and crimes with a limited choice of suspects.Countless volumes of such stories have been published, but some are still impossible to find: stories that appeared in a newspaper, magazine or an anthology that has long been out of print and unpublished stories that were absorbed into an author’s archive when they died . . .Here for the first time are three never-before-published mysteries by Edmund Crispin, Ngaio Marsh and Leo Bruce. Together with a newly unearthed short story by Ethel Lina White that inspired Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, and a complete short novel by Christianna Brand, this diverse mix of tales by some of the world’s most popular classic crime writers contains something for everyone.Complete with indispensable biographies by Tony Medawar of all the featured authors, the fourth volume in the series Bodies from the Library once again brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown.The historical context of these stories adds a layer of intrigue, transporting readers back to the golden age of detective fiction. The thrillers included in this anthology are some of the best and top-rated in the genre, making it a must-read for fans of traditional mystery.For fans of E.C.R. Lorac (Death of an Author), John Dickson Carr (The Black Spectacles), E. C. R. Lorac (Post After Post-Mortem), Tony Medawar (Ghosts from the Library), and Cecily Gayford (Murder by the Seaside).
