The Collected Stories Book

"For more than twenty-five years Amanda Cross has been blazing a trail for the rest of us to follow", declares Sara Paretsky. The New York Times Book Review adds that if by some cruel oversight you havent discovered Amanda Cross, you have an uncommon pleasure in store for you. Pleasure indeed. Amanda Cross is master of the American literary whodunit. In her delicately menacing short fiction, assembled here in one volume for the first time, dangerous impulses seize the most unlikely individuals, and everyday existence is fast eclipsed by the bizarre.

With a brilliant touch as light as a butterfly's wing, Cross creates unforgettable characters who probe the baffling conundrums that seek them out: the disappearance of an unpopular university colleague, gone before anyone told her that they loved her . . . the enigma of the nameless toddler who walks out of the bushes one New England summer afternoon . . . the cold-blooded murder of Mrs. Byron Lloyd, shot dead during a writers panel discussion . . . the theft of a seventeenth-century painting from a lonely Texas convent . . . the reappearance of a missing Constable drawing just where it can cause the most trouble . . . and other wonderful mysteries, many of which star the incomparable private investigator Kate Fansler.

In a web of irony, wit, and compassion, Cross nets a rich variety of humankind, adjusting the scales of justice so perfectly that readers will rejoice, not only for the consummate resolution of her elegant puzzles but for the excellent company of Kate Fansler and her gifted creator.