Queens of Mystery gathers more than forty gripping tales in which women investigate crimes, decipher motives, and contest the assumptions that once confined them to the margins of detective fiction. Ranging from sensation-inflected intrigue and domestic mystery to ingenious puzzles, disguise plots, and courtroom-adjacent investigations, the volume illuminates the formative variety of popular crime writing. Its standout narratives place the woman sleuth at the center of action, making perception, social knowledge, and persistence essential instruments of detection. The contributors represent a rich cross-section of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mystery culture. Their work emerges from the intertwined traditions of Victorian sensation fiction, the New Woman novel, penny-dreadful and magazine serialization, and the developing conventions of the Golden Age detective story. Across these varied professional and cultural settings, the collection's writers reimagine investigative authority: women are not merely victims, suspects, or romantic auxiliaries, but interpreters of evidence and agents of justice. The presence of both named authors and pseudonymous popular writers further reveals the genre's broad publishing ecology. Recommended for students, mystery devotees, and readers of women's literary history, this anthology offers an unusually capacious introduction to female detection before its modern canon hardened. Its many voices invite comparison across styles, social worlds, and narrative strategies, while fostering a lively dialogue about gender, crime, and literary ingenuity.