Starting with five titles this fall, Mysterious Press and HighBridge are collaborating to create two new audio imprints: Mysterious Press-HighBridge Audio will feature new titles from the renowned mystery publisher, now an imprint of Grove/Atlantic Books, and Mysterious Press-HighBridge Audio Classics will offer outstanding backlist titles, many of which have never been available on audio.

Sallie Neall, President of HighBridge, says “The Mysterious Press titles bring a wonderful richness and depth to our mystery list.” In the last year HighBridge has published mystery/suspense titles by Alafair Burke, Colin Cotterill, Sara Gran, Camilla Läckberg, Deon Meyer, and Håkan Nesser, as well as the Black Mask series, a multi-volume audio collection based on The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories edited by Otto Penzler, who is also the President and Publisher of Mysterious Press. “Our work with Otto on the Black Mask series naturally developed into a larger interest in the entire Mysterious Press line.”

“I’m pleased to be working with HighBridge to publish Mysterious Press titles in audio format,” says Penzler. “HighBridge has an outstanding reputation as an independent audio publisher and will give them the quality production they deserve.”

The first two titles published under the Mysterious Press-HighBridge Audio imprint are Headstone by Ken Bruen (October 2011) and The Corn Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates (November 2011).

The three Mysterious Press-HighBridge Audio Classics releasing this fall are Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake, The City When It Rains by Thomas H. Cook, and The Glitter Dome by Joseph Wambaugh, all publishing in November 2011.

HighBridge Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is an award-winning independent publisher of spoken word audio. Started by Minnesota Public Radio in the early 1980s to produce and distribute recordings of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, HighBridge now publishes a diverse list of New York Times best-selling fiction and nonfiction, humor, National Public Radio compilations, and more. HighBridge is distributed to the book trade by Workman Publishing, New York.

The Mysterious Press is a publishing company devoted entirely to mystery, crime, and suspense fiction. It was founded in 1975 by Otto Penzler, largely with the intention of raising the stature of mystery fiction. The recent incarnation of The Mysterious Press as an imprint of Grove/Atlantic will feature works by such authors as Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Joseph Wambaugh; Edgar Allan Poe Award–winning authors Thomas H. Cook, Andrew Klavan, and Thomas Perry; two-time nominee Ken Bruen; National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates; PEN West Award winner Robert Ward; and Pulitzer Prize–winner Robert Olen Butler.