Audiobooks by Otto Penzler

The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries Audiobook

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler-'detective fiction's best editor and champion' (The Washington Post)-returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horse-drawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. With his latest title in the Big Book series, Otto Penzler is cracking cases and serving up the most thrilling, suspenseful Victorian mysteries. This collection brings together incredible stories from Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Guy de Maupassant, among other legendary writers of the grand era of the British Empire. So brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

Otto Penzler (Author), Dan Calley, Rachael Beresford, Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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The Big Book of Espionage

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler is back with a new anthology that has gathered the intel on the world's greatest secret agents, declassified here for the first time. Statesecrets. Double agents. Leaks. Otto Penzler brings you all this and more with his latest title in the Big Book series. No need to wait for the government to release redacted information, Otto is ready to declassify confidential matters. Great stories from Lee Child and Charles McCarry are pulled from the shadows and into the light. So pull your fedora down, adjust your fake moustache, and get ready to settle in with some of the greats.

Otto Penzler (Author), Alex Wyndham, Daniel Thomas May, Piper Goodeve (Narrator)

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The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021

Lee Child selects the twenty best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, and many more. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller Lee Child has selected the twenty most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume. Includes stories by: Alison Gaylin, David Morrell, James Lee Burke, Joyce Carol Oates, Martin Edwards, Sara Paretsky, Stephen King, Sue Grafton (with a new, posthumously published work), and many more!

Lee Child, Otto Penzler (Author), Emily Sutton-Smith, Matt Godfrey (Narrator)

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Black Noir: Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction by African-American Writers

Some of the best-known and most influential pieces of crime fiction have been from African American writers. Be it Walter Mosley's great detective Easy Rawlins, or the mean streets of Harlem at the hands of Chester Himes, the stories and characters in this anthology have shaped the mystery genre with their own unique viewpoints and styles. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright.

Otto Penzler (Author), Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Sean Crisden (Narrator)

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Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop

Each year, for seventeen years, Mysterious Bookshop proprietor Otto Penzler commissioned an original Christmas story by a leading suspense writer. These stories were then produced as pamphlets, just 1,000 copies, and given to customers of the bookstore as a Christmas present. Now, all seventeen tales have been collected in one volume, showcasing the talents of: Charles Ardai, Lisa Atkinson, George Baxt, Lawrence Block, Mary Higgins Clark, Thomas H. Cook, Ron Goulart, Jeremiah Healy, Edward D. Hoch, Rupert Holmes, Andrew Klavan, Michael Malone, Ed McBain, Anne Perry, S. J. Rozan, Jonathan Santlofer, and Donald E. Westlake. Some of these stories are humorous, others suspenseful, and still others are tales of pure detection, but all of them together make up a charming collection and a perfect Christmas gift for all ages.

Otto Penzler (Author), Christina Delaine, Matt Godfrey (Narrator)

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Uncertain Endings: Literature's Greatest Unsolved Mystery Stories

Otto Penzler presents a collection of nineteen unsolved mystery stories by a number of noted authors, including Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, and Mark Twain, where the ending is left up to the listener to determine. Here are the most intriguing riddle mysteries in literary history, including tales from Bradbury, Dahl, Huxley, O. Henry, and Twain. Tantalizing, as ingenious as they are devious, the classic stories in this continually arresting collection come with an irresistible challenge: At their end they leave it to you, the listener, to determine how they end. For ultimately it's the listener who authors the fate of the brave youth as he contemplates which of the two doors in the king's arena he will choose in Frank Stockton's famous and unforgettable 'The Lady, or the Tiger?' And which of the two brothers in three-time Edgar-winner Stanley Ellin's 'Unreasonable Doubt' shoots a bullet square in the middle of their rich uncle's forehead? And just what not-so-sweet secret is the prim Miss Spence hiding behind her smile in Aldous Huxley's deliciously enigmatic tale? You decide.

Otto Penzler (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

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The Vicious Circle: Mysteries & Crime Stories from the Algonquin Round Table

The mystery and crime fiction of the Algonquin Round Table. With the possible exception of the expatriate writers living in Paris in the 1920s, no single group of American literary figures has achieved as much fame or notoriety as the New York sophisticates who met to match wits and attempt to outshine each other as members of what came to be called the Algonquin Round Table. The humorists Robert Benchley and S. J. Perelman, playwrights Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman, novelists Edna Ferber and Alexander Woollcott, and most famously, Dorothy Parker, were the literary luminaries who made up this group, and each one produced a piece or two of crime fiction at some point, which have been collected in this anthology by acclaimed mystery editor Otto Penzler.

Otto Penzler (Author), James Romick (Narrator)

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The Big Book of Ghost Stories

The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson, and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you listening with fearful delight. Including such classics as 'The Monkey's Paw' and 'The Open Window' and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!

Otto Penzler (Author), Amy Landon, Joel Richards (Narrator)

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The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, ruthless, and brilliant criminals in mystery fiction, for the biggest compendium of bad guys (and girls) ever assembled. The best mysteries have one thing in common: a memorable perpetrator. For every Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade in noble pursuit, there's a Count Dracula, a Lester Leith, or a Jimmy Valentine. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations-and who often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect. Now, for the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the iconic traitors, thieves, con men, sociopaths, and killers who have crept through the mystery canon over the past 150 years, captivating and horrifying readers in equal measure. The handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most depraved of psyches, from iconic antiheroes like Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin and Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu to contemporary delinquents like Lawrence Block's Ehrengraf and Donald Westlake's Dortmunder, and include unforgettable tales by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Jack London, H. G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, O. Henry, Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward D. Hoch, Max Allan Collins, Loren D. Estleman, and many more.

Otto Penzler (Author), George Spelvin, Shaun Grindell (Narrator)

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The Big Book of Female Detectives

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, resourceful, and brilliant female sleuths in mystery fiction. Otto Penzler gathers the most iconic women of the detective canon over the past 150 years, captivating and surprising listeners in equal measure. The handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most determined of gumshoe gals, from debutant detectives like Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange to spinster sleuths like Mary Roberts Rinehart's Hilda Adams, from groundbreaking female cops like Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly to contemporary crime-fighting PIs like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, and include indelible tales from Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells, Edgar Wallace, L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Laura Lippman, and many more.

Otto Penzler (Author), Amy Landon, Paul Woodson (Narrator)

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The Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories that Inspired Great Crime Films

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology rolls out the red carpet for the stories that Hollywood is made of. Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. Among these are Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; and 'Cyclists' Raid,' the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One. Otto Penzler delivers the director's cut on these classic short stories and the films they gave rise to. So grab your Sno-Caps and a jumbo box of popcorn and curl up with these cinematic tales from the likes of Dennis Lehane, Joyce Carol Oates, Dashiell Hammett, O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Otto Penzler (Author), Christina Delaine, Gildart Jackson, Tim Campbell (Narrator)

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The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

Have yourself a crooked little Christmas with The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than fifty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories-many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark and Isaac Asimov; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you're in the mood for-suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural-can be found in this book.

Otto Penzler (Author), Cat Gould, Matthew Lloyd Davies (Narrator)

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