Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop, edited by Otto Penzler is a series of short stories in a mini book. Penzler is an editor of mystery fiction, and owns The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. This book is part of a
A holiday tradition where authors submit stories which are released in a mini book.

The only rules are that it should be set during the Christmas season, involve a mystery, and have at least some of the action take place at the mysterious book shop.

I really enjoyed the variety of mysteries in this series. I appreciated the different points of view, and the different authors and how they portrayed their characters. The short stories helped this to be a quick read. I also liked how all of the books somehow revolved around Christmas or the holiday season, and how this was celebrated in different ways by the individuals and families. I was also pleasantly surprised with the change of narrators in some of the short stories. Added to the variety!

I definitely recommend this book of short stories! I think this would be a great book to read in the holiday season, and has a good variety to be enjoyed by different readers. Thank you to NetGalley, and to the author, publisher, and narrator for an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a fun collection of twelve Christmastime stories written for the Mysterious Bookshop in NYC. The requirements to be included in the collection are as follows: be set at Christmastime, involve a crime of some kind, or the suspicion of one, and be set at least partially in the Mysterious Bookshop.

I had a great time listening to this audiobook and was pleased to discover several new to me authors that I will have fun exploring in the future. I had already read books by Laura Lippman, Tom Mead, Jeffrey Deaver and Rob Hart, so I was also happy to have authors known to me included.

I had a very hard time choosing which story was my favorite - it came down to a four way tie between Wolf Trap, Hester’s Gift, Sargent Santa and Here We Come A-Wassailing.

This would be a great collection to re-read each holiday season to get you in the mood for a trip to NYC, stopping by The Mysterious Bookshop, and solving mysteries there. I really liked it when a fictional version of Otto Penzler was included in the stories.

Here is a list of the stories and their authors:

1. Black Christmas by Jason Starr
2. A midnight clear by Lyndsay Faye
3. Wolf Trap by Loren D Estleman
4. Secret Santa by Ace Atkins
5. The gift of the Wise Guy by Rob Hart
6. Snowflake Time by Laura Lippman
7. The Christmas Party by Jeffrey Deaver
8. Here We Come A-Wassailing by Thomas Perry
9. A Christmas Puzzle by Ragnar Jónasson
10. Hester's Gift by Tom Mead
11. Sargent Santa by David Gordon
12. End Game by Martin Edwards

The narrators (Jennifer Pickens and Graham Rawat) did a great job too.

Special thanks to Netgalley and RBMedia for a copy of the audiobook in exchange for my honest opinion.

Overall I thought this was a pretty interesting book It had a good variety of different stories I feel like there would be a story for just about everyone in this book The different story is kept me roped in from the beginning until the end they were short they were sweet but they were also very interesting and very detailed there was also a really good variety of different stories so like I said there's something for everyone but also it helped to switch things up it wasn't the same repetitive story in different formats It was something new and different every single time.

If you are expecting happy, warm Christmas stories, this isn’t it. They take place around Christmastime, but they weren’t what I would consider Christmas stories. They are a bit dark and grim. My favorites were “The Christmas Party" by Jeffery Deaver, “Here We Come A-Wassailing" by Thomas Perry, and "A Christmas Puzzle" by Ragnar Jónasson.

The narrators, Jennifer Pickens and Graham Rowat, did an excellent job with all the stories.

Thank you to the author, HighBridge Audio, and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) copy of this book and I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

Just like the Twelve Days of Christmas, these dozen short stories are a gift wrapped in tinsel. After all, they were presents for the patrons of New York’s legendary Mysterious Bookstore. Now everyone can read the work of amazing authors who were asked to follow only a few rules: their story must be set at Christmastime, involving a crime or the suspicion of one, and set in the bookstore. Other than that, each tale is completely different and there isn’t a single bad one. Some made me chuckle, others made me tear up. Sergeant Santa by David Gordon, made me laugh and cry at the same time. Snowflake Time by Laura Lippman had me in stitches (indeed, feel free to kill anyone you want in fiction but do not hurt the kitty!). Some were darker than others, and all of them show these contemporary authors’ love for their classic counterparts, especially A Christmas Puzzle by Ragnar Johasson or Wolfe Trap by Loren Estleman. The audiobook narration by Graham Rowat and Jennifer Pickens shows impressive acting skills, as they both have to portray many different characters, and they nail the tone of each story, from very dark to laugh out loud funny. The collection itself is like an Advent calendar, you don’t know what’s coming next, but you know it will be good.
I chose to listen to this audiobook and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/HighBridge Audio.