Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore

09/01/2026

A Court of Thorns & Roses Night Court Paperback Set $46.50. Come and get it!
Call Bookwise at 561-347-6455 for directions.

08/15/2026

Bookwise

08/11/2026

Erle Stanley Gardner.
We get requests for certain older mystery writers — Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Josephine Tey, Arthur Upfield — all the time but only Agatha Christie is more requested than Erle Stanley Gardner — and we see his books much less often.
So you can imagine how pleased we were to take in TWO collections of his work in the same week. The first batch (pictured) was of fourteen titles in their fragile dust jackets (the books, alas, are reprints, not firsts — sorry, hi-end collectors). The second batch is twenty+ volumes of the two-in-one editions sold via mail order, issued without jackets.
Today, we think of Baldacci, Grisham, Sanford et al as bestseller machines, cranking out two books a year — but Gardner was there first. Not limited to the Perry Mason books for which he’s best known, he wrote another series with an honest D.A. central character and another based on a P.I. firm, publishing novels, short stories, and nonfiction under a dozen pen names and reviewing movie and tv scripts.
Executives at his hardcover publisher, William Morrow, and its paperback partner, Pocket Books realized at some point in the early-mid 1950s that Gardner — a smoker already in his sixties — accounted for a quarter of all the firms’ revenue and was not going to live forever. They began looking — even advertising — for other writers with the ingenuity and stamina to take up the ESG mantle.
They found one Evan Hunter, then building his literary reputation with books like “The Blackboard Jungle,” later filmed. Hunter proposed a series centered not on one central character but an ensemble cast working together in a never-named big city. Pocket Books liked the idea. His “Cop Hater” appeared as a paperback original in 1956 by “Ed McBain” — Hunter hoping to keep his crime-writing career and reputation separate from his literary one — and the 87th Precinct series was born. It never became the breadwinner that Perry Mason had been, but won critical acclaim, was widely imitated and admired (if not always acknowledged: lookin’ at you, Steven Bochco and Hill Street Blues), and ultimately ran to 55 books, the last appearing in 2005, the same year Hunter/McBain passed.
Pick up some Gardner while you can. And yes, we have some McBain in stock, too, for the moment — as with the other luminaries mentioned above, never as much as we’d like.

05/19/2026

Louise Penny UK Paperback Armand Gamache Set of Books 2-15 available for purchase $70.

05/18/2026

We are open Memorial Day Monday May 25, 2026. 10-6 PM.

03/13/2026

In our New Arrivals section: We see film books all the time, of course, but this batch covers an unusual breadth of subjects, including lots of off-screen talent: Hal Ashby, Saul Bass, Bruce Dern, Victor Fleming, Thomas Ince, Rex Ingram, David Lean, Peter Lorre, Bella Lugosi, Pola Negri, Warren Oates, Arthur Penn, Claude Rains, Josef von Sternberg, Hal Wallis, Raoul Walsh, Charles Walters, Billy Wilder and William Wyler among others.
A little less mainstream, a bit more depth, not the celebrity bios we see every day.
Here for you Monday-Saturday 10-6..

01/30/2026

Don't miss Writers Live 2026 with Murder on the Beach and Palm Beach County Library System.

12/22/2025

We will be closed Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve & New Years Day. Happy Holidays and see you next year! 🎄🥳

Happy Holidays everyone and see you next year! 🎄🍾

11/29/2025

With Bookwise – I just got recognized as one of their top fans! 🎉

11/24/2025

Thursday November 27, 2025
Closed For Thanksgiving.
Happy Holidays! 🦃