Classic Mystery

With the world clinging to a fragile peace forced on the Fae by humanity after the Faerie Wars, metalsmith Alex Blackwood is plunged into the world of the half-fae who traffic in illegal magical artifacts. Her best friend's murder and his cryptic last message place her in the crosshairs of a scheme to reignite the decade-old war between humans and fae. Worse, violent attacks against her and the arrival of a fae knight on a mission force Alex to face a devastating revelation of who and what she is.

It begins with a dead body at the far end of Baker Street tube station, all that remains of American exchange student James Gallagher - and the victim's wealthy, politically powerful family is understandably eager to get to the bottom of the gruesome murder. The trouble is, the bottom - if it exists at all - is deeper and more unnatural than anyone suspects...except, that is, for London constable and sorcerer's apprentice Peter Grant.

When the shah is thrown out of Iran, the nation's turmoil becomes world headlines. Caught in this shifting world of fanaticism, ambition, duplicity, and violent death are the foreign helicopter pilots who have been servicing the oil fields up and down the country. Their one objective is to make a bold, concerted escape to safety across the Gulf.

In Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie presents eleven riveting short stories featuring the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. From high-stakes jewel thefts to baffling murders, Poirot faces a variety of complex and puzzling cases that challenge his remarkable intellect and investigative prowess. In these tales, Poirot must unravel a web of deception involving missing persons, secret identities, and shocking crimes, using his keen observation and logical deductions to reveal the truth.

If you thought magic was confined to one country - think again. Trier: famous for wine, Romans, and being Germany's oldest city. When a man is found dead with his body impossibly covered in a fungal rot, the local authorities know they are out of their depth. But fortunately this is Germany, where there are procedures for everything. Enter Tobias Winter, an investigator for the Abteilung KDA, the branch of the German Federal Criminal Police which handles the supernatural.

The year 1894. The monstrous Hound of the Baskervilles has been dead for five years, along with its no less monstrous owner, the naturalist Jack Stapleton. Sir Henry Baskerville is living contentedly at Baskerville Hall with his new wife, Audrey, and their three-year-old son, Harry. Until, that is, Audrey’s lifeless body is found on the moors, drained of blood. It would appear some fiendish creature is once more at large on Dartmoor and has, like its predecessor, targeted the unfortunate Baskerville family.

The virtuous and loving Emily, the young protagonist, finds herself in the care of her aunt following the death of her father. Her aunt promptly marries the villain Montoni, a cruel and calculating man whose scheming leads him to lock both women in the dark and winding castle of Udolpho. Will they survive to tell of its terrors?

My troublemaker cousin was trapped in Transratania! And before I could even squeak, my sister, Thea, dragged me along on her rescue mission. Little did we know that Transratania is the land of vampire bats! Holey cheese, bats give me goose bumps!

When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life. An assassin has left the Emperor Ashravan without consciousness, a circumstance concealed only by the death of his wife. If the emperor does not emerge after his hundred-day mourning period, the rule of the Heritage Faction will be forfeit and the empire will fall into chaos.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase - a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns.

Julian, Dick and Anne are spending the holidays with their tomboy cousin George and her dog, Timothy. One day, George takes them to explore nearby Kirrin Island, with its rocky little coast and old ruined castle on the top. Over on the island, they make a thrilling discovery, which leads them deep into the dungeons of Kirrin Castle on a dangerous adventure. Who - and what - will they find there?

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life - including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door - becomes increasingly unpredictable.

When anthropology professor Gideon Oliver is offered a teaching fellowship at US military bases in Germany, Sicily, Spain, and Holland, he wastes no time accepting. On his first night, he is forced to fend off two desperate, black-clad men who have invaded his Heidelberg hotel room with intent to kill. And then there are a few trivial details that the recruiting agency forgot to mention - such as the fact that the two previous holders of the fellowship both met with mysterious ends.

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby, a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival.

The Birches was one of the grand mansions of the 1920s, with a ballroom, tennis courts, and, of course, a swimming pool. But after the crash of '29, when Lois and Judith's father killed himself to escape his debts, the family turned the summer home into a fulltime retreat from the world. Decades later, Judith is the queen of New York society, a fast-living beauty whose nerves are beginning to fray, while Lois still lives in the dilapidated old mansion, writing mystery novels to pay the bills. She is about to encounter a mystery of her own.

Fred Underhill is a young cop on the rise in Los Angeles in the early 1950s - a town blinded to its own grime by Hollywood glitter; a society nourished by newspaper lies that wants its heroes all-American and squeaky clean. A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy. When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past.

Myke Cole continues to blow the military fantasy genre wide open with an all-new epic adventure in his highly acclaimed Shadow Ops universe - set in the early days of the Great Reawakening, when magic first returns to the world and order begins to unravel....US Navy SEAL Jim Schweitzer is a consummate professional, a fierce warrior, and a hard man to kill. But when he sees something he was never meant to see on a covert mission gone bad, he finds himself - and his family - in the crosshairs.

Detective stories existed for centuries before the concept of the detective itself—amateur or professional— was fully formulated, and tales of mystery and intrigue have been thrilling readers since ancient times. The Lock and Key Library is the classic overview of the history of the mystery genre, at once a rousing listen for fans of the unsolved and unknown as well as an essential literary resource for those seeking to understand the roots of modern pulp fiction. This volume is sure to delight and enthrall armchair detectives and fans of classic mysteries alike.

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.

Deep in the primeval rainforest of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, the skeletal remains of a murdered man are discovered. And a strange, unsettling tale begins to unfold, for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver determines that the murder weapon was a primitive bone spear of a type not seen for the last 10,000 years. And whoever - or whatever - hurled it did so with seemingly superhuman force. Bigfoot "sightings" immediately crop up, but Gideon is not buying them.