Classic Mystery Short Stories

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.

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished 10 years before. Four years later, she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Watson to accompany her.

Join Sherlock Holmes, one of the greatest detectives in all of literature, for four of his thrilling adventures. "The Musgrave Ritual", one of Holmes' first cases, concerns an ancient map hidden in family documents. "The Red-Headed League" is a "three-pipe problem" for the eminent detective. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" starts with a whistle in the night and a young woman's scream, and in "The Final Problem" Holmes matches wits with his most worthy opponent, Professor Moriarty.

Discover a world of heroes and villains, suspense and intrigue. This riveting and comprehensive collection brings together some of the best crime writing of all time. Ruth Rendell and Frances Hegarty spearhead the modern genre, moving through the popular and rarely recorded Graham Greene, to Edgar Wallace and G.K. Chesterton and his master detective Father Brown. And that's not all.

When your ears are itching to hear a great detective story, this boxed set, by some of the cleverest authors in history, can satisfy that itch. This boxed set includes all the stories from Volumes 1,2 and 3 of Classic Detective Stories.

In the midst of the Japanese occupation of China and Hong Kong, two lives become intertwined: Wong Chia Chi, a young student active in the resistance, and Mr. Yee, a powerful political figure who works for the Japanese occupational government. As these two move deftly between Shanghai's tea parties and secret interrogations, they become embroiled in the complicated politics of wartime - and in a mutual attraction that may be more than what they expected.

An enthralling collection of creepy and mysterious stories. From classic detective stories to spine-tingling horror and scary ghost stories, these tales will make your flesh crawl.... 1. 'A Ghost Story' by Mark Twain. 2. 'The Silver Mask' by Hugh Walpole. 3. 'The Cactus' by O. Henry. 4. 'Dead of Night' by W. F. Harvey. 5. 'The Terrible Old Man' by H. P. Lovecraft. 6. 'Rattle of Bones' by Robert E. Howard. 7. 'The Last Leaf' by O. Henry. 8. 'The Magnet' by Barry Pain. 9. 'Pickman’s Model' by H. P. Lovecraft.

In “Two Hundred Thousand Francs Reward!”, it has been a fortnight since the baroness Repstein disappeared from Paris, taking with her a fortune in jewels stolen from her husband. French detectives have chased her all over Europe, following the trail of gemstones like so many precious breadcrumbs, but she has eluded their efforts. When Arsène Lupin finds her, she will not escape so easily. Also featuring “The Wedding-Ring”, “The Sign of the Shadow”, “The Infernal Trap”, “The Red Silk Scarf”, “Shadowed by Death”, “Lupin’s Marriage”, and more.

Listening to great writing is a pleasure unto itself. Sometimes the opening paragraph of a work, or even the first sentence, makes it obvious that you are in the hands of a master, and once venturing a few furtive steps onto the path of prose, no matter what forest it enters, valley it descends, or mountain it scales, you will walk the entire distance.

The Classic Crime Collection is a collection of 12 classic detective novels, read by an esteemed cast of award-winning narrators. Included here are stories by some of the most iconic crime writers in history, including Arthur Conan Doyle; Wilkie Collins; Josephine Tey; AA Milne; and more.

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.

From the number one best-selling author of The American Boy and The Ashes of London comes a collection of three Gothic novellas - Broken Voices, The Leper House and The Scratch - perfect for fans of The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley.

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.

Lacy Logan thought she had a normal life. She was healthy, happy, and about to start her own paranormal investigations business...until she met the man in black. In a matter of days, she was fighting for her life, questioning her sanity, and hoping to uncover a secret from her past that would allow her to slay a demon.

This audiobook contains 17 short stories inspired from famous classic fairy tales. In addition to 17 classic tales, you’ll get another three bonus stories from Aesop’s Fables book.

Violet Strange is no ordinary well-to-do young New York City debutante. Unbeknownst to family and society friends, she leads a secret life as a professional sleuth for a private detective agency. On a mission to raise money for an undisclosed project, the determined and gutsy young debutante diligently snoops around sleepwalking widows, violent and sinister characters, whispering clocks and concealed tombs, connecting clues to solve tales of murder, mystery and intrigue.

For The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, writer and anthologist Michael Sims did not summon the usual suspects. He sought the unfamiliar, the unjustly forgotten, and little-known gems by writers from outside the genre. This historical tour of one of our most popular literary categories includes stories never before reprinted, features rebellious early “lady detectives," and spotlights former stars of the crime field—Austrian novelist Auguste Groner and prolific American Geraldine Bonner among them.

A spine-tingling selection of detective stories including contributions from Edgar Wallace, Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton.

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.

Nobody plays accordion like Dick Contino. His skilled fingers can find beauty in even the schmaltziest Borscht Belt favorites, and with his matinee-idol looks he could be a real star. Right now, though, he’s slumming it as the headliner in a Grade Z teenybopper picture called Daddy-O. He’s too good for this movie, and finishing it is going to take him to a very dark place. Daddy-O and Dick Contino are both real, their stories dredged out of the past by James Ellroy, a master of historical crime fiction. In Dick Contino's Blues he takes us to B-List Hollywood in 1957 - a time when movies were cheerful and dirty secrets lurked just off camera.