Masterful Mysteries

New York Times bestselling author Hallie Ephron grew up in a family of writers and a household filled with books. Her parents were Henry and Phoebe Ephron who wrote screenplays for classic movies like Carousel and Daddy Long Legs. Hallie was the last of their four daughters (Nora, Delia, Hallie, Amy) to start writing or, as she calls it, succumb to her genes. Now Hallie writes suspense novels she hopes keep readers up nights. Her suspense novels include Never Tell a Lie, There was an Old Woman, and Photoplay:  A Story of Suspense. She’s the author of the Edgar-nominated how-to-write book, Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock ‘Em Dead with Style. Her latest is Night Night, Sleep Tight: A Novel of Suspense (William Morrow) a riveting tale of domestic noir, infused with old Hollywood folklore and glamour, set in a town rife with egotism and backstabbing and where fame and infamy are often interchangeable. Ephron also contributes to Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession (Algonquin Books), an anthology that proves what every woman knows—many things in life matter more than hair, but few bring as much pleasure as a really great hairdo.

Edgar Award winning Otto Penzler is the editor of twelve Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, including The Big Book of Pulps, The Big Book of Black Mask Stories, and, most recently, The Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries. He lives in New York City, where he is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop, the longest operating and largest specialist mystery bookseller in the world. His latest anthology is The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (Pantheon). Arguably, no other character in history has been so enduringly popular as Sherlock Holmes. From his first appearance, in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 novella A Study in Scarlet, readers have loved reading about him—and writers have loved writing about him. Here, Otto Penzler collects 83 stories about Holmes and Dr. John Watson, the majority of which will be new to readers.