The New York City Theatre District provides the backdrop in this locked-room mystery, the first of many featuring Inspector Richard Queen and his son, Ellery Queen!

It's 1943, the war is raging, and sleuthing scribe Ellery Queen wants to do his bit. After a tortuous cross-country drive, he takes a job writing scripts for a Hollywood propaganda house - twelve hours a day of hack work that quickly turns his mind to jelly. After a few weeks, he is so worn down that he can type nothing but gibberish, and he decides to drive home. The trouble starts as soon as he reaches the desert.

As war rages in 1944, young army lieutenant Lucas Athan recovers a sarcophagus excavated from an Egyptian tomb. Shipped to Princeton University for study, the box contains mysteries that only Lucas, aided by brilliant archaeologist Simone Rashid, can unlock. These mysteries may, in fact, defy - or fulfill - the dire prophecies of Albert Einstein himself.

Mrs. Virgil (Emily) Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, was a widow with grown children. She was tired of attending her Garden Club meetings. She wanted to do something good for her country. This first in the series sends Emily on her first case after she successfully persuades a skeptical CIA recruitment officer that she is the best person for the job.

Caught behind the lines of Hitler's Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face to face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazis themselves. Compelled by the encounter to survive at all costs, so begins a journey that for Saul will span decades and cross continents, plunging into the darkest corners of 20th century history to reveal a secret society of beings who may often exist behind the world's most horrible and violent events.

In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection.

At 12, Gideon Crew witnessed his father, a world-class mathematician, accused of treason and gunned down. At 24, summoned to his dying mother's bedside, Gideon learned the truth: His father was framed and deliberately slaughtered. With her last breath, she begged her son to avenge him. Now, with a new purpose in his life, Gideon crafts a one-time mission of vengeance, aimed at the perpetrator of his father's destruction. His plan is meticulous, spectacular, and successful.But from the shadows, someone is watching. A very powerful someone, who is impressed by Gideon's special skills.

They said his uncle Ian died in a car accident. Alex Rider knows that's a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle's car confirm the truth. But nothing can prepare him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for Britain's top-secret intelligence agency. Enlisted to find his uncle's killers and complete Ian's final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with no way out.

The adventure of Brian Parker's dreams has just become a nightmare. While on a school trip to Europe, Brian hopes for just a taste of the glamour and excitement from his favorite spy novels. Yet he gets way more than he bargained for when he stumbles across a wounded spy in a Lucerne alley.

For 40 years Western intelligence agents have known a terrible secret: the Russians have a mole - code-named Talbot - inside the CIA. At first Talbot is suspected of killing European agents. Then a street-smart ex-cop uncovers a storm of espionage and murder on the streets of New York, while in a Long Island suburb a civic demonstration against the Russian mission masks a desperate duel of nerves and wits. Engineered by Talbot, a shadow world of suspicion and deceit is spilling onto the streets....

Celine Sutherland is dead - her body half-hidden under the Atlantic City Boardwalk - and Damien Dickens, P.I. killed her. Detective Lt. James Holmes found Damien's gun and wallet near the crime scene, and discovered Celine's cash-filled, emerald-studded evening bag hidden in Damien's apartment. Sylvia Sutherland, Celine's older sister and CEO of the family's tobacco empire, insists that Dickens pulled the trigger. And the Sutherlands carry a lot of influence in Atlantic City.

Nothing can save Alex Sennefer's life. That's what all the doctors say, but his mother knows it's not true. She knows that the Lost Spells of the Egyptian Book of the Dead can crack open a door to the afterlife and pull her son back from the brink. But when she uses the spells, five evil ancients - the Death Walkers - are also brought back to life. An ancient evil has been unleashed. Mummies are awakening. New York is overrun with scorpions. And worst of all for Alex, his mom and the Lost Spells have both disappeared.

She's young. She's beautiful. And her corpse, laid out in the office of Boston medical examiner Cat Novak, betrays no secrets - except for a notebook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. When a second victim is discovered, Cat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the city streets: a shadowy madman without mercy or apparent motive. The police are sceptical. The mayor won't listen. And Cat's chief suspect is one of the city's most prominent citizens.

Sam Rockwell came home from the Second World War to work as a fledgling private investigator specializing in helping "Returns": recently deceased ghosts who've come back with unfinished business. Short on experience and long on the imitated swagger of the detectives found in his dog-eared collection of pulp fiction P.I. mysteries, the quick-witted Sam waits for his big break - and his chance to win the heart of Amelia, his Girl Friday. But when his no-nonsense father is murdered and becomes a Return himself, everything changes.

Two years ago, Robin Monarch was a top level CIA operative—perhaps the best they had when it came to black bag operations. Then one day, in the middle of an operation, with his team around him in the field, Monarch walked away, leaving his old life and friends behind without a word of explanation. Now this ex-soldier, ex-operative, and orphan with a murky past is a thief, stealing from the super-rich and has surfaced in St. Tropez.