"The crossword is a feature of the modern world, inspiring daily devotion and obsession from not just everyday citizens looking to pass the time but icons of American life, such as Bill Clinton, Yo-Yo Ma, and Martha Stewart. It was invented in 1913, almost by accident, when a newspaper editor at the New York World was casting around for something to fill some empty column space for that year's Christmas edition. Practically overnight, it became a...

Chief Harper comes to Cora Felton, asking her to solve a crossword puzzle found on the body of Old Man Overmeyer. Cora pokes into Overmeyer's death, hoping to prove he died of natural causes and soon learns the cranky hermit was the sole surviving member of a forty-year-old stock pooling agreement.

A brilliant crossword puzzle editor finds her life turned upside-down when she is pulled into a police investigation after several of the clues in her recent puzzles are linked to unsolved crimes. Proving her innocence means leaving the comfort of her sheltered world and working with a tough police detective, puzzling through clues together in order to crack the case, as the two are fish out of water in each other's worlds.

Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen's Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator's compulsively readable memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women's work and feminist protest. The indisputable "queen of crosswords," Anna Shechtman published her first New York Times puzzle at age nineteen, and later, spearheaded the The New Yorker's popular crossword section. Working...

A journey into the world of Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor at The New York Times. Shortz has spent his entire lifetime studying, creating and editing puzzles, and has built a huge following along the way including Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.

Irrepressible crossword editor and amateur sleuth Belle Graham and her private detective partner, Rosco Polycrates, return in five crossword puzzle mysteries, which are accompanied by five crossword puzzles.