Classic English Mystery

'No sign of foul play,' says Dr Carr after the post-mortem on Agatha Dawson. The case is closed. But Lord Peter Wimsey is not satisfied... With no clues to work on, he begins his own investigation. No clues, that is, until the sudden, senseless murder of Agatha's maid. What is going on in the mysterious Mrs Forrest's Mayfair flat? And can Wimsey catch a desperate murderer before he himself becomes one of the victims?

A society matron's life is threatened after she engineers the theft of her own priceless jewelry to pay off a gambling debt. Only a debonair connoisseur of crime can save her and recover her gems. For a price.

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists....

A mysterious woven metal artifact is found at a paleontological dig in Africa. Mystified experts, confounded by the impossible timeline they get from traditional dating methods, call upon a stubborn young man with a unique talent. Matthew Turner's gift is also his curse: When he touches any object, his awareness is flooded with the thoughts and feelings of those who touched it before him. It is a talent that many covet, some fear, and almost no one understands.

A reclusive writer of detective stories, Oe Shundei, has gone missing, leaving behind a suspicious trail of blackmailing letters to a former lover. Another detective novelist, his rival, is the only one who can find him. A sequence of macabre and appalling events follows.

Was it a living woman that stood by his side, or a dead body reanimated for the time or the occasion in some strange manner?

When Sherlock Holmes met his demise in "The Adventure of the Final Problem," published in 1893, the distress of the unsuspecting reading public was profound. For years fans showed no signs of letting Sherlock Holmes lie down and die. Eventually, Doyle saw fit to continue his Holmes' canon and wrote a series of 13 short stories, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1905.

Our story begins in 1785 when a young seafarer, Captain Thornhill, disappears while visiting the shop of a barber in London, a certain Sweeney Todd whose shop in Fleet Street is situated by St. Dunstan's church, just round the corner from the famous and popular meat pie shop run by Mrs. Lovett. Thornhill was carrying a string of pearls as a gift for Johanna Oakley, the sweetheart of his friend Mark Ingestrie who is missing, presumed lost at sea.

Originally published in 1922 and translated by Takashi Kojima, this classic short story was the inspiration for Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, about the murder of a samurai. Told from the perspective of multiple witnesses.

The citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, never tire of their heritage. For decades, the intellectuals of this little hamlet have continued endless debates about Concord’s favorite sons: Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and their contemporaries. Concord’s latter-day transcendental scholars are a strange bunch, but none is more peculiar than Homer Kelly, an expert on Emerson and on homicide. An old-fashioned murder is about to put both skills to the test.

The Austins are trying to settle into their new life in New York City, but their once close-knit family is pulling away from each other. With the Austins going in different directions, they don't notice that something sinister is going on in their neighborhood - and it's centered around them. A mysterious genie appears before Rob and Emily. A stranger approaches Vicky in the park and calls her by name. Members of a local gang are following their father. The entire Austin family is in danger. If they don't start telling each other what's going on, someone just might get killed.

When a leak is traced back to a small sub-section of SIS, it sparks off security checks, tensions and suspicions - the sort of atmosphere where mistakes could be made. This novel opens up the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the Secret Service.

In this tale, Holmes and his faithful companion Dr. John Watson are told of a curse which haunts the wealthy Dartmoor family of Sir Charles Baskerville. This centuries-old curse manifests itself as a gigantic and ferocious hound that is said to prowl the moors adjacent to the Baskerville estate. When Sir Charles drops dead of fright just outside the moor and the footprints of an enormous hound are discovered nearby, the cry goes out for Holmes to come to Dartmoor and solve the mystery.

A slumber party over at Lucille's richie nanna's big giant house is sure to be a dream come true for Junie B.! 'Cause what could possibly go wrong?

Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt 'Papa Doc' and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American, and Jones the confidence man - these are the 'comedians' of Graham Greene's title. Hiding behind their actors' masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. And, to begin with, they are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself.

When Melanie Ross first meets April Hall, she's not sure what to think. What other sixth grade girl wears her blonde hair piled in a twist and flaunts false eyelashes? But when the two girls discover the storage shed outside the A-Z Antiques and Curio Shop, they discover they both love anything to do with ancient Egypt. Soon the friends create the Egypt Game.

Once a city of enormous wealth and culture, Prague was home to emperors, alchemists, astronomers, and, as it’s whispered, hell portals. When music student Sarah Weston lands a summer job at Prague Castle cataloging Beethoven’s manuscripts, she has no idea how dangerous her life is about to become. Prague is a threshold, Sarah is warned, and it is steeped in blood. Soon after Sarah arrives, strange things begin to happen.

Ian Tregillis's Something More Than Night is a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas’s vision of Heaven. It’s a noir detective story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale, and the Voice of God.

Beloved author Mary Stewart's long-lost novella, now available again for the first time in 40 years. In 1879 a wealthy young woman elopes with an impoverished fisherman, leaving her family, who live on the volcanic island of Lanzarote, distraught. In 1968, 23-year-old Perdita West, secretary to the famous author Cora Gresham, visits Lanzarote, the strangest and wildest of the Canary Isles, on a research trip. They meet Cora's estranged son, Mike, and fall in love with the unusual, beautiful little island.

In this collection you'll hear Stephen Fry narrating Great Expectations, Scrooge's ghostly journey narrated by Jason Isaacs, Juliet Stevenson leading us through The Old Curiosity Shop, and many more award-winning narrators bringing Dickens' words to life. Also included here is a short introduction to Dickens' life and works from Dr Pete Orford, an internationally renowned Dickens expert and the Course Director for the Charles Dickens Studies MA at the University of Buckingham.