Kate Fansler's husband, Reed, has been kidnapped--and will be killed unless Kate obeys the carefully delineated directives of a ransom note. Tormented by her own puzzled heart, Kate seeks solace and wise counsel from both old friends and new. But who precisely is the enemy? Is he or she a vengeful colleague? A hostile student? A terrorist sect? The questions mount as Kate searches for Reed--accompanied by her trusty new companion, a Saint Bernard puppy named Bancroft. Hovering near Kate and Bancroft are rampant cruelties and calculated menace. The moment is ripe for murder. . . .

Kate Fansler's husband, Reed has been kidnapped--and will be killed unless Kate obeys the carefully delineated directives of a ransom note. Tormented by her own puzzled heart, Kate seeks solace and wise counsel from friends both old and new. But who precisely is the enemy? The questions mount as Kate searches for Reed--accompanied by her trusty new companion, a Saint Bernard puppy named Bancroft.

Cora Felton, the Puzzle Lady, is stunned when Benny Southstreet, a two-bit gambler, accuses her of stealing a crossword puzzle, a case that is further complicated when her own attorney files a plagiarism suit against her and the police arrest her for murder.

The Puzzle Lady embarks on another adventure involving one classic movie and featuring new puzzles by Will Shortz When an elderly boarder at a Bakerhaven bed-and-breakfast drops dead during afternoon tea, there's nothing particularly suspicious about it—except for the Sudoku in his jacket pocket. But when a second body turns up in the window seat and an autopsy shows both men were poisoned with elderberry wine, the Puzzle Lady suspects she's dealing with a cold-blooded killer who for some reason is copying the Cary Grant movie Arsenic and Old Lace, in which two old ladies who run a boarding house poison elderly widowers and bury them in the basement. More murders, more puzzles, and a grave dug in the cellar seem to cement the theory. Ordinarily, Cora would eat a case like this for breakfast, but for once she can't figure it out. And she's not sure if the clues don't add up, or if the much-married Puzzle Lady is just distracted by being involved in her first romantic entanglement in years. Arsenic and Old Puzzles is filled with laughs, mayhem, and fun new puzzles by Will Shortz. Mystery and puzzle fans will find much to enjoy in this latest treat from Parnell Hall.

Fully illustrated in color, this treasure trove features 250 puzzles on every imaginable theme and subject. The book is a bonanza of mazes, word games, visual and logic puzzles, and more.

Learning programming with one of “the coolest applications around”: algorithmic puzzles ranging from scheduling selfie time to verifying the six degrees of separation hypothesis. This book builds a bridge between the recreational world of algorithmic puzzles (puzzles that can be solved by algorithms) and the pragmatic world of computer programming, teaching readers to program while solving puzzles. Few introductory students want to program for programming's sake. Puzzles are real-world applications that are attention grabbing, intriguing, and easy to describe. Each lesson starts with the description of a puzzle. After a failed attempt or two at solving the puzzle, the reader arrives at an Aha! moment—a search strategy, data structure, or mathematical fact—and the solution presents itself. The solution to the puzzle becomes the specification of the code to be written. Readers will thus know what the code is supposed to do before seeing the code itself. This represents a pedagogical philosophy that decouples understanding the functionality of the code from understanding programming language syntax and semantics. Python syntax and semantics required to understand the code are explained as needed for each puzzle. Readers need only the rudimentary grasp of programming concepts that can be obtained from introductory or AP computer science classes in high school. The book includes more than twenty puzzles and more than seventy programming exercises that vary in difficulty. Many of the puzzles are well known and have appeared in publications and on websites in many variations. They range from scheduling selfie time with celebrities to solving Sudoku problems in seconds to verifying the six degrees of separation hypothesis. The code for selected puzzle solutions is downloadable from the book's website; the code for all puzzle solutions is available to instructors.