Daniel Stashower Books In Order

Publication Order of Harry Houdini Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Malice Domestic Books

Publication Order of The Further Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Daniel Stashower
Daniel Stashower is the author of the Edgar Award winning “Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle”, which was also won a 2000 Agatha Award for best critical/biographical work. He’s received the The Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing and he has spent a year as a visiting Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford.

Having worked as a freelance journalist since 1986, his articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Geographic Traveller, Connoisseur, and Smithsonian Magazine.

“The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man” was nominated for an Edgar Award in the year 1986 for best first novel. “A Deliberate Form of Frenzy” was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story in 1988.

“Elephants in the Distance” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 1989. Paul Galliard is a magician by heredity and training: his dad died performing an infamous trick which through the centuries has claimed over a dozen magicians’ lives, called the Bullet Catch. Paul is a pragmatist and confines his conjuring to commercials; showing up often on television screens, demonstrating the magical power of some brand of household cleanser.

But then he gets a call. This producer wants to do this show highlighting his dad’s old cronies, those grizzled veterans of the glory days of television magic acts. Paul would like to give them one last shot at the limelight. However there is a catch. A Bullet Catch, to be more precise. The show will only go on if Paul does the trick that killed his dad.

“The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man” is the first novel in the “Henry Houdini Mystery” series and was released in 1985. When Harry Houdini gets framed and locked up for espionage, Sherlock Holmes makes a vow to clear his good name, with the pair joining forces to take blackmailers on that have targeted the Prince of Wales.

It is a case that requires all of their skills—both physical and mental. Can this daring duo solve what people have taken to calling ‘The Crime of the Century’?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s timeless creation has returned in a new series of handsomely designed detective novels. From the earliest days of Holmes’ career to his astonishing encounters with Martian Invaders, the Further Adventures series encapsulates the most thrilling and varied cases of the worlds’ greatest detective.

“The Dime Museum Murders” is the second novel in the “Henry Houdini Mystery” series and was released in 1999. In 1897, and New York City is teeming with immigrants and criminals, freshly made millionaires and hustlers, con artists and fine artists. Among them is a rabbi’s son who’s calling himself Houdini. He’s struggling to make it in the brutal entertainment business when detectives call on him to try the most amazing feat of his fledgling career: solve the mystery of this toy tycoon murdered in his posh Fifth Avenue mansion.

It is a challenge that Harry, who is never at a loss for self-confidence, is more than willing to accept. However soon two more murders are connected to this first one, and the investigation soon leads into the odd world of rare curios and the collectors that pay fortunes just to own them.

Now, this master magician, along with the help of Dash Hardeen, his reluctant brother, have to uncover a motive for murder and track a killer back to his hidden lair. It’s an appointment with danger from which not even the great Houdini can possibly escape.

“The Floating Lady Murder” is the third novel in the “Henry Houdini Mystery” series and was released in 2000. Now you see her, now you don’t.

It is tough to gain the attention of the public in turn-of-the-century New York, even if you happen to be the greatest escape artist the world’s ever seen. So this young performer that calls himself Harry Houdini has to be content, at least for the time being, working for the “Dean of American Magicians”, the internationally renowned Keller.

However tragedy strikes at the inaugural performance of the Floating Lady (the master’s most astonishing illusion), when Keller’s levitating assistant plummets to the ground abruptly, apparently to her death. But an investigation quickly reveals that it is a drowning, and not some fatal fall, which has killed this unfortunate young woman. It’s an intriguing impossibility to be certain.

And it is the great, albeit unsung, Houdini, along with the aid of Dash (his brother) and Bess (his wife), who have to solve this deadly conundrum, leading all of them into a maze of grim deceptions, twisted schemes, and bloodletting that is not just stage fakery.

“The Beautiful Cigar Girl” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2006. A stunned city, a gruesome murder, and Edgar Allan Poe come to life in vivid detail in this shockingly true story.

July 28, 1841. A young woman’s battered body is discovered floating in the Hudson River. It was quickly learned that it was Mary Rogers, a lovely twenty-year-old cigar salesgirl that had gone missing just three days before. By nightfall, news about the girl’s death spread and sent Manhattan into a spasm of outrage and terror.

In the following months, the gruesome details of this murder pushed American journalism into some previously unimagined realms of sensationalism. However despite media pressures, New York City’s disjointed and unregulated police force proved to be unable to mount any kind of effective investigation, and the crime is still unsolved.

One year after Mary’s murder, while public interest in the case started waning, one struggling author named Edgar Allan Poe chose to take the case on. At the time of this murder, Poe (currently age 31) had just published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (his groundbreaking detective story). One year later, though, his fortunes had taken a turn for the worse. Desperate for some kind of success, he sent his famous detective C. Auguste Dupin, out on the case of a lifetime. To actually solve this baffling murder of Mary Rogers in “The Mystery of Marie Roget”.

Daniel captures the mystery and drama of New York during the mid-nineteenth century, and illuminates the spellbinding crime which transformed an entire city.