A pair of federal agents from either side of the US–Mexico border target a cartel kingpin.
They call him “Cuchillo,” the Knife. Not because he kills with a blade—he has plenty of men to do that kind of work for him—but because his mind is so sharp. As Mexico’s government wages war on the drug cartels, it takes brains to survive, and Cuchillo has not just survived—he has prospered. But when Cuchillo...

Attempting the perfect murder, a killer encounters the perfect cop in this short story by Special Edgar Award and Ellery Queen Award–winning author William Link.
After years of get-rich-quick schemes, Troy Pellingham’s bank account is empty and his options are down to one: take a job in his uncle’s rare book shop, and spend his days working for an unpleasant man whose only redeeming quality is a mammoth bank account....

An ancient scroll draws a bookseller into a chilling mystery.
Monty Danforth finds the tin buried beneath a shipment of leather-bound classics. Inside is a millennia-old vellum manuscript written in an unfamiliar but unmistakably ancient language. Danforth tries to photocopy and photograph it, but he ends up with blank images, as though the ink were made of something impervious to modern technology. As the scroll’s mystery enchants...

The lie that bought Jacob Weisen a new life cannot help him escape the past.
Birkenau could not kill Jacob Weisen. He survived the death camp and made his way to America, where he became famous telling the story of Isaac Becker, an author who was tortured to death when the guards caught him writing down his story. Becker’s manuscript was lost, but by telling the tale, Weisen keeps his memory alive. No other witnesses...

As World War II draws near, a dying genius fights against hate to preserve his legacy.
Cancer has ravaged Sigmund Freud. It is 1938, and the great doctor has fled Vienna for London, where he races to finish his final, most dangerous work: a radical reimagining of the origins of Judaism, which posits that Moses was murdered by his followers. Though his colleagues say that such a controversial text could only give grist to those who would...

After the death of his father, a literature professor is drawn into the murder investigation of a bookstore proprietor. Though Don and his father both love books, their tastes couldn’t be more different. Don is a scholar, and his father reads nothing but schlock. His house is full of dime paperbacks, battered thrillers, and case after case of western novels, none of which his son could ever bear to read. At his father’s...

A librarian is tormented by a lethal volume of black magic.
When A. Davenport Lomax’s young daughter asks him whether spirits and faeries are real, the Edwardian librarian just pats the little darling on the head. But when a desperate man emerges from the winding passages of the library muttering about demonology, he gets Lomax’s attention. Theodore Grange is a member of the Brotherhood of Solomon, a secret society dedicated...

A puzzler of a tale about a dead bookshop owner, a priceless cache of first editions, and a deadly secret taken to the grave.
It’s no mystery who killed Robert Ripple, owner of Precious Finds Bookstore in Pokesville, Pennsylvania. It was Agatha Christie—or rather, a large carton of valuable Christie hardcovers that the not-so-young Ripple was attempting to lift when his heart gave out. The real question is why the so-called...

A long lost manuscript by Geoffrey Chaucer draws Professor Dominic Hallkyn through the streets of Boston and into a mysterious plot.
When Professor Dominic Hallkyn receives an anonymous phone call late one night from a voice claiming to possess a priceless Chaucerian manuscript presumed lost forever, he doesn’t know how to react. He soon finds himself scrambling to meet the caller’s demands amid uncompromising suspense that...

The next story in the Bibliomysteries series, penned by MWA Grand Master Carolyn Hart.
Everyone dreams of stumbling upon a long-lost treasure in the attic or inheriting a fortune from some distant relative. But for Ellen Gallagher, the impoverished owner of a thrift shop in South Carolina, that dream comes true. She finds in her possession a first edition of Agatha Christie’s Poirot Investigates that...