For most of its 45-year history, The Mysterious Bookshop --- the oldest mystery specialty bookstore in the world --- has commissioned an original short story as a holiday gift for its customers. Written exclusively for the store and never published elsewhere, the stories were given as a holiday gift to its customers as a thank you for their business, handed out or mailed between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. The prompt for the story requires three elements: that it be set at Christmastime, that it involve a crime of some kind, or the suspicion of one, and that it be set at least partially in the bookstore. And from these loose structural guidelines, diverse tales took flight. The dozen tales included in this volume are among the finest to be produced in this annual tradition, sure to charm any reader looking for a holiday-themed escape.

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 20 most suspenseful, most confounding and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

If you like mysteries and you like books, what could be better than combining both worlds, with mysteries set against a background involving books? This collection of crime for bibliophiles includes stories about rare books, bookshops, libraries, manuscripts, magical books, collectors --- in short, the wonderful universe that makes this precious object we all love so important and priceless. Whether your taste is for the traditional mystery, something a little more hard-boiled, or the bizarre and humorous tale, you will find exactly your cup of tea in this collection of 15 stories by the most distinguished mystery writers working today.

If you open your dictionary, you will discover that there is no such word as “bibliomystery.” However, most mystery readers know that the word refers to a mystery story that involves the world of books: a bookshop, a rare volume, a library, a collector or a bookseller. The stories in this unique collection were commissioned by the Mysterious Bookshop and were written by some of the mystery genre’s most distinguished authors --- tough guys like Ken Bruen, Reed Farrel Coleman, Loren D. Estleman, and Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins; bestsellers like Nelson DeMille, Anne Perry and Jeffery Deaver; and Edgar winners such as C. J. Box, Thomas H. Cook and Laura Lippman.

Bestselling novelist Harlan Coben, a master of suspense and creator of the critically-acclaimed Myron Bolitar series, edits this latest collection of the must-reads in mysteries from the past year.

Each year, for the past 17 years, Mysterious Bookshop proprietor Otto Penzler has commissioned an original Christmas story by a leading suspense writer. These stories were then produced as pamphlets and given to customers of the bookstore as a Christmas present. Now, all 17 tales have been collected in one volume.