The Return of the Black Widowers


The Return of the Black Widowers is a collection of short mystery stories by American writer Isaac Asimov, featuring his fictional [Gentlemen's Gentlemen's club (traditional)|club (traditional)|club] of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. It was first published in hardcover by Carroll & Graf in December 2003, and in trade paperback by the same publisher in November 2005.
This book is the last of six books that collect the stories of the Black Widowers, a club based on a literary dining club Asimov belonged to known as the Trap Door Spiders.Asimov 1994, I. Asimov, chapter "120. The Trap Door Spiders". It was assembled and edited after Asimov's death by Charles Ardai, and collects the last six stories Asimov wrote for the series. These six stories are preceded by an introduction by Harlan Ellison, ten stories selected by the editor as the best from the previous Black Widowers collections, and a homage by William Brittain. They are then followed by an eleventh reprinted tale featuring a fictionalized version of Ellison, a new Black Widowers tale by Ardai, and an afterword by Asimov on the creation of the series drawn from his autobiography I. Asimov.

Contents

  • "Introduction"
  • "The Acquisitive Chuckle"
  • "Ph As in Phony"
  • "Early Sunday Morning"
  • "The Obvious Factor"
  • "The Iron Gem"
  • "To the Barest"
  • "Sixty Million Trillion Combinations"
  • "The Wrong House"
  • "The Redhead"
  • "Triple Devil"
  • "The Men Who Read Isaac Asimov"
  • "Northwestward"
  • "Yes, but Why?"
  • "Lost in a Space Warp"
  • "Police at the Door"
  • "The Haunted Cabin"
  • "The Guest's Guest"
  • "The Woman in the Bar"
  • "The Last Story"
  • "Afterword"