He had no name, no language, no friends. He had not been born and he could not multiply. He had just 'Happened' - an accidental combination of atoms that could think and learn and do a lot of incredible things. He had floated free in space for billions of years, for all he knew he was the only living thing in the Universe. So when he met three human beings wrangling and bickering in their funny-looking space ship, his whole life changed. Because he suddenly knew that he could make them do anything he wanted.

Taking place over the span of a single evening, we find a city enflamed by fear. A serial killer is on the loose, and while the maniac ties the city into knots, the lives of ordinary citizens are drawn into an inescapable spiral of greed and chance.

Fredric Brown was an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. He is known for his use of humor and for his mastery of the "short short" form—stories of 1 to 3 pages, often with ingenious plotting devices and surprise endings. According to his wife, Fredric Brown hated to write. So he did everything he could to avoid it. He'd play his flute, challenge a friend to a game of chess, or tease Ming Tah, his Siamese cat. If Brown had trouble working out a certain story, he would hop on a long bus trip and just sit and think and plot for days on end. When Brown finally returned home and sat himself in front of the typewriter, he produced work in a variety of genres: mystery, science fiction, short fantasy, black comedy–and sometimes, all of the above. Сontents: Hall of Mirrors Two Timer Keep Out

Compiled in one book, the essential collection of stories by Fredric Brown: Earthmen Bearing Gifts Happy Ending Hall of Mirrors Keep Out Two Timer

Mystery icon and original Dutton Guilt Edged Mysteries author Fredric Brown’s inventive and shocking novel We All Killed Grandma, first published in 1952, is available as an eBook for the first time! In We All Killed Grandma, Rod Britten’s first memory is speaking to the police on the phone, staring at the body of a woman with a bullet in her brain. He is completely unable to answer the police’s questions about who he is, where he is, or how he came to discover the woman — who he soon learns is his own grandmother. The killing is written off as a botched burglary, but Rod is determined to discover the truth, both about his life before the amnesia and his grandmother’s death. His quest entangles him with Robin, his beautiful ex-wife who he may be falling in love with all over again, but also puts him in grave danger: what does he know about the murder that his mind won’t let him remember? Edgar Award winning author Fredric Brown, whom Mickey Spillane called “my favorite writer of all time,” weaves a fascinating mystery, now available to a whole new generation of readers.

THEY WERE GREEN, THEY WERE LITTLE, THEY WERE BALD AS BILLIARD BALLS AND THEY WERE EVERYWHERE! Luke Devereaux was a science fiction writer, holed up in a desert shack waiting for inspiration. He was the first to see a Martian - but he certainly wasn't the last. It was estimated that one billion of them had arrived - one to every three human beings on Earth. Obnoxious green creatures who could be seen and heard (but not harmed) and who probed private sex lives as shamelessly as they exposed government secrets. No one knew why they had come. No one knew how to make them go away - except perhaps, Luke Devereaux. Unfortunately he was going slightly bananas, so it wouldn't be easy. But for a science fiction writer nothing was impossible...

BUG-EYED MONSTERS ON BROADWAY Pulp SF magazine editor Keith Winton was answering a letter from a teenage fan when the first moon rocket fell back to Earth and blew him away. But where to? Greenville, New York, looked the same, but Bems (Bug-Eyed Monsters) just like the ones on the cover of Startling Stories walked the streets without attracting undue comment. And when he brought out a half-dollar coin in a drugstore, the cops wanted to shoot him on sight as an Arcturian spy. Wait a minute. Seven-foot purple moon-monsters? Earth at war with Arcturus? General Dwight D. Eisenhower in command of Venus Sector? What mad universe was this? One thing was for sure: Keith Winton had to find out fast - or he'd be good and dead, in this universe or any other.

“A masterfully delivered tale of an inconspicuous citizen who [finds] murder simple . . . The climax packs a brilliant wallop.” —Chicago Tribune Relentlessly twisting and blackly funny, this noir novel by Edgar Award winner Fredric Brown is a portrait of a seemingly upstanding print shop owner in mid-twentieth-century Los Angeles who has successfully murdered his wife—and is now feeling quite confident about his criminal skills. As victims start falling like dominoes, this fast-paced tale works its way to a memorable end, marking a masterwork by this celebrated author of mysteries and crime thrillers. “A real pro . . . a natural storyteller.” —The New York Times Book Review

This edition features • illustrations • a linked Table of Contents CONTENTS TWO TIMER EARTHMEN BEARING GIFTS HAPPY ENDING HALL OF MIRRORS KEEP OUT

Vice and murder prowl the back alleys of North Side Chicago... Ed Hunter is eighteen, and he isn’t happy. He doesn’t want to end up like his father, a linotype operator and a drunk, married to a harridan, with a harridan-in-training stepdaughter. Ed wants out, he wants to live, he wants to see the world before it’s too late. Then his father doesn’t come home one night, and Ed finds out how good he had it. The bulk of the book has Ed teaming up with Uncle Ambrose, a former carny worker, and trying to find out who killed Ed’s dad. But the title is as much a coming-of-age tale as it is a pulp. Fredric Brown’s first mystery novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint, won the Edgar Award for outstanding first mystery novel.