Showing posts sorted by date for query "Carolyn See". Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query "Carolyn See". Sort by relevance Show all posts

Wednesday, January 7, 2026

Short Story Wednesday: Carolyn See on William Kotzwinkle's JEWEL OF THE MOON



Book Review: Mixed Bag of Stories From Kotzwinkle
By CAROLYN SEE
FEB. 13, 1986 12 AM PT

Suppose you’re a 19-year-old girl, and smart as well as beautiful. You can have any basketball player you want, but a sky-high intellectual with John Lennon glasses gives you a book for Christmas--”Le Desire Attrappe par le Coeur,” Pablo Picasso’s only play--and now smartypants (your classmate) has a birthday coming up. What do you do about it, since you know he’s already read everything, in that insistent undergraduate way of his? Scoot on out to your nearest independent bookstore and buy him a copy of William Kotzwinkle’s Jewel of the Moon.

No one’s read it yet, it looks spooky and delicious and the author’s picture on the back looks like a combination of Merlin and Lennon himself. Direct the intellectual’s attention particularly to “Sun, Moon and Storm,” which chronicles the life of the artist Antonio Correggio as he painted his masterwork on a cathedral dome for venal theologians who care nothing for genius. . . .

Or, suppose you’re 19 and beautiful as well as smart. The basketball center on the college team has been hanging around, giving you woof-eyes and you think he’s pretty cute, so--in Math, probably--you hand him “Jewel of the Moon,” wrapped carelessly in newspaper. “No big deal,” you tell him. “No biggee. Just read ‘Victory at North Antor.’ When I read it, I don’t know why, I thought of you.”

Jumble of Stories

What we are addressing here, then, is a book of short stories, wildly different, thematically chaotic, attractively written. The stories are a jumble. No one (outside of the author) seems to have given them much thought or attention: A lax publicity release announces that only two of these stories have been published before: “All the others are being published for the first time,” but the author’s agent has countered that nine of these have already seen print.

And no one seems to know what to make of them. Again, the publicity release quotes Kurt Vonnegut: “William Kotzwinkle’s materials seem to come from way down deep.” Well, OK, but don’t most writers of fiction scramble around, dredging up their materials from “way down deep”?

The truth may be that these stories are so varied in tone that if you like some, you probably won’t be able to stomach the others: the volume is a mixed review. For instance, the title story is an erotic myth of creation, a god and goddess on a steamy honeymoon of sorts, creating the universe.

Again, in “Fana,” a tale of a Middle-Eastern dancing girl who is the very embodiment of the winking universe, the same themes are suggested: “There waited a white camel bearing a noble sheik. In the hoof-beats of the camel Al-nujum heard the drumming of time, and in the eyes of the sheik he saw the race of man. The sheik’s own heart was a flame which no man could extinguish, and here Al-nujum was inclined to rest--but Fana undulated once more.”

Clearly, here is a man who holds the sexual act in high regard, and who could argue against that? But readers who dote on this silken-pillow literature can’t be expected to like “Victory at North Antor,” which depicts life in a working-class high school, in a fiendish small town, in the middle of Northeast nowhere--a town where the adults live in mill shacks and have, as vocational opportunities, “the button mill, the pillow factory, or the sewer works.” Is it possible for there to be heroism in such grim and forgotten worlds? Certainly, for some--and that heroism heartens even the inarticulate gnomes still locked inside these hells of the imagination.

Great Fun to Read

“Victory at North Antor,” with its rich cast of characters--Shrimp Sondoni, Tootzi Zonka, Tony One-Punch and Franky Plunger--is great fun to read, as is “Star Cruisers, Welcome,” in which an invincible space ship full of invincible aliens (who literally eat Earth for lunch) makes the mistake of landing in the South Bronx, where the ship is taken apart, with terrific casualness, by a gang called the Walton Avenue Baldies, who sell their space parts to the local fence and break out the space booze.

A wonderful story, but where does that leave the lavender intricacies of Fana and Zahir and Al-nujum? It seems that this slim volume literally isn’t big enough for Fana and Tootsie Zonka.

More than 100 years ago, as they never tire of telling us in literature classes, Wordsworth and Coleridge got together and decided that for a project they’d work--separately--on making “strange things familiar and familiar things strange.” Thus, that host of golden daffodils from Wordsworth, and that Ancient Mariner from Coleridge. But, for the sake of their own fevered minds, they didn’t try doing both at once, as does Kotzwinkle. Never mind. Give this book to nice male undergraduates of every stripe. They’ll appreciate the culture and like the sex; they may grow their hair long, and buy a monocle like that pixie author on the back.





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Wednesday, December 20, 2023

SSW: stories by Joyce Carol Oates, A. M. Homes, Richard Matheson, John Varley, Ambrose Bierce, Al Franken (among others) from THIS IS MY BEST edited by Kathy Kiernan and Retha Powers (QPB 2004) and FLIGHT OR FRIGHT edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent (Cemetery Dance 2018)

A pair of anthologies from the "turned up in my resettling the flooding/roof collapse survivors" set, the vast majority of my library, and as one bedroom used mostly for storage becomes Alice's office.  I suspect the Stephen King and his associate, (Mr.) Bev Vincent might've here produced the least widely-sold volume credited to King, among those not produced exclusively by a small press (even as there was a Cemetery Dance edition of this anthology which apparently preceded its corporate publishers' versions) nor suppressed by author's inclination (the "Richard Bachman" novel Rage)...even with original short fiction included from King and his son, "Joe Hill".  While the Kiernan and Powers bug-crusher, also offered by Chronicle Books in an eventual "illustrated edition" I've not seen (inasmuch as the Quality Paperback Club original includes comics and near-comics work by Gary Trudeau, Mark Alan Stamaty and Scott Adams [a man whose work would be less likely to be included in the years since 2004, and who has not yet stopped digging his own hole], it, too, is Illustrated to at least that extent. I wonder if the Chronicle edition includes the original Esquire magazine illustrations for this Nth reprint of Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" [which famously involves writer Harlan Ellison being harassed by Sinatra and his flunkies, and not truckling to the latter's bored distaste]). As in previous We Ask Writers For Their Favorite Among Their Own Work volumes (such as two I've offered here previously), This Is My Best is aware of its predecessors in such compilations, and specifically harkens back to Whit Burnett's 1942 original by that title (though they seem unaware of Burnett's 1970 sequel volume).

The Oates story was offered by her as a relatively pure example of the kind of tale she's accused, not quite correctly, of  repeatedly writing, those that detail horrible crimes against young women. As she notes, despite the unflinching detail she brings to her accounts of such abuse, she is in nearly all those stories more interested in the aftermath in the lives of the survivors, whether the protagonists or their families and other loved ones. But in the case of  "The Girl with the Blackened Eye", Oates grants that this story keeps its focus almost entirely on the events of the protagonist's ordeal, which involves the ordeals of others...intense thus even by Oates's standards. But I'd still put forth the default, early choice of her short fiction, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" as an even more intense example of her continuing concern ("Girl" apparently takes as its springboard an actual abduction which a relative of Oates survived; that Oates herself survived a childhood attempt at gang-assault by similarly young boys would tend to help make consideration of such matters of in one's fiction at least likely).

The A. M. Homes story, "The Former First Lady and the Football Hero", is an account of Nancy and Ronald Reagan (Sr.)'s lives as he slips ever more deeply into senile dementia, and she does what she can to cope with his crisis and with her own in trying her best to keep it from the public. Homes notes in her introduction that in being so intrusive as to write such a story about people actually suffering thus that she had to make it more than a mere lampoon of their travail...and she does so, resulting in a black comedy of sorts that reasonably speculates and demonstrates how such things go (though the notion that the addled former president would manage to get past his detail of Secret Service agents seems less likely than it is portrayed). Small details are filled in with empathy, otherwise...as someone who saw both parents succumb to varying sorts of dementia in their last years, it reads as a moving account.

Along with the Adams strip (makes its point, and its point is a bit more genuinely populist than his latter-day tRumpeting) and the Trudeau strips and the excerpt from Stamaty's heavily illustrated beginning-reader book, among the humorous bits which rely on trans-text is the fake NYT book review attributed to Jeanne Kirkpatrick (and the "outraged" "responses" from Al Franken, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and the paper's editors), all taken from Franken's most famous text, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations. I'd say Franken's done better (and, in at least one other famous attempt at pranking, worse), but for what they are, they're fine.

Among the stories I've not previously read in Flight or Fright, the most famous is almost certainly Richard Matheson's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"...I have seen the two Twilight Zone-branded adaptations decades back, and the story is better, but at first (and a bit repetitiously) it seems as if it might not be, while Matheson sketches in the details of his protagonist's lack of joy in his life; the ending was changed for both adaptations, making them slightly less realistic (it's quite possible to read the short story as non-fantasy as it's usually understood) and thus more rewarding to a less-experienced audience. Nonetheless, not nearly Matheson's best work, I'd suggest, and perhaps unsurprising it first appeared in an anthology edited by Matheson's agent rather than in any of the magazines he might've contributed to at the time.

While I did read John Varley's "Air Raid" not too long after it was published (in the first issue of what's now called Asimov's Science Fiction, in 1977), in 1978 when I was trying to read all the Varley fiction I could find. I liked it but didn't love it, which has put me at odds with a number of fellow admirers of Varley's work...I preferred Varley's other story in that first Asimov's issue, for example. It was expanded to novel length after a grueling process of adapting it for filming over more than a decade, the film and the novel both titled Millennium, and neither did as much for Varley as the amount of time and effort they wasted. "Air Raid" has excellent detail and scene-setting, and quite aside from being more consistently grim than the majority of Varley's early work (not too sure that put me off, as I was certainly reading a fair amount of Pohl, Kornbluth, Malzberg, Kafka, et al. at the time, and still very much a reader of horror fiction), it also deals in a future for humanity that is capable of time and long-distance space travel but cannot handle genetic drift in various forms at all...which struck me as unlikely at the time, though Varley manages deftly enough to avoid dealing with that, and much of the story is ingenious. So, definitely read "Air Raid" before any of his early novels, but perhaps after the other stories in his first three collections, at least. (Revisiting "The Persistence of Vision" as an adult left me with a larger sense of discomfort than I felt when reading it as a 13yo, as it was first published, but even that one might remain a better story in every way.)

Ambrose Bierce's "The Flying-Machine" (first collected in his Fantastic Fables, 1899) remains as very good and pointed a joke-anecdote today as it was in 1891.




























This Is My Best: Acclaimed QPB Authors Share Their Favorite Work 
QPB edition published 2004 and can be read at the link; a Chronicle Books trade edition (with slightly amended subtitle) followed for non-QPB members in 2005; edited by Kathy Kiernan and Retha Powers; the contributors provide headnotes to their entries.

ix * Introduction  * Retha Powers and Kathy Kiernan * in
1 * Dilbert, October 8, 2001 *  Scott Adams * cs Andrews McMeel Syndication
3 * "Jimmy Hoffa's Odyssey" * Ai * pm Agni #28, 1989
7 * From Before We Were Free, the chapter "Freedom Cry" * Julia Alvarez * novel excerpt, Knopf 2002
21 * "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist" * Natalie Angier * es The New York Times Magazine 14 January 2001
34 * From Timbuktu *  Paul Auster * novel excerpt, Henry Holt 1999
42 * "Filthy with Things" * T. Coraghessan Boyle * The New Yorker 15 February 1993
From Sweet Summer / Bebe Moore Campbell
"What to Do" / Hayden Carruth
From Caramelo / Sandra Cisneros
"Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter" / Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
"A Short Story" / Emma Donoghue
"Her Island" / Rita Dove
From "Tiger-Frame Glasses" / Carolyn Ferrell
"Dumped!" / Helen Fisher
From Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot / Al Franken
"Surprise" / Martin Gardner
"A Hidden Killer in Cajun Country" / Laurie Garret
From Migrations of the Heart / Marita Golden
The Former First Lady and the Football Hero, A. M.  Homes (ss)  Zoetrope: All-Story Fall 2002
From Fanatics and Fools / Arianna Huffington
From A Taste for Death / P.D. James
"Who's Irish?" / Gish Jen
From Cherry / Mary Karr
From The Poisonwood Bible / Barbara Kingsolver
From China Men / Maxine Hong Kingston
"A Gaggle of Saints" / Neil LaBute
From Under My Skin / Doris Lessing
From The Fortress of Solitude / Jonathan Lethem
"My Father with Cigarette Twelve Years Before the Nazis Could Break His Heart" / Philip Levine
"The Mappist" / Barry Lopez
From "The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios" / Yann Martel
From Property / Valerie Martin
From Salesman in Beijing / Arthur Miller
"From Mao to America: a Writer's Remarkable Journey" / Anchee Min
From Farewell the Trumpets / Jan Morris
From The Wind Up Bird Chronicle / Haruki Murakami
"The Wedding at the Courthouse" / Kathleen Norris
From Intimate Apparel / Lynn Nottage
The Girl with the Blackened Eye * Joyce Carol Oates (ss) Witness v14 #2, 2000
"Impossible to Tell" / Robert Pinsky
From The Botany of Desire / Michael Pollan
"America: The Multi-National Society" / Ishmael Reed
"The Queen of Mold" / Ruth Reichl
From Anthropology: "normal," "pieces," "Madrid," "trick," "dust," "beauty," and "lesbian" / Dan Rhodes
From Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates / Tom Robbins
"Sand" / Richard Rodriguez
"Getting Away from It All" / Witold Rybczynski
"Repeat after Me" / David Sedaris
"Flakes of Fire, Handfuls of Light" / Huston Smith
From Who Needs Donuts? / Mark Alan Stamaty
"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" / Gay Talese
Doonesbury: "The Golden Hour" / Garry Trudeau
From The Laws of Our Fathers / Scott Turow
From Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant / Anne Tyler
"Your Lover Just Called" / John Updike
"Son in the Afternoon" / John A. Williams






































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Wednesday, December 21, 2022

The best crime fiction of the year annuals of Ed Gorman, Robert Randisi, Martin H. Greenberg & company, revised


In 1990, Mystery Scene founders Ed Gorman and Robert Randisi took on Martin H. Greenberg as a partner in the magazine, and in that year they produced their first would-be annual edition of the year's best crime fiction, one volume only with New American Library in hardcover and paperback. 

still looking for a full index...ToC provided by Cindy Zeising 22 Dec 2022



In 1991, Randisi sold his stake in the magazine to Greenberg. In that year, Gorman and Greenberg began putting together a new Best of the Year annual, published by Carroll & Graf, which would run for seven volumes, till the 1998 offer, eventually with some credited co-editors. There was no 1999 volume (though in 1997, St. Martin's released an abridged mass-market paperback version of the 1996 C&G hardcover); in 2000, Gorman and Greenberg's annual took on a new format with a new publisher, as The World's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories , which would see five fatter annual volumes from the St. Martin's/Tor/Forge complex of imprints, and thus joined the established Gardner Dozois sf and Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling fantasy and horror annuals there. The Gorman/Greenberg series took on a similar attempt to the other annuals to be even more thoroughly a yearbook for the crime fiction field as well as a BOTY anthology, with hefty nonfictional summations as prefatory matter to the fiction. After the fifth volume in this sequence, the project returned to Carroll & Graf for two volumes (and two volumes of a companion anthology devoted to novellas), with a changed title format (featuring the title of one of the included stories), a format it would retain for the rest of the series' run. Apparently, though I'm still looking into it when not fighting the Blogspot typesetting. there was a phantom announcement of  a 20-story rather than 22-story version of The Deadly Bride volume, which was to appear from Da Capo Press, which would publish the 2007 edition and, subsequently, Pegasus Crime, Bleak House Books and finally Tyrus Books would get one each of the remainder...unfortunately, by the final volumes' appearance, the editors' health and other matters were affecting the production of the annual (perhaps their formatting software was as rebellious as Blogspot's, and jumping from division to division and then to another publisher almost certainly didn't help), with proofreading sliding downhill and a most remarkable clunker, the listing of Patti Abbott's short story in the contents and back-cover blurb for the penultimate volume, but omitting of the text of her story altogether in the book, in some sort of paperwork error. But the Gorman and Greenberg annuals provided a useful and often impressive alternative as successors and competitors to the Best Mystery and Suspense Stories of the Year (wrapping up its long run with the 1995 volume, extending back through the volumes of the Best Detective Stories of the Year), with long-term Best Mystery editor Edward Hoch contributing nonfiction as well as fiction to the Gorman/Greenberg volumes, and as successors the two-volume Jon L. Breen iBooks annual (2001-2002; Breen, too, would join the Gorman/Greenberg effort), Maxim Jakubowski's Best British Mysteries annual, and the two current survivors in the field, successors to  Otto Penzler's Best American Mystery Stories, beginning with its 1997 volume (which B. V. Lawson reviews this week [at time of this post's first publication]), Steph Cha's Best American Mystery and Suspense (HM Harcourt) and Penzler's The Best Mystery Stories of the Year (Mysterious Press) .

1992:
* Challenge the Widow-Maker by Clark Howard
* Stakeout by Bill Pronzini
* Malibu Dog by Faye Kellerman
* Decoy by Michael Gilbert
* White Alligator by Andrew Henry Vachss
* The Detective’s Wife by Edward D. Hoch
* The Fish-Sitter by Ruth Rendell
* Elvis Lives by Lynne Barrett
* Mother Tucker by James Kisner
* The Mandrake Forgeries by William Bankier
* The Nick of Time by Robert Barnard
* Hanged for a Sheep by Henry Slesar
* Incident On and Off a Mountain Road by Joe R. Lansdale
* Batman’s Helpers by Lawrence Block
* The Valuation by Peter Lovesey
* A Matter of Principal by Max Allan Collins
* Final Resting Place by Marcia Muller
* The Maltese Cat by Sara Paretsky
* Another Room by Joan Hess
* Button in the Bag by Charlotte MacLeod
* The Three Musketeers by Jeremiah Healy
* A Poison That Leaves No Trace by Sue Grafton
* Someone Else by John Lutz
* The Dead Past by Nancy Pickard
* A Time for Every Purpose by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 
1993:
* Introduction: The Mystery in 1992 by Jon L. Breen
* Someday I'll Plant More Walnut Trees by Lawrence Block
* The Winfield Trade by Jeremiah Healy
* Liar's Dice by Bill Pronzini
* Long Live the Queen by Ruth Rendell
* Lazy Susan by Nancy Pickard
* A Hotel in Bucharest by Robert Barnard
* The Crime of Miss Oyster Brown by Peter Lovesey
* Secrets by June Thomson
* Whatever Has To Be Done by Jan Grape
* Stop, Thief! by Barbara D'Amato
* While She Was Out by Edward Bryant
* True Faces by Pat Cadigan
* The Perplexing Puzzle of the Perfidious Pigeon Poisoner by Charlotte MacLeod
* Cat Got Your Tongue by Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins
* The Last to Know by Joan Hess
* The Man Who Loved Noir by Loren D. Estleman
* Johnny Halloween by Norman Partridge
* The Maltese Double Cross by Carole Nelson Douglas
* Benny's Space by Marcia Muller
* Settled Score by Sara Paretsky
* The Theft of the Barking Dog by Edward D. Hoch
* A Predatory Woman by Sharyn McCrumb
* Wedding Bells by Michael Z. Lewin
* Proxime Accessit by Reginald Hill
* The Wind from Midnight by Ed Gorman

1994:
* Introduction: The Mystery in 1993 by Jon L. Breen
* Slasher by F. Paul Wilson
* Keller’s Therapy by Lawrence Block
* The Mouse in the Corner by Ruth Rendell
* That Bells May Ring and Whistles Safely Blow by Margaret Maron
* That Damn Cat by Barbara Collins
* Parris Green by Carole Nelson Douglas
* The Man in the Red-Flannel Suit by Jan Grape
* Checkout by Susan Dunlap
* Goodbye, Sue Ellen by Gillian Roberts
* The Ghost Show by Doug Allyn
* McIntyre’s Donald by Joseph Hansen
* Some Sunny Day by Julian Rathbone
* The Wall by Marcia Muller
* History Repeats Itself, and It Doesn’t Even Say Pardon by Mat Coward
* Strays by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
* The Lesson by Billie Sue Mosiman
* Spin-a-Rama by Jeremiah Healy
* The Mood Cuckoo by Jonathan Gash
* The Ugly Earthling Murder Case by George Alec Effinger
* Sweetheart of the Rodeo by Mark Timlin
* A Vacance en Campagne by Tim Heald
* It Takes One to Know One by Robert Bloch
* Shade Work by Bill Pronzini
* First Lead Gasser by Tony Hillerman
* Enduring as Dust by Bruce Holland Rogers


1995:
Introduction : the mystery in 1994 / Jon L. Breen -- The gentleman in the lake / Robert Barnard -- 
High heels in the headliner / Wendy Hornsby -- 
Coyote peyote / Carole Nelson Douglas -- 
The lost coast / Marcia Muller 
Sign of the times / Nancy Pickard -
Unkindest cut / Lary Segriff -- 
A deep hole / Ian Rankin -- 
And she laughed / Liz Holliday -- 
Last of kin / Jo Bannister -- 
One of those days, one of those nights / Ed Gorman -- Pork pie hat / Peter Straub -- 
Old rattler / Sharyn McCrumb -- 
Oil and water / J.A. Jance -- 
No simpel solution / Jan Grape -- 
Nooses give / Dana Stabenow -- 
His father's ghost / Max Allan Collins -- 
The man who hated television / Julian Symons -- With anchovies / John Lutz -- 
The ten lives of Talbert / Barbara Collins -- 
The necessary brother / Brendan DuBois -- 
The tennis court / Brenda Melton Burnham -- 
An eye for a tooth / Justin Scott -- 
The dancing bear / Doug Allyn -- 
Keller on horseback / Lawrence Block -- 
Out of the depths / Bill Pronzini.
1996:
* Introduction by Jon L. Breen
* She Rote by John Harvey
* Valentine's Night by Nancy Pickard
* The Matchmaker by Sharyn McCrumb
* The Judge's Boy by Jean B. Cooper
* One Night At Dolores Park by Bill Pronzini
* When Your Breath Freezes by Kathleen Dougherty
* Principles of Accounts by Ian Rankin
* Mommy by Max Allan Collins
* Beasts in Buildings, Turning 'Round by J.N. Williamson
* The Best Sort of Husband by Susan B. Kelly
* An Act of Violence by William F. Nolan
* The End Of It All by Ed Gorman
* The Hudson Chain by Edward D. Hoch
* The Holes in the System by Marcia Muller
* Double Take by L.J. Washburn
* Grace Notes by Sara Paretsky
* Keepsakes by Peter Crowther
* Dirty Dancing by Carole Nelson Douglas
* Of Mice, Men and Two Women by Julian Rathbone
* The Silence of Sorrow by Richard T. Chizmar
* All That Glitters by Joan Hess
* The Pushover by Peter Lovesey
* Keller in Shining Armor by Lawrence Block
* Midnight Sun by Barbara Paul
* The Blackmailer by Anne Perry 

 1997 abridged mass-market paperback edition of the 1996 hardcover:
She rote / John Harvey --
Valentine's night / Nancy Pickard --
The matchmaker / Sharyn McCrumb --
The judge's boy / Jean B. Cooper --
One night at Dolores Park / Bill Pronzini --
When your breath freezes / Kathleen Dougherty --
Principles of accounts / Ian Rankin --
Mommy / Max Allan Collins --
The end of it all / Ed Gorman --
The holes in the system / Marcia Muller
Grace notes / Sara Paretsky --
Dirty dancing / Carole Nelson Douglas --
All that glitters / Joan Hess --
The pushover / Peter Lovesey --
Keller in shining armor/ Lawrence Block --
The blackmailer / Anne Perry.
1997:
The dark snow / Brendan Du Bois
The escape / Anne Perry -- 
Clothes / Ruth Rendell -- 
The cracks in the sidewalk / Marcia Muller -- 
Dead drunk / Lia Matera -- 
Running from legs / Ed McBain -- 
The cassoulet / Walter Satterthwait -- 
Toad crossing / John Lutz and David August -- 
Wild horses / Sam Pizzo -- 
The last word -- Maude Miller
My murder / David Corn -- 
The narrow house / Edward D. Hoch -- 
Married to a murderer / Alan Russell -- 
The perfect murder club / Reginald Hill -
Kiss the sky / James Grady -- 
Intent to kill / Monica Quill -- 
The girl who talked to horses / Robert J. Randisi -- Stalking horse / Susan B. Kelly
A good thing / Simon Brett -- 
Hoops / S.J. Rozan -- 
Real life / Sarah Shankman -- 
A rock and a hard place / Nancy Pickard -- 
The burglar and the whatsit / Donald E. Westlake -- 
Publicity stunts / Sara Paretsky -- 
The monster / Bill Pronzini.

 1998:
Contents:
The kneeling soldier/Jeffrey Deaver -- 
Speak no evil/Nancy Pickard -
Solo/Marcia Muller -- 
Psychofemmes/Melissa Mia Hall -- 
Blood brothers/Richard T. Chizmar -- 
Ways to kill a cat/Simon Brett
The horseshoe nail/Bill Pronzini -- 
Bird of paradise/John Harvey 
A front row seat/Jan Grape -- 
A long and happy life/DeLoris Stanton Forbes -- Nightcrawlers/John Lutz -- 
Remembrance/Carolny G. Hart -- 
Tea for two/M.D. Lake -- 
On the psychiatrist's couch/Reginald Hill 
The Easter cat/Bill Crider -- 
Call me Walt/Jerry Sykes. 
Cold turkey/Carole Nelson Douglas -- 
Death cup/Joyce Carol Oates -- 
Love me for my yellow hair alone: 32 short films about Marilyn Monroe/Carolyn Wheat -- 
The clock that counts the dead/Edward Bryant -- 
Take it away/Donald E. Westlake. 
The man who beat the system/Stuart Kaminsky -- 
Keller on the spot/Lawrence Block -- 
The house on the edge/D.A. McGuire -- 
Crimson shadow/Walter Mosely.

2000:
The year in mystery and crime fiction : 1999 / Jon L. Breen --
A 1999 yearbook of mystery and crime / Edward D. Hoch --
Heroes / Anne Perry --
Rio Grande gothic / David Morrell --
The hanged man / Ian Rankin --
Spooked / Carolyn G. Hart --
Show me the bones / Carolyn Wheat --
A flash of chrysanthemum / J.A. Jance --
The man in the white hat / Loren D. Estleman --
'53 Buick / Gary Phillips --
Crack / James W. Hall --
Paleta man / Laurie R. King --
Snow / Stuart M. Kaminsky --
The canasta club / Eleanor Taylor Bland --
Unchained melody / Doug Allyn --
Something simple / Rob Kantner --
The circle of ink / Edward D. Hoch --
The death cat of Hester Street / Carol Gorman --
Dark times / Peter Crowther --
Those that trespass / Peter Tremayne --
Blitzed / Phil Lovesey --
For services rendered / Jeffery Deaver --
The tinder box / Minette Walters --
Symptoms of loss / Jerry Sykes --
Taking care of Frank / Antony Mann --
Styx and bones / Edward Bryant --
Not long now / Carol Anne Davis --
The shortest distance / Mat Coward --
I love everything about you / Marthayn Pelegrimas and Robert J. Randisi --
The case of the headless witness / Lloyd Biggle, Jr. --
The mummy case / Carole Nelson Douglas --
Recycle / Marcia Muller --
Now what? / Donald E. Westlake --
Barking at butterflies / Ed McBain --
The dark prince / Joyce Carol Oates --
Rappin' dog / Dick Lochte --
Dream lawyer / Lia Matera --
Flood / Bill Pronzini --
The ice shelf / Clark Howard --
In for a penny / Lawrence Block.

2oo1:
Spinning / Kristine Kathryn Rusch -
The summer people / Brendan DuBois --
Afraid of the dark / Nancy Pickard --
For all the saints / Gillian Linscott --
Let's get lost / Lawrence Block --
Under suspicion / Clark Howard --
Childhood / S.J. Rozan --
Art & craft / Donald E. Westlake --
The allotment / Peter Crowther --
Twelve of the little buggers / Mat Coward --
Missing in action / Peter Robinson --
The Haggard Society / Edward D. Hoch --
Scorpion's kiss / Stuart M. Kaminsky --
Noble causes / Bob Mendes --
The sleeping detective / Gary Phillips --
A night in the Manchester store / Stanley Cohen --
What Mr. McGregor saw / Dorothy Cannell --
Delta double-deal / Noreen Ayres --
Three nil / Mat Coward --
The man in the civil suit / Jan Burke --
Black and white memories / Robert J. Randisi --
Nothing to lose / Robert Barnard --
Widower's walk / Joseph Hansen --
Character flaw / Christine Matthews --
Golden Gate Bridge--A view from below / Jürgen Ehlers --
Boo / Richard Laymon --
Veterans / John Lutz --
The abbey ghosts / Jan Burke --
The country of the blind / Doug Allyn --
Happiness / Joyce Carol Oates --
The confession / Ian Rankin --
The perfectionist / Peter Lovesey --
A wall too high / Edward D. Hoch --
The silence / Kristine Kathryn Rusch --
The big bite / Bill Pronzini --
The gathering of the klan / Les Roberts --
When the black shadows die / Clark Howard --
Rebirth (Cain and Abel) / Miguel Agustí --
Helena and the babies / Denise Mina --
Old soldiers / Brendan DuBois --
The victim / Ed McBain --
The poet of pulp / Pete Hamill
2002:
The world's finest mystery and crime stories : third annual collection The year in mystery and crime fiction: 2001 / Jon L. Breen A 2001 yearbook of crime and mystery / Edward D. Hoch World mystery report: Great Britain / Maxim Jakubowski World mystery report: Australia / David Honeybone World mystery report: Canada / Edo van Belkom World mystery report: Germany / Thomas Woertche Year 2001 in mystery fandom / George A. Easter Double-crossing Delancey / S.J. Rozan -- Activity in the flood plain / Ed McBain -- The only good judge / Carolyn Wheat -- Speaking of greed / Lawrence Block -- The California contact / Clark Howard -- Tell me you forgive me? / Joyce Carol Oates -- Beautiful / Jeffery Deaver -- Unreasonable doubt / Max Allan Collins -- Lucky devil / Nancy Pickard -- The star thief / Brendan DuBois -- Chip / Bill Pronzini -- Come again? / Donald E. Westlake -- Dark mirror / Lauren Henderson -- The adventure of the Cheshire cheese / Jon L. Breen -- Dry whiskey / David B. Silva -- Countdown / Wolfgang Burger -- Old dog, new tricks / Robert Barnard -- The wink / Ruth Rendell -- Fire works / Paul Lascaux -- Juggernaut / Nancy Springer -- Star struck / Peter Lovesey -- Known unto God / Jac. Toes -- The eye of the beholder / Lillian Stewart Carl -- Blind alley / Mary Jane Maffini -- Canon / John Vermeulen -- A well-respected man / Margaret Coel -- The girl who killed Santa Claus / Val McDermid -- The Trebuchet murder / Susanna Gregory -- Turnaround / Carolyn Hart -- Out like a lion / Bill Crider -- The perfect man / Kristine Kathryn Rusch -- Conscience / Stephan Rykena -- Living next door to malice / Billie Rubin -- The good old German way / Tatjana Kruse -- The case of the bloodless sock / Anne Perry -- Blood, snow, and classic cars / Joseph Hansen -- The impostor / Marcia Muller -- The problem of the yellow wallpaper / Edward D. Hoch -- In the city of angels / Dick Lochte -- Honorable mentions / Angela Zeman.
2003:
The year in mystery and crime fiction, 2002 / Jon L. Breen
A 2002 yearbook of crime and mystery / Edward D. Hoch
World mystery report, Great Britain / Maxim Jakubowski
World mystery report, Canada / Edo Van Belkom
World mystery report, Germany / Thomas Wörtche
To live and die in Midland, Texas / Clark Howard
Rules of the game / Kate Wilhelm --
The wagon mound / Val McDermid --
Ghost writer / Janice Law --
My cousin Rachel's Uncle Murray / Susan Isaacs 
Top of the world / Bill Crider --
Ere I killed thee / Anne Perry --
The Panama hen / Gesine Schultz --
Gracious silence / Gillian Linscott --
Cold-blooded / Stephan Rykena --
Lead ... follow / Jac. Toes --
Two sisters / Frauke Schuster --
Barefoot / Chris Rippen --
Those are pearls that were his eyes / Carole Nelson Douglas
A mimicry of mockingbirds / Lillian Stewart Carl
The twin / Brad Reynolds --
The vampire theme / Edward D. Hoch --
The devil that walks at noonday / Ralph McInerny
The murder ballads / Doug Allyn --
The vale of the white horse / Sharyn McCrumb --
A girl named Charlie / Stanley Cohen --
The adventure of the mooning sentry / Jon L. Breen
Second story sunlight / John Lutz --
A moment of wrong thinking / Lawrence Block --
Too many cooks / Marcia Talley --
The path to the shroud / Robert Barnard
Closer to the flame / Jerry Sykes --
Chalele / John Vermeulen --
Wrong place, wrong time / Bill Pronzini
Fleeting fashion / Bob Mendes --
Flying fast / Piet Teigeler --
The best time for planting / Ina Coelen --
The money to feed them / Martin Spiegelberg --
Mexican Gatsby / Raymond Steiber --
Three killings and a favor / Joan Waites
War can be murder / Mike Doogan --
The adventure of the agitated actress / Daniel Stashower --
Two in the same boat / Anke Gebert --
Aftermath / Jeremiah Healy --
Whispers of the dead / Peter Tremayne --
An empire's reach / Brendan DuBois --
Surveillance / Jeffery Deaver -
The 2002 Edgar Allan Poe mystery fiction short-list.
2004:
The year in mystery and crime fiction, 2003 / Jon L. Breen
A 2003 yearbook of crime and mystery / Edward D. Hoch --
World mystery report, Great Britain / Maxim Jakubowski -
World mystery report, Canada / Edo van Belkom --
World mystery report, Germany / Thomas Wörtche
The year 2003 in mystery fandom / George A. Easter
Cowboy Grace / Kristine Kathryn Rusch -
Palace in the pines / Doug Allyn --
Offenders / Mat Coward --
Bet on Red / Jeff Abbott --
Doctor's orders / Judith Cutler --
Esther Gordon Framlingham / Antony Mann --
Nighthawks / John Lutz --
Starting over / Carol Anne Davis -- 
Dreams of Jeannie / Catherine Dain -- 
The face of Ali Baba / Edward D. Hoch -- 
Take my word for it and you don't have to answer / Robert S. Levinson 
The maids / G. Miki Hayden -- 
Black Heart and Cabin Girl / Shelley Costa -- 
Dollface / Marion Arnott 
Doppelganger / Rhys Bowen --
No man's land / Elizabeth Foxwell --
Safety first / Marcia Talley -- 
Red meat / Elaine Viets -- 
Sex and bingo / Elaine Viets -- 
Aces & eights / David Edgerly Gates --
Proportionate response / Jeremiah Healy -- 
The hunter / Joyce Carol Oates -- 
The Cherub affair / Peter Robinson -- 
The corpse that lost its head / John Vermeulen - 
The best / Chris Rippen -- The rival / Helga Anderle -
African Christmas / Frauke Schuster -- 
The gallows necklace / Sharyn McCrumb 
One shot difference / Brendan DuBois -- 
Woke up this morning / Liza Cody -- 
The leper colony / Clark Howard -- 
Honorable mentions -- 
About the editors

Sixth: 2005
2005:
The year in mystery and crime fiction: 2004 / Jon L. Breen --
A 2004 yearbook of crime and mystery / Edward D. Hoch --
The mystery in Great Britain/Maxim Jakubowski --
The newest four-letter word in mystery / Sarah Weinman --
The adventure of the missing detective / Gary Lovisi 
The Westphalian ring / Jeffery Deaver --
The hit / Robert S. Levinson --
The last case of Hilly Palmer / Duane Swierczynski --
Everybody's girl / Robert Barnard --
Imitate the sun / Luke Sholer --
Father Diodorus / Charlie Stella --
A nightcap of hemlock / Francis M. Nevins --
The best in online mystery fiction in 2004 / Sarah Weinman --
Just pretend / Martyn Waites --
Geoffrey says / Aliya Whiteley --
God's dice / David White --
The consolation blond / Val McDermid --
The shoeshine man's regrets / Laura Lippman --
For benefit of Mr. Means / Christine Matthews --
East side, west side / Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens --
The promotion / Larry D. Sewazy --
Me and Mitch / Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg -
The necromancer's apprentice / Lillian Stewart Carl 
The banshee / Joyce Carol Oates --
Sounds of silence / Dennis Richard Murphy.

The novellas volume from 2004 publications:
2005:
The Gin Mill / Doug Allyn --
Wreck Rights / Dana Stabenow --
Deep Lock / Clark Howard Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [v124 #6, #760, December 2004] ed. Janet Hutchings 
Scrogged: A Cyber-Christmas Carol / Carole Nelson Douglas
The Widow of Slane / Terence Faherty --
Tricks / Steve Hockensmith
A Tale of One City / Anne Perry.

Seventh: (see abridged reprint at list's end)
2006:
The mystery in 2005 and 2006 / Jon L. Breen --
A 2005 yearbook of crime and mystery / Edward D. Hoch --
Online mystery fiction in 2005 and 2006 / Sarah Weinman --
The catch / James W. Hall --
There is no crime on Easter Island / Nancy Pickard --
Born bad / Jeffery Deaver --
The deadly bride / Sharan Newman --
Highest, best use / J.A. Jance --
Interlude at Duane's / F. Paul Wilson --
The adeland sanction / David Morrell --
Lightning rider /Rick Mofina --
Driven to distraction / Marcia Talley --
Little sins / Mike MacLean --
Dust up / Wendy Hornsby --
Why'd you bring me here? / Stanley Cohen --
Chapter 82: Myrna Lloyd is missing / Robert S. Levinson --
Down and out in Brentwood / Neal Marks --
Cain was innocent / Simon Brett --
A temporary crown / Sue Pike --
Sanctuary! / Peter Tremayne --
A matter of honor / Jeremiah Healy --
Low drama / Kim Harrington --
Jury duty / Kristine Kathryn Rusch --
The last interview / Craig McDonald --
Lost causes / Anne Perry.

The novellas volume from 2005/2006 publications: 2007

Honor code / Joyce Carol Oates --
Junior partner in crime / Carole Nelson Douglas --
Grieving Las Vegas / Jeremiah Healy --
Resurrection man / Sharyn McCrumb --
Temptation of King David / Brendan DuBois --
Gustav Amlingmeyer, Holmes of the range / Steve Hockensmith --
Wolf Woman Bay / Doug Allyn --
Merely hate / Ed McBain --
Diamond dog / Dick Lochte --
Arizona heat / Clark Howard Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [v128 #2, #780, August 2006] ed. Janet Hutchings

Eighth: 2008
The mystery in 2007 / Jon L. Breen --
Obituaries in 2007 / Edward D. Hoch --
Mulholland dive / Michael Connelly --
Everybody loves somebody / Sandra Scoppettone --
Making amends / Jeffery Deaver --
A vision in white / Lawrence Block --
Pony girl / Laura Lippman --
Prayers for the dying / Jeremiah Healy --
Devil dog / Dick Lochte --
A prisoner of memory / Robert S. Levinson --
A saving grace / Patricia Abbott --
Cadaver dog / Bryon Quertermous --
Anniversary / Hilary Davidson --
Something out of the ordinary / Kerry Ashwin --
Dead as a dog / Doug Allyn --
Dies irae / Dorothy Salisbury Davis --
Blues in the Kabul night / Clark Howard --
The profane angel / Loren D. Estleman --
Bereavement / Tom Piccirilli --
Country manners / Brendan DuBois --
And then she was gone / Christine Matthews --
The guardians / Jim Fusilli --
I killed / Nancy Pickard --
Substitutions / Kristine Kathryn Rusch --
Pickpocket / Marcia Muller --
The winning ticket / Bill Pronzini --
Valentine, July heat wave / Joyce Carol Oates --
Online mystery fiction in 2007 / Sarah Weinman.

Ninth: 2009
The year in mystery: 2008 / Jon L. Breen --
Father's day / Michael Connelly --
Walking the dog / Peter Robinson --
Lucky / Charlaine Harris --
A sleep not unlike death / Sean Chercover
Joyce Carol Oates, 
Laura Lippman, 
Tom Piccirilli, 
John Harvey, 
Skinhead Central/T. Jefferson Parker, 
Patricia Abbott [story on Table of Contents, but missing from book], 
Megan Abbott, 
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 
Robert S. Levinson, 
Doug Allyn, 
Noreen Ayres, 
Charles Ardai, 
Martin Edwards, 
Bill Pronzini, 
Steve Hockensmith, 
Dominique Mainard, 
Brett Battles, 
David Edgerly Gates, 
Nancy Pickard, 
Scott Phillips, 
Bill Crider, 
Gary Phillips, 
Norman Partridge, 
Martin Limon, 
Jeremiah Healy

Tenth: 2010
The mystery in 2009 / Jon L. Breen --
Animal rescue / Dennis LeHane --
Family Affair : a Smokey Dalton story / Kris Nelscott 
Survival instincts / Sandra Seamans --
Julius Katz / Dave Zeltserman --
Seeing the moon / S.J. Rozan --
Dark chocolate / Nancy Pickard --
Telegraphing / Marcia Muller --
The Valhalla verdict / Doug Allyn --
Pure pulp / Bill Crider --
Blood sacrifices and the catatonic kid / Tom Picirrilli
Patterns / Richard Lupoff --
The tell-tale purr / Mary Higgins Clark --
The big switch: a Mike Hammer story / Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins --
Crazy Larry smells bacon / Greg Bardsley --
Femme Sole / Dana Cameron --
The dark island / Brendan Dubois --
The Caretaker / Terence Faherty --
The case of the Colonel Crockett's violin / Gillian Linscott --
The case of Colonel Warburton's madness / Lyndsay Faye --
Time will tell / Twist Phelan --
By hook or by crook / Charlie Dress --
The final nail: A Val O'Farrell story / Bob Randisi --
Amapola / Luis Alberto Urrea --
Cougar / Laura Lippman --
Digby, attorney at law / Jim Fusilli --
The way they limp / Clark Howard --
O'Nelligan's glory / Michael Nethercott --
Between sins / Robert Levinson.

 More to come here. And, with luck, with proper typefaces et al.

 And this is the apparent phantom version of The Deadly Bride:

A Short Story Wednesday entry...
for more of today's SSW entries,
please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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