A Moment on the Edge: 100 Years of Crime Stories by Women - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060588217 ISBN 13: 9780060588212

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2004

Synopsis

Whether the story is a murder mystery, a tale of suspense, a psychological study of the characters affected by a devastating event, a courtroom drama, a police procedural ... the question remains the same. Why crime? Why exists this fascination with crime and why, above all, exists this fascination with crime on the part of female writers?
-- Elizabeth George

In A Moment on the Edge, bestselling author Elizabeth George has selected a stunning collection of twenty-six crime stories from some of the best practitioners of the genre, who also happen to be some of the most successful women writers of our time.

These shocking and compulsively readable stories are arranged chronologically, starting with the classic "A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell (1917). Also included are stories by Golden Age mystery writers Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh, and New Golden Age author Sara Paretsky, as well as selections by writers outside the genre, such as Shirley Jackson, Nadine Gordimer, Antonia Fraser, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Collectively these stories illustrate how crimefiction -- especially that written by women about women -- has changed in the last hundred years. As Elizabeth George notes in her introduction, "All of these authors share in common a desire to explore mankind in a moment on the edge. The edge equates to the crime committed. How the characters deal with the edge is the story."

This is a must-have anthology for aficionados of crime fiction.

About this title

About the Author:

Elizabeth George is the New York Times bestselling author of sixteen novels of psychological suspense, one book of nonfiction, and two short story collections. Her work has been honored with the Anthony and Agatha awards, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the MIMI, Germany's prestigious prize for suspense fiction. She lives in Washington State.

From Booklist:

Well known for her Inspector Lynley series, George here collects short mysteries by women, bracketing the 26 entries with two tales about the death of abusive husbands, written more than 80 years apart. Between them springs an entertaining assortment of locked-room murders, theatrical whodunits, white-collar-crime and detective stories, and psychological puzzlers, each headed by revealing author notes. Agatha Christie, praised by George in the volume's enlightening introduction, isn't represented, but her contemporaries in the "Golden Age of Mystery in Great Britain" are: Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, and Margery Allingham. Dorothy Davis, Charlotte Armstrong, Minette Walters, and Ruth Rendell are here as well, and sleuths Sharon McCone, Jemima Shore, and V. I. Warshawski, each one now a star of her own long-running detective series, make appearances. Here, too, are writers not associated primarily with the genre, including Joyce Carol Oates and Nadine Gordimer, whose tragic tale about the consequences of an interracial affair in South Africa is both mystery and political fiction. From start to finish, a first-rate anthology. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060588217
• ISBN 13: 9780060588212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 540
• Editor: Elizabeth George