Cornell Woolrich. His name conjures a maelstrom of nerve- shattering suspense spawned by the stark, cynical landscape of urban America in the 1930s and 1940s.

This collection spotlights thirteen of his most unforgettable narratives, including REAR WINDOW, which watches Hal Jeffries confined with a broken leg to a tiny apartment that only allows him to survey the daily lives of his neighbors across the courtyard?until he discovers one of them is a cold-blooded murderer and that he?s the next victim.

Other thrillers involve a woman trapped with a psychotic stranger obsessed with knifing his victims on the dance floor; a man who finds his bride buried alive; and a housewife seizing her chance to escape a sadistic husband, only to find her dream go terrifyingly wrong.

With REAR WINDOW, as in the other stories in this volume, Woolrich proves that, like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain, he remains one of the all-time masters of the noir genre.