Puzzles of the Black Widowers is a collection of mystery short stories by American author Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...

, featuring his fictional club of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers

Black Widowers

The Black Widowers is a fictional men-only dining club created by Isaac Asimov for a series of sixty-six mystery stories which he started writing in 1971...

. It was first published in hardcover

Hardcover

A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...

 by Doubleday in 1990, and in paperback

Paperback

Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...

 by Bantam Books

Bantam Books

Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...

 in 1991.

This book is the fifth of the six books featuring the Black Widowers. It collects twelve stories by Asimov, most reprinted from mystery magazines and a few previously unpublished, together with a general introduction and an afterword following each story by the author. Each story involves the club members' knowledge of trivia

Trivia

The trivia are the three lower Artes Liberales, i.e. grammar, rhetoric and logic. These were the topics of basic education, foundational to the quadrivia of higher education, and hence the material of basic education, of interest only to undergraduates...

.

Contents

• "Introduction"
• "The Fourth Homonym"
• "Unique Is Where You Find It"
• "The Lucky Piece"
• "Triple Devil"
• "Sunset on the Water"
• "Where Is He?"
• "The Old Purse"
• "The Quiet Place"
• "The Four-Leaf Clover"
• "The Envelope"
• "The Alibi"
• "The Recipe"

External links

• "Puzzles of the Black Widowers" - a book review by John H. Jenkins