Short Stories/Novellas

The Instant Babe Sherman became desperate, he began to make mistakes—just two mistakes, but either could cost his life! Originally published in Detective Fiction Weekly (1936).

The story that inspired the Alfred Hitchcock film masterpiece! Cornell Woolrich. His name represents steamy, suspenseful fiction, chilling encounters on the dark and sultry landscape of urban America in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, in this special collection, are his classic thrilers, including 'Rear Window', the story of Hal Jeffries who, trapped in his apartment because of a broken leg, takes to watching his neighbours through his rear window, and becomes certain that one of those neighbours is a murderer. Also included are such haunting, heart-stopping tales as those involving a man who finds his wife buried alive; a girl trapped with a deranged murderer who likes to knife his victims while dancing; and a woman seizing her chance to escape a sadistic husband, only to find her dream go terrifyingly wrong.

Cornell Woolrich is "our greatest writer of Suspense Fiction" - Francis Nevins, Woolrich biographer. Mystery in Room 913 is one of Woolrich's short stories considered a novella based upon it's length. Set in New York, a place he lived with his mother, and where many of his stories take place, it's the story of Room 913 in the Hotel St. Anselm, where three men check in and unexplainably jump out of the window to their deaths. The detective who investigates refuses to believe that all three men coincidentally committed suicide in the same room of the same hotel. Not until the detective checks into the room himself does the reader learn of the secret of Room 913. This is one of Cornell Woolrich's classics. It delivers the kind of suspense that Woolrich fans have come to love. The story was also published under the title "The Room with Something Wrong" in a collection of stories entitled "Somebody on the Phone." Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 December 1903 – 25 September 1968) is one of America's best crime and noir writers who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley. He's often compared to other celebrated crime writers of his day, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler. He attended New York's Columbia University but left school in 1926 without graduating when his first novel, "Cover Charge", was published. "Cover Charge" was one of six of his novels that he credits as inspired by the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Woolrich soon turned to pulp and detective fiction, often published under his pseudonyms. His best known story today is his 1942 "It Had to Be Murder" for the simple reason that it was adapted into the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie "Rear Window"starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. It was remade as a television film by Christopher Reeve in 1998. Check out the countless other Woolrich Novels, Novellas and Short Stories, also available as EBooks, from the Estate of Cornell Woolrich and Renaissance Literary & Talent!