Amor Towles 
The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023 (Best Mystery Stories) 

Amor Towles selects the best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Andrew Child, Jeffery Deaver, and T.C. Boyle.

In his introduction to this volume, guest editor Amor Towles pays tribute to the forgotten person of the mystery story—the cadaver. “Male or female, old or young, rich or poor, ” he writes, “for over a hundred years the cadaver has been accommodating, gracious, and generally on time. There is no other figure in crime who has proven to be more reliable.”



Like the cadaver, this anthology series, now in its third year of publication, is also proving reliable, bringing to readers the finest mystery/crime/suspense stories of the year from a variety of sources including mystery and general interest magazines, anthologies, online publications, and literary periodicals.



Among the treasures collected herein are Jeffery Deaver’s “Dodge, ” in which a chess match between a volatile woman and a U.S. marshal takes a surprise twist; “The Landscaper’s Wife, ” a suspense-filled tale by Brendan Du Bois that explodes all expectation; and Kerry Hammond’s “Strangers at a Table, ” which offers a darkly witty homage to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.



The collection contains well-known authors such as T.C. Boyle and up-and-comers such as Jessi Lewis; it features tales with famous crime-fighters (Jack Reacher and Sherlock Holmes) and a bonus story from the annals of mystery history by Edith Wharton. In short, these pages promise something for every reader of crime fiction, no matter the particularities of his or her taste.

विषयसूची

CONTENTS
Foreword. Otto Penzler

Introduction, Amor Towles




Doug Allyn, Blind Baseball


Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June


Derrick Belanger, The Adventure of the Misquoted Macbeth

A Detective’s Life: Sherlock Holmes, ed. by Martin Rosenstock (Titan Books)


T. Coraghessan Boyle, Princess


The New Yorker, November 7


Joslyn Chase, Cold Hands, Warm Heart


Mystery, Crime, and Mayhem: Cold Cases (Knotted Road)


Andrew Child, New Kid in Town


Hotel California, ed. by Don Bruns (Blackstone)


Aaron Philip Clark, Death at the Sundial Motel


Witnesses for the Dead, ed. by Gary Phillips & Gar Anthony Haywood ((Soho Crime)


Jeffery Deaver, Dodge


The Broken Doll (Amazon)


Brendan Du Bois, The Landscaper’s Wife


Mystery Tribune, August/September


Kerry Hammond, Strangers at a Table


Malice Domestic: Murder Most Diabolical (Wildside)


Victor Kreuiter, Miller and Bell


Mystery Magazine, August


David Krugler, Two Sharks Walk into a Bar


Mystery Magazine, September


Tom Larsen, Pobre Maria


Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February


Avram Lavinsky, Playing God


Best New England Crime Stories: Deadly Nightshade, ed. by Susan Oleksiw, Christine Bagley, and Leslie Wheeler (Crime Spell Books)


Jesse Lewis, Ears


Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring/Summer


Ashley Lister, The Smoking Gunners


The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, ed. by Maxim Jakubowski (Mango)


Sean Mc Cluskey, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday


Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, Vol. 3, ed. by Michael Bracken (Down & Out Books)


Michael Mallory, What the Cat Dragged in


The Strand Magazine, Vol 68


Lou Manfredo, Sundown


Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April


Annie Reed, The Promise


Mystery, Crime, and Mayhem: Cold Cases (Knotted Road)


Anna Round, Glass


The Briarcliff Review


Joseph S. Walker, Crime Scene


Malice in Dallas: Metroplex Mysteries, ed. by Barb Goffman

लेखक के बारे में

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press (1975); Mysterious Press.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from Noir Con and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.