On a sunny morning in June, Margaret Carpenter wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater. The problem is, Charity has been missing for over a month. Most people in town --- even the police --- think she’s dead. Margaret and Charity have been lifelong friends. They share everything and know the most intimate details about one another. Except for the destructive secret hidden from them both. A secret that will trigger a chain of events ending in tragedy, bloodshed and death. And now Charity wants Margaret to know her story --- the real story. In a narrative that takes place over one feverish day, Margaret follows a series of increasingly disquieting breadcrumbs as she forges deeper into the mystery of her best friend --- a person she never truly knew at all.

When professor turned crime-fighter Brandt "Doc" Savage and his girlfriend, Kira Sunlight, land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. An escape from their tumultuous pasts. But they don't have long to enjoy their newfound peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the Earth. Doc's search for Kira takes him from the coast of Brazil to northern Europe and the jungles of the Congo, and he discovers they are entangled in a global conspiracy that is bigger than he ever could have imagined.

Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for 12 hours each day. Once home to Vanessa, a famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared 20 years ago. Now home to Grace, a solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation. But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling. And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge.

Cameron Winter is troubled in heart and mind. He’s plagued by memories of his time as a government operative investigating a notorious Turkish sex trafficker. The fact that the mission was left unfinished still haunts him and threatens to tear him apart. In the midst of his painful soul-searching, Winter crosses paths with an ex-flame --- his first love --- and the chance encounter ignites a passion he thought was long lost. But just as soon as she wanders back into Winter’s life, the woman vanishes, leaving Winter scrambling to track her down. His pursuit takes him deep into a world rent by partisan violence, where extremists clash and Winter sides with no one. As he faces his most dangerous case yet, victory might simply mean getting out alive.

Five days ago, the epidemic of rage began. Four days ago, the rash of senseless murders swept the nation. Three days ago, the president addressed the country and begged for peace --- even as the murders increased tenfold. Two days ago, the killers began to mobilize. One day ago, the power went out. And tonight, the killers are reading the names of those to be killed over the Emergency Broadcast System. Jack Colclough is listening over the battery-powered radio on his kitchen table in Albuquerque, and he just heard his name. People are coming to his house to kill him, his wife, his daughter and his son. He has no idea what’s happening, or why, but the time for questions is long past. His only chance is to run.

After her terrifying experience at the hands of the Watchers, Mina has escaped to a cottage on the west coast of Ireland. She obsessively researches her former captors, desperate to find any way to prolong the safety of humankind. When Mina encounters a stranger near her home, she fears the worst --- for she knows the figure is not what it seems. Soon, people she has encountered start to disappear. Mina knows the Watchers' power is growing. She flees for her life, but when she reports her fears, she finds her sanity questioned. Can she convince people that the Watchers are real, and ready to strike --- or will she suffer the fate she has dreaded since she first encountered those malevolent beings?

Jack Reacher wakes up alone, in the dark, handcuffed to a makeshift bed. His right arm has suffered some major damage. His few possessions are gone. He has no memory of getting there. The last thing Reacher can recall is the car in which he hitched a ride getting run off the road. The driver was killed. His captors assume Reacher was the driver’s accomplice and patch up his wounds as they plan to make him talk. A plan that will backfire spectacularly.

Jose Carriles is the pilot of the Mosaic, a massive ship taking the Interstellar Union's first-ever mission to outside our solar system. His former friend, Corin Timony, should have been the best spy at the Bazaar, the lunar colony's international intelligence arm. Instead, she's been demoted to admin duties. But when the Mosaic experiences a series of strange malfunctions, and Carriles is forced to take a wild gamble to save the ship, he begins to suspect the reasons behind the exploratory mission weren't exactly on the up and up. At the same time, Timony's old instincts kick in as she realizes that the distress call she received from the Mosaic has been wiped without a trace. As people start to end up dead and loyalties are tested, Timony and Carriles find themselves entangled in a star-spanning conspiracy.

Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres, as well as to explore what some of her fictional creations such as Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur and Max Mephisto might have done outside of the novels. THE MAN IN BLACK gathers these bite-sized tales all together in one splendid volume. There are ghost stories, cozy mysteries, tales of psychological suspense, and poignant vignettes of love and loss.

From a pool of over 3,000 considered stories published last year --- anything that touched on crime, mystery and suspense --- these are the very best, selected by series editor Otto Penzler and guest editor Anthony Horowitz. The tales included cover a range of styles, highlighting the diversity of subjects and forms comprising the genre we call mystery fiction. Featuring a mixture of household names, masters of the short form and newcomers to the field, the collection offers a variety that promises something for every reader. And it’s all capped off by a vintage story from the first half of the previous century, sourced directly from the rare book room at The Mysterious Bookshop, the oldest mystery fiction specialty store in the world.