Uncertain Endings: The World's Greatest Unsolved Mystery Stories »

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He is a recipient of an Edgar Award for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and the Ellery Queen Award by the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the editor of The Vampire Archives and The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which was a New York Times bestseller.

The most intriguing riddle mysteries in literary history, including tales from Bradbury, Dahl, Huxley, O. Henry, and Twain

Tantalizing, as ingenious as they are devious, the classic stories in this continually arresting collection come with an irresistible challenge: At their end they leave it to you, the reader, to determine how they end.

For ultimately it's the reader who authors the fate of the brave youth as he contemplates which of the two doors in the king's arena he will choose in Frank Stockton's famous and unforgettable "The Lady, or the Tiger?" And which of the two brothers in three-time Edgar-winner Stanley Ellin's "Unreasonable Doubt" shoots a bullet square in the middle of their rich uncle's forehead? And just what not-so-sweet secret is the prim Miss Spence hiding behind her smile in Aldous Huxley's deliciously enigmatic tale? You decide.

In all, as in "The Moment of Decision"—a chilling tale that seals an escape artist inside an airless stone cell with a heavy wooden door, which may or may not open—the moment of decision is yours.

Publishers Weekly

Mystery maven Penzler offers a unique anthology of 19 classic mystery and puzzle stories whose appeal, paradoxically, derives from their ambiguous endings. Penzler complements the epitome of the unresolved riddle tale-Frank Stockton's "The Lady, or The Tiger?"-with the author's lesser known but similarly vexing "The Discourager of Hesitancy," a tale of a dangerously arranged marriage. The volume's highlights, however, come from the best known and least known authors-Ray Bradbury and Peter Godfrey. Bradbury's exceptional gifts of subtle suggestion and suspense are on full display in two tales of a serial killer plaguing a quiet Illinois community, "The Whole Town's Sleeping" and its enigmatic sequel, "At Midnight, in the Month of June." Godfrey, an undeservedly obscure South African writer, contributes the superb, psychologically twisted "The Lady and the Dragon," about a photographer overcome by a powerful obsession. Additional compelling conundrums come from such notables as Roald Dahl, Mark Twain, Stanley Ellin and Aldous Huxley. (Dec.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.