Horror puzzle books

Authorship here is entirely meta; there’s a sense in which the Shortz corpus seems like a grand publishing performance-art piece. Shortz’s bibliography is like a model-railroad-size recreation of the entire publishing world in puzzle-addled miniature. He’s the “author” of horror puzzle books (The Little Orange Book of Harrowing Sudoku: 335 Frighteningly Fierce Puzzles), business performance & productivity puzzle books (KenKen for your Coffee Break: 100 Logic Puzzles to Make You Smarter), highbrow puzzle books (The New York Times Forever Sunday Crossword Puzzle Book), puzzles-for-dummies books (Will Shortz Presents Everyday Easy Sudoku), even New-Agey self-help puzzle books (The New York Times Soul-Soothing Crosswords: Seventy-Five Relaxing Puzzles). The only genre that seemed to be missing was the novel—now that’s a puzzle book I’d like to see. —Matthew Battles, "Will Shortz & the Death of the Author," Hilobrow