LITMIR.BIZ

The taxi handbook says thou shall not get involved with your passengers; this is an object lesson for those who would stray from the rulebook. A handsome woman is not all she seems when the moon doesn’t shine. A simple family farm hides many secrets and encounters with the pig farmers can lead to challenges.

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Amber is the one true world of which all others are but shadows. Collected here in one binding are seven tales of Amber. It was Zelazny’s intent to use these short stories to tie up unfinished threads from his amazing Chronicles of Amber. This edition is sure to be a treat for the legion of Amber fans.
“A storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen.” —George R.R. Martin
“. . . his performance was never anything other than dazzling.” —Robert Silverberg
“Roger Zelazny’s work excited me. It was intoxicating and delightful and unique. And it was smart.” —Neil Gaiman

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Scarlet Stiletto: The Eleventh Cut – 2019 features thirteen award-winning stories from the 26th annual Scarlet Stiletto Awards. 'Crime and mystery short story collections of startling originality; and a grim warning of what evil lurks in Australian suburbia.' – Kerry Greenwood The Scarlet Stiletto series of eBooks – the First to the Eleventh Cuts – feature superb collections of spine-chilling crime and mystery short stories, by Australian women writers, curated from 26 years of the Scarlet Stiletto Awards hosted by Sisters in Crime Australia.

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Hodgkiss and The Fatal Map / Hodgkiss and the Telltale Eyes / Hodgkiss and the Unsafe Safe<br /> <br />Hodgkiss is a cranky old sod. The continual sniping and point-scoring between him and his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, drives his daughter Esme to distraction. Hodgkiss compensates for his obnoxious treatment of Donald by helping him to solve a series baffling crimes, thus giving a welcome boost to his son-in-law's career. But it is towards the incompetent and corrupt Kanundda Council that Hodgkiss directs the most venomous products of his bile. <br /> <br />Hodgkiss' letter-writing campaigns in the columns of the local newspaper, The Northern Star, create big problems for the dodgy councillors and their corrupt developer mates when details of their venal little schemes start appearing in print. And when disgruntled council employees begin leaking embarrassing information to Hodgkiss, the trouble starts… big-time.<br /> <br />Murderous mayors, cowardly councillors and manipulative staff weave their way through plots involving sudden death, blackmail, corruption and, of course, sex.<br /> <br />A murdered body in a locked room – but how did the killer escape? How was the invisible body identified? How did the blackmail photos vanish impossibly from a locked and guarded safe? Hodgkiss arrives at the truth through impeccable logic.

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Hodgkiss and the Treasures of Kanundda / Hodgkiss and the Two Ladies / Hodgkiss and the Deadly Ciphers<br /> <br />A young woman turns up at the Burkes' home to enlist Hodgkiss' aid in finding her missing grandmother. Donald becomes an unwilling assistant as they attempt to retrace the elderly woman's steps. During the course of their investigation Hodgkiss finds himself once again in conflict with the bullyboys of Kanundda council and uncovers a particularly nasty, opportunistic murder.

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Hodgkiss and the Word Game / Hodgkiss and the Moving Picture / Hodgkiss and the GO Players<br /> <br />Observant, imaginative, creative, aggressive… offensive, all terms that could be readily and fairly applied to Edgar Hodgkiss as he goes about the delicate business of assisting his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Burke, solve crimes without humiliating him.

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Hodgkiss Does His Duty / Hodgkiss and the Sceptical Scientist / Hodgkiss and the Ornamental Lion<br /> <br />When he is called up for jury duty the experience is not at all what Hodgkiss had expected. One of his fellow jurors, a former tennis professional, insists upon discussing the case with Hodgkiss during breaks in the trial in spite of the judge's directions to the contrary. Gradually it dawns on Hodgkiss that the circumstances of the case are not as they appear and he is forced to take rather unconventional action resulting in the trial being dramatically aborted.

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Hodgkiss and the Mobile Phones / Hodgkiss and the Twelve Jurors / Hodgkiss and the Vanishing Waiter<br /> <br />Hodgkiss can't resist a challenge. When he receives a threatening message on his mobile phone, although it is a wrong number, he sets out to track down the caller in spite of his daughter, Esme's, misgivings. When it turns out the call was from an employee of the terminally compromised Kanundda Council he knows he must have stumbled on some form of corrupt behaviour. Then he overhears other calls which, taken separately seem harmless enough, but soon they form a sinister pattern which results in Hodgkiss uncovering a murder and a devious plot to swindle council.<br />After an evening out at an art show, Hodgkiss and his friend Pat Strong return to Pat's town house to discover it has been burgled, but apparently nothing is missing. Then the complications begin, involving some very incompetent burglars who had misunderstood the last words of a convicted murderer.<br />Kanundda Council plans to form a sister city relationship with Havana, Cuba. But of course the whole arrangement is just another scam which comes unstuck when the representative of Havana is poisoned at the official dinner to mark the occasion. Hodgkiss' son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, is called in to investigate and the last thing Donald wants is his father-in-law interfering in his inquiry. But Hodgkiss' special knowledge of the skullduggery that is behind all of council's decisions enables him to demonstrate motive, means and opportunity in this most ingenious murder plot.<br /> <br />Hodgkiss at his most imaginative, observant and obnoxious.

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Hodgkiss and the Second Bullet / Hodgkiss and the Stolen Memory / Hodgkiss and the Blonde Visitor<br /> <br />Hodgkiss is a suspicious old sod. When he hears of a dead body found in a locked room and the police have written it off as suicide, his suspicions are seriously aroused. He wins no accolades when he tells his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, who has to investigate these crimes, 'The very fact that the body is found in such obviously improbable and contrived circumstances should, of itself, be sufficient to raise the gravest suspicions in the mind of any intelligent investigator.'<br />This fifth volume of 'The Hodgkiss Mysteries' contains three such cases which present ingenious variations on the locked room murder theme.<br />In the first story a particularly obnoxious member of Kanundda Council, a body notorious for its venal conduct, is found shot dead in his study. In spite of the barred windows and bolted door Hodgkiss soon demonstrates how the man was murdered and his killer managed to escape the scene of the crime.<br />The second case is a new variation on the theme where the body is discovered in a flat with all the windows and doors locked and the safety chain on the door in place.<br />The third case offers an entirely new approach to solving the problem of the locked room murder. The solution is complicated when a water main bursts in the street outside the murder house, creating a huge hole in the roadway which attracts emergency services and news crews. Hodgkiss is baffled until he re-reads a children's book which unexpectedly presents him with an unlikely solution.<br /> <br />A must for lovers of locked room murders and impossible crimes.

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Hodgkiss and the Ghost of the Capsule / Hodgkiss Loses a Bet / Hodgkiss Takes a Holiday<br /> <br />– Hodgkiss returns – sharper and crankier than ever. When he accompanies his daughter, Esme, and her husband, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, on what he fears will be a boring holiday to a Pacific island paradise, Hodgkiss' instincts soon detect tension among the locals when a time capsule, buried twenty years earlier, is about to be raised prematurely. His investigations among the colourful island characters enable him to solve several mysteries that have puzzled the locals for years, including a twenty-year-old murder.<br />– When the homes of a major property developer and the chief town planner of the terminally corrupt Kanundda Council are both burgled on the same night, Hodgkiss' suspicions are aroused and the complications come thick and fast, including anonymous tipoffs to Donald and mysterious pasted-up notes. He and Donald have a bet on who will be the first to identify the burglars and a body found buried in the Kanundda National Park.<br />– As a result of this bet Hodgkiss has arranged for the Burke menage to spend a week's holiday at a plush resort in the mountains. Unfortunately the whole of Kanundda Council, a body which is frequently the object of Hodgkiss' scorn in frequent letters to the local paper, is booked into the same resort for a brainstorming session. But when the body of a young woman, whom Hodgkiss had befriended, is found beaten to death, Hodgkiss uses all his wits to expose the killer.<br />In this fourth volume of stories the sharp sixty-eight year-old shows how logic and the ability to observe circumstances and events brings surprising results.

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