Книги автора Flora Fletcher

This volume is the nineteenth annual collection of the best stories from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Every year since the anthology’s inception, it has been acknowledged No. 1 in its field, and this current one is no exception. The stories here range from pure detection to suspense, horror and psychological grue. Regardless of the reader’s taste, he will find a fulfilling and diverting repast offered by these writers: John D. MacDonald, James M. Ullman, L. E. Behney, Michael Gilbert, George Sumner Albee, Helen Nielsen, Roy Vickers, Borden Deal, Fletcher Flora, Avram Davidson, William O’Farrell, Norman Daniels, Hugh Pentecost, Victor Canning, Helen McCloy, John Reese, Holly Roth, Edward D. Hoch, Gerald Kersh, Fred A. Rodewald & J. F. Peirce, Lawrence Treat, Stanley Ellin.

Hell Has No Fury — like a crossed-up dame, they say, and Burr thought he could use that adage to save a pal’s life. But with those dames — he’d better try first to save himself!

A girl like Brenda and fifty grand... Who could blame Cleo Constance for trying to make a killing? Certainly not Jeff Pitt, who knew Brenda... But who did not know just what kind of a killing Cleo would make.

She was as conniving a blonde as ever tried to steal another girl’s husband... Now she was dead, found murdered in a lonely lovers’ lane. And the police wanted to know why.

A hand reaching out of the dark past had killed Margaret Hadley, and the only way I would ever find her killer — was to be the next to die!

How can you all sit there, Deming’s nerves screamed, playing poker as if you cared? Any minute, any hour, a man will walk into a trap — a man that we must kill!

Colleen was the mistress of the house, beautiful, rich and romantic, with the lush, pliant body of an overly passionate woman, and a husband who didn’t appreciate her obvious charms.

Onofre was the newly hired handyman, sullen, opportunistic and blatantly virile — like a stud bull that accepts all comers.

Pansy, the maid, got the message at once and offered herself without reservations. Vesta, the housekeeper, fought her attraction for him and continued making passes at Colleen.

Colleen, torn between pressure from Vesta, loyalty to her husband and her desperate need for Onofre, resisted, wavered, then fell like a ripe plum into Onofre’s bed.

Willie and Howard — man and wife

Willie and Quincy — cousins (in-law)

Willie, wanton

Quincy, without honor

Howard, quite dead

Result — a light-hearted treatment of the grim details, in the new Cock Robin Mystery Award winner.

Howard, alive, has been a dull lubber, with the single virtue of being able to make money without benefit of discernible brains; dead, he is a challenge and an excitement. He is even a challenge to Quincy, who is a difficult fellow to challenge to any kind of sustained effort. Fortunately, Quincy is clever and full of plans. His only fault, as far as Willie can see, is a tendency to he fanciful where simplicity would suffice. There is Howard’s body to dispose of. Quincy’s plot is a trifle thick, though not without wit. It’s not Quincy’s fault when his plot takes an unexpected turn. It is the fault, in fact, of dear, dead Howard, whose capacity for deception and tricky commitments turns out to have been as unsavory as that of the cousins.

Fletcher Flora has written a winning thriller of cousins who kiss and kill.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S HOW-TO-DO-IT BOOK Including: • How to solve your marital problems       —(poison) • How to dress properly when admitting to first degree murder       —(black tie) • How to take off a few pounds fast       —(a knife) • How to ruin a perfect friendship       —(a homemade bomb) And many, many other helpful hints from such specialists as: EVAN HUNTER, JOHN CORTEZ, RAY BRADBURY, RICHARD STARK, RICHARD MATHESON, HELEN NIELSON, DONALD WESTLAKE, RICHARD DEMING, JACK RITCHIE, JONATHAN CRAIG, C. B. GILFORD, JAY STREET, ROBERT ARTHUR, FLETCHER FLORA, CHARLES EINSTEIN

Uncle Slater O’Shea was loaded. Uncle Slater was supporting the lot of them — five freeloaders. And in spite of liberal daily applications of whisky, Uncle Slater had his health. He intended to keep it, so he had made a new will. So long as he continued to enjoy life, he would continue to maintain them. But the minute he died, his estate would be cut up among them, plus seventeen additional assorted O’Sheas. Cut up into twenty-two pieces, the freeloaders wouldn’t get enough from Uncle Slater O’Shea’s estate to live in the manner to which they had become accustomed. Several weeks later, benevolently trailing a fragrant haze of good Irish whisky behind him, Uncle Slater went upstairs for a nip and a nap. He never came down. Which of them had been foolish enough to do the old boy in?

Skimmer was the hotshot — handsome, smart, arrogant... He had everything: personality, looks, women. He was ready for success — regardless of the cost... And then he met a girl and a gangster — and something went wrong... Hotshot is Skimmer’s story — a unique candid portrait, not of the knife-wielding delinquents who capture headlines, but of today’s troubled youth as they really are. The unforgettable story of a generation battling to find its way in a world it never made.

If you don't shudder with every twist and sudden thrust of these 16 terror tales…

if you are able to turn off your bedside lamp after closing this volume and drift off to a deep, dreamless sleep…

if you can drink your morning coffee without thinking there just might be a peculiarly bitter taste to it, or turn your back on your spouse or best friend without feeling a funny itching between your shoulder blades…

then that lovable old master of menace, Alfred Hitchcock, apologizes and personally guarantees you your full payment in horror. All you have to do is meet him in the cemetery under the next murderer's moon…

A walk on the wild side! In this series of collections of gritty Noir and Hardboiled stories, you’ll find some of the best writers of the craft writing in their prime.

Welcome to The Seventh Ghost Story MEGAPACK®! Once more we have a wide-ranging assortment of supernatural fiction, with setting across the world — Europe, the Americas, Asia — and across the centuries. You will note that we have a larger than normal number of "Anonymous" stories. No, the authors weren't embarrassed by their contributions. Victorian-era literary magazines and newspapers often ran fiction without crediting the author, or with only vague terms like "A Lady," initials, or humorous pseudonyms (as with the story by "Q.E.D." in this volume). Authors later collected their stories in books, and that's when readers discovered who had actually written what. If a story never got reprinted, its author remained a mystery. Modern scholars are still researching these anonymous stories, but many authors will never be properly identified.