paul auster's brilliant debut novels, city of glass, ghosts, and the locked room, are here collected in a cloth edition for the first time in the united states. these three novels brought auster international acclaim for his creation of a new genre, mixing elements of the standard detective fiction and postmodern fiction. city of glass combines dark, kafka-like humor with all the suspense of a hitchcock film as a writer of detective stories becomes embroiled in a complex and puzzling series of events, beginning with a call from a stranger in the middle of the night asking for the author - paul auster - himself. ghosts, the second volume of this interconnected trilogy, introduces blue, a private detective hired to watch a man named black, who, as he becomes intermeshed into a haunting and claustrophobic game of hide-and-seek, is lured into the very trap he has created. the final volume, the locked room, also begins with a mystery, told this time in the first-person narrative. the nameless hero journeys into the unknown as he attempts to reconstruct the past which he has experienced almost as a dream. together these three fictions lead the reader on adventures that expand the mind as they entertain.