Classic Fiction Mysteries

This classic precursor to the modern-day spy novel was recently in headlines when it was revealed that the Unabomber drew considerable inspiration from its prophetic portrait of terrorism. Written in 1907 and set in Edwardian London, The Secret Agent resonates just as strongly in today's world, where a handful of fanatics can still play mad politics and victimize the innocent.

What else did they have to do with their days? They ambled around casually. From time to time, they paused, not because they were out of breath but to admire a tree, a house, the play of light and shadow, or a face. While taking a much-needed rest cure in Vichy with his wife, Maigret feels compelled to help with a local investigation, unravelling the secrets of the spa town's elegant inhabitants.

The enigmatic Mr Reeder investigates eight cases involving baffling burglary and blackmail, mendacious and merciless murderers, and cruel convicts and convincing cons, using his criminal mind to solve these unusual and peculiar mysteries. A lot of his inquiries involve Margaret Belman, a very pretty and appealing young lady who lives nearby, and the detective finds himself more and more attracted to this femme fatale. Surely these feelings cannot be mutual....

The Trial by Franz Kafka, narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, begins like a nightmare - only K is awake, and he is being arrested and indicted on charges he never learns. He is caught up in a legal system that will destroy his life. This is a text that often is used in English classes because it is so deep. Kafka attacks the norms of society, religion, and the legal system.

The classic vampire story by Bram Stoker revolves around a struggle between good and evil, tradition and modernity, and lust versus chastity. The author didn’t invent vampires, but his novel has so captured the public’s imagination that he is rightly considered their popularizer. Listen and you will meet not only the Count himself, but heroes Jonathan Harker and Abraham Van Helsing, plus an array of madmen, psychiatrists, and fair maidens who cross paths with the fanged menace.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

A sparkling new translation of this flashback to the start of Inspector Maigret's career, part of the new Penguin Maigret series. The profession he had always yearned for did not actually exist...he imagined a cross between a doctor and a priest - a man capable of understanding another's destiny at first glance. The very first investigation by eager young police secretary Jules Maigret leads him to a wealthy Paris family's dark secrets.

Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter, Elizabeth, is in trouble; she just doesn't know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact she has had with Elizabeth for years. Now, Elizabeth has sent her a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at San Francisco's most luxurious hotel. Yet she has not tried to contact Martha since she arrived, leaving her lonely, confused, and a little bit worried. Into the story steps Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who lives at the hotel and is drawn to Martha's good nature and ability to pinpoint the truth of a matter.

A young woman is found dead in a college while the students demonstrate. It turns out she was the principal's secretary, and there was more to her than meets the eye. Who wanted her dead and why? And what does it have to do with the student revolt led by a charismatic firebrand from Iraq? Inspector John Crow is called in and has little doubt who's responsible, but a series of surprises will make him reconsider everything. Many of the faculty seem to have things to hide.

It has been 10 years since Juliette de Marny's father asked her to swear revenge upon Deroulede for the death of her brother in a duel. At last, she finds herself in Deroulede's house, with an easy opportunity to betray him to the citizens of France for conspiring against the people. But Juliette realizes, too late, that she is in love with Deroulede.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. His third appearance is a story of murder in a most respectable seaside resort. '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.

In what many refer to as one of the first and greatest science fiction thrillers, a mysterious stranger wanders into an inn, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages. What lies beneath the bandages is something even more mysterious. As Wells tackles issues of identity, deception, and the deterioration of the human mind, listeners will be drawn into the story of the mysterious man, whose own mistakes end up whisking him into a whirlwind of deceit, terror, and even murder. In the end, the question will be asked: when your sense of self and identity vanish, who will you become?

Sir Richard Hannay introduces this last adventure involving his old friends.

John Blenkiron discovers that a ruthless industrialist is plotting to destabilise America and cause global turmoil. Although Bavarian born, Castor plans to dominate the world from Olifa, a small country in Latin America. Hannay realises he is now too old for the job of thwarting these evil designs and enlists the aid of his old friend Sandy Arbuthnot, now Lord Clanroyden.

"With the roar of thunder and the speed of a galloping horse comes the tide to Mont St. Michel", goes the old nursery song. So when the aged patriarch of the du Rocher family falls victim to the perilous tide, even the old man's family accepts the verdict of accidental drowning. But too quickly, this "accident" is followed by a bizarre discovery in the ancient du Rocher chateau: a human skeleton, wrapped in butcher paper, beneath the old stone flooring. Professor Gideon Oliver, lecturing on forensic anthropology at nearby St. Malo, is asked to examine the bones.

A fourth floor room, a door locked with the key inside, no way in, no way out. Edgar Allan Poe is the true grandfather of the murder mystery. Decades before Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, Poe gave us C. Auguste Dupin, a man able to solve mysteries through observation and deduction.

Tippy the triceratops was once a little girl's imaginary friend, a dinosaur detective who could help her make sense of the world. But when her father died, Tippy fell into the Stillreal, the underbelly of the Imagination, where discarded ideas go when they're too real to disappear. Now, he passes time doing detective work for other unwanted ideas - until Tippy runs into The Man in the Coat, a nightmare monster who can do the impossible: kill an idea permanently. Now Tippy must overcome his own trauma and solve the case, before there's nothing left but imaginary corpses.

Written for boys and girls between the ages of six and 12, The Happy Hollisters are wholesome books, with an accent on humor and good, clean fun. Integrity always pays off and right wins over wrong. Parents, grandparents, and teachers will love these books for their healthy celebration of life in simpler times. Kids will be thrilled with the fast-paced action and will not want to put them down. This is a perfect gift for the young listener in your life!

Dilbert Pinkerton's not the greatest private detective, but he's good at sniffing out clues. Of course, it's hard to take a five-foot-nothing mutant armadillo in a trench coat and fedora seriously. He sticks his snout where it doesn't belong far too often while digging for the truth. So when some rich dame asks him to steal - ahem, retrieve - a pearl necklace from her ex-husband, Dill almost reconsiders. Until, that is, she offers him so much money that he can't refuse.

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.

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been claimed as the first detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination".