The Surprise of His Life — Elizabeth George

Crime and detection are women's work for twenty-six great writers in this second brilliant collection of mystery fiction edited by Sara Paretsky. From wicked irony and white-collar crime in Amanda Cross's "The Baroness," to the chilling "Only a Woman," Algerian writer Amel Benaboura's English-language debut, here are voices known and unknown at home and abroad, as familiar crime turf in America and England is expanded to Russia, Algeria, Austria, Germany, and South America.

From Ruth Rendell's lovelorn secretary to Eleanor Taylor Brand's Asian-African college professor, the women characters in these tales are girlfriends who collaborate to catch a thief . . . or get away with murder; P I.s who keep guns in their handbags . . . or their bras; crime victims, homeless women, or housewives whose ordinary lives take a brutal, sometimes fatal twist. But in each case, a master storyteller has created new, powerful fiction that plumbs the depth and breadth of a woman's art.

HELGA ANDERLE * AMEL BENABOURA * PIEKE BIERMANN * ELEANOR TAYLOR BLAND * P.M. CARLSON * FRANCES FYFIELD * SUSAN GEASON * LINDA GRANT * DICEY SCROGGINS JACKSON * MYRIAM LAURINI * SUSAN DUNLAP * IRINA MURAVYOVA * SARA PARETSKY * ANDREA SMITH * BARBARA WILSON * AND ELEVEN MORE GREAT WRITERS