The Collected Short Stories

First edition published in hardback, 1997 - HarperCollins

Millions of readers around the world have relished Jeffrey Archer's short stories. Now, for the first time, all three collections are gathered together in one handsome volume.

One of the most acclaimed authors writing today, Jeffrey Archer is a dazzling storyteller. A master of character and suspense, he has a gift for the unexpected plot twist that has catapulted all three of his short story collections -- A Quiver Full of Arrows, A Twist in the Tale, and Twelve Red Herrings -- onto international bestseller lists and earned him widespread critical praise.

The stories from A Quiver Full of Arrows take us on a tour of ancient heirlooms and modern romance, of cutthroat business and kindly strangers, of lives lived in the realms of power. Fortunes are made and squandered, honour betrayed and redeemed, love lost and rediscovered. As Publishers Weekly said about this collection, "Somerset Maugham never penned anything so swift or urbanely witty as this."

The spellbinding stories from A Twist in the Tale lead us on a journey of thwarted ambition, undying passion, and unanswered honour -- to places we've never visited and people we'll never forget. Readers will meet an extraordinary cast of diverse characters: a philandering husband who thinks he's committed a perfect murder, a self-assured chess champion who plays a beautiful woman for stakes far higher than the secrets of a Swiss bank.

The New York Times raved about A Twist in the Tale, "Jeffrey Archer plays a subtle cat-and-mouse game with the reader in twelve original stories that end, more often than not, with our collective whiskers twitching in surprise."

From his inventive third collection, Twelve Red Herrings, comes a dozen delectable morsels in which human beings are given opportunities to seize, crucial problems to solve, or dangers to avoid. And buried in each is a red herring Archer challenged his readers to uncover. In these stories things are never quite what they seem: an imprisoned man is certain that his supposed murder victim is very much alive, a female driver is tailed relentlessly by a menacing leather-jacketed figure in a pursuing vehicle; a young artist gets the biggest break of her career, an escaped Iraqi on Saddam Hussein's death list lands unexpectedly in his homeland. The Daily News Express hailed Twelve Red Herrings as "Outstanding... White-knuckled suspense and witty denouncements."

These 36 tales are Jeffrey Archer at the peak of his form. Wonderfully entertaining, The Collected Short Stories will astonish, delight, and enthral Jeffrey's many fans, both old and new.

Somerset Maugham never penned anything so swift or urbanely witty as this.
-- Publishers Weekly