It’s our annual Halloween kickoff—for the next four Black Cats, extra spooky stories will be creeping and crawling into every issue. This time, we have vampires and scarecrows and werewolves (oh my!) as well as sinister strangers for your reading pleasure. Plus other tricks and treats.Here’s the complete lineup—Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure:“Skip Trace,” by Angela Zeman [Michael Bracken Presents short st...

TEMPERS FLARE IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT……And the wrong move, the wrong word, even the wrong look can set off any man or woman already driven past their boiling point. A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, edited by bestselling author Jeffery Deaver, features 20 stories of people dealing with not just the torrid weather, but all different kinds of heat. From a retired police chief pitching in on a missing dog report that leads to him solving a murder to...

When New Mexico private eye Skip Rose is hired to determine why a woman was murdered in Gary, Indiana, the things he learns strike closer to home than he ever expected.

Theft and murder derail a comedienne's Catskills comeback.When she meets Mrs. Risk, Rachel is eighteen, married, and living in fear. Her fishmonger husband is three decades older than her and intent on killing her slowly. Each day Rachel grows weaker -- the result of pesticides that Ike sneaks into her food. Only the eccentric Mrs. Risk, whom the local children call a witch, sees Ike's plan. With a simple deception, she frightens Ike into having a heart attack, sav...