UNITED STATES AUTHOR · FICTION · GENERAL
James Gould Cozzens
Attempting to compile a list of the best of anything is inevitably an exercise doomed to failure.
Most acclaimed

The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time
[Purloined Letter]( / Edgar Allan Poe A terribly strange bed / Wilkie Collins The three strangers / Thomas Hardy T[he red-headed league]( / Arthur Conan Doyle The corpus delecti / Melville Davisson Post Gentlemen and players / E.W. Hornung A journey / Edith Wharton The leopard man's story / Jack London A retrieved reformation / O. Henry The problem of Cell 13 / Jacques Futrelle The absent-minded coterie / Robert Barr The invisible man / G.K. Chesterton The infallible Godahl / Frederick Irving Anderson The adventure of the unique "Hamlet" / Vincent Starrett The Gioconda smile / Aldous Huxley Haircut / Ring Lardner The killers / Ernest Hemingway The hands of Mr. Ottermole / Thomas Burke The little house at Croix-Rousse / Georges Simenon The case of the missing patriarchs / Logan Clendening Clerical error / James Gould Cozzens The two bottles of relish / Lord Dunsany The chaser / John Collier The perfect crime / Ben Ray Redman Yours truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert Bloch The blind spot / Barry Perowne The catbird seat / James Thurber Recipe for murder / C.P. Donnel Jr. The nine mile walk / Harry Kemelman Kill or be killed / Ogden Nash The specialty of the house / Stanley Ellin Nearly perfect / A.A. Milne The Gettysburg Bugle / Ellery Queen The last spin / Evan Hunter Stand up and die! / Mickey Spillane A new leaf / Jack Ritchie The snail-watcher / Patricia Highsmith The long way down / Edward D. Hoch The man who never told a lie / Isaac Asimov I have / John Gardner [Quitters, Inc.]( / Stephen King Horn man / Clark Howard The new girl friend / Ruth Rendell By the dawn's early light / Lawrence Block Iris / Stephen Greenleaf High Darktown / James Ellroy The Pietro Andromache / Sara Paretsky Soft monkey / Harlan Ellison The hand of Carlos / Charles McCarry Karen makes out / Elmore Leonard

More Stories to Remember -- Volume II
Good morning, Miss Dove / Frances Gray Patton -- Turn about / William Faulkner -- Mary Smith / Booth Tarkington -- Clerical error / James Gould Cozzens -- The suicide club / Robert Louis Stevenson -- Eighteen oak ties / Tim Pridgen -- Ultima Thule / John Galsworthy -- Anty Bligh / John Masefield -- Sam Weller makes his bow / Charles Dickens -- The Croxley master / Arthur Conan Doyle -- François Villon meets a woman / John Erskine -- Father and the cook / Clarence Day, Jr. -- The grave grass quivers / Mackinlay Kantor -- The king waits / Clemence Dane -- Babylon revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald -- The bowmen / Arthur Machen -- [The murder of Roger Ackroyd ]( Agatha Christie.

By love possessed
Deadly attraction. Black sheep. Gambler. Notorious womanizer. Accused murderer! Liz Hayden had dreamed about mysterious nineteenth-century Garrett Rowland, his dark history reaching out to her until... With a flash of lightning, Liz was hurled into the past...and into the waiting arms of Garrett himself. He mistook her for his pregnant wife, the woman history claimed he'd murdered. And Liz knew that to stay alive she had to go along with whatever he wanted. Yet there was no playacting involved in her uninhibited response to Garrett's knowing caresses. She understood just how dangerous loving a man like Garrett could be. But the longer she stayed with him, the more she felt the future slipping out of reach....