Classic Mystery

Few were disappointed when Raoul Vernet was found with his head bashed in, dead in a pool of his own blood. On vacation in England, the Belgian seducer comes to visit Matilda, an old flame from a few years before. She agrees despite suspicions that Vernet has been deploying his legendary charm on another member of the family: young Rosie, who has returned from her Swiss boarding school carrying a child. None of the family members were in the house when Raoul was killed, but all were within a fog-choked London mile.

A few weeks after marrying an attractive widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs. Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterward, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man's sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by "spirits" that Mrs. Underhay's first husband is still alive. Poirot has his suspicions when he is asked to find a missing person guided only by the spirit world.

"The 120 Days of Sodom" is "the most impure tale that has ever been told since our world began". It was written by the Marquis de Sade, a french noble man, in the space of 37 days, while imprisoned in the famous parisian Bastille. Fearing confiscation, the Marquis de Sade, Donatien-Alphonse-François, had to write it on a continuous roll of paper, made up of small pieces glued together. The original manuscript is now on display in Paris, and is the third most expensive kept in France, insured for 12 million euros.

Ashley Court: the tumbledown ancestral home of the Ashley family, all blessed with 'the gift' of being able to speak to each other without words. When Bryony Ashley's father dies under mysterious circumstances, his final words a cryptic warning to her, Bryony returns from abroad to uncover Ashley Court's secrets. What did her father's message mean? What lies at the centre of the overgrown maze in the gardens? And who is trying to prevent Bryony from discovering the truth?

"Uno studio in rosso", il primo romanzo scritto da Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sulle indagini del detective Sherlock Holmes...

Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog find excitement and adventure wherever they go in Enid Blyton's most popular series. In book 10, Dick is woken by a light flashing through his window. Is someone trying to send him a coded message? When the Famous Five hear of an escaped convict in the area, they are on red alert. The police won't help, so the Five have no choice - yet again, they'll be solving this mystery by themselves.

Jasper Fforde's delightfully zany Thursday Next series shows no signs of slowing down with its seventh entry, The Woman Who Died a Lot. Despite being semihappily semi-retired from SpecOps, Thursday accepts the head librarian position at the Swindon library. But soon threats from a supreme Deity, a mnemonomorph, and the nefarious Goliath corporation press Thursday back into active duty.

On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her...despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort.

Anne Beddingfeld is always ready for an adventure. So when she witnesses a man wearing a brown suit die at a tube station in London, she searches for clues and finds a mysterious piece of paper nearby. The message it contains leads her on a confounding chase full of secret aliases and codes as she seeks to solve the case and catch the murderer. Featuring an appearance from Secret Service agent Colonel Race, this story from renowned mystery writer Agatha Christie is a true classic that blends adventure and suspense with the detective story.

Juanita di Perli was a young woman when she decided to live the rest of her life on a table-top. She called it God's will, but for the order of nuns that sprang up around her, Juanita's devotion was a curse. For decades they did the bidding of the holy grouch, and the entire island of San Juan el Pirata sighed with relief when she died. Twenty years later, the islanders fight for Juanita's canonization - not because they liked her, but because a local saint would be a tourist boon. The only thing keeping the island poor is the Archduke, who refuses to ask Rome to consider Juanita for sainthood.

A husband’s untimely death is foretold by a newspaper clipping found in his young wife’s bedroom the day before his death. The wife enlists a detective to help solve the puzzle only to find the killer is much closer than she ever imagined. Written by the first female writer of detective fiction in America, this short thriller in two parts showcases the remarkable mind of Anna Katharine Green. Green is widely considered the “mother of the detective novel” and was a contemporary influence on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.

It sounds idyllic: a leisurely drive through the sun-drenched landscape of Provence. But Charity's dream holiday turns into a nightmare when she becomes embroiled in a sinister plot to kidnap a young boy. She soon finds herself in a deadly pursuit and must uncover whom to trust...and whom to fall for.

The rambling house called Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale. Left to Gilly Ramsey by the cousin whose occasional visits brightened her childhood, the cottage, set deep in a wild wood, has come just in time to save her from a bleak future. With its reputation for magic and its resident black cat, Thornyhold offers Gilly more than just a new home. It offers her a chance to start over.

Randy and Oliver Melendy awake one morning full of gloom. Their brothers and sisters are away, the house seems forlorn and empty, and even Cuffy, their adored housekeeper, can't pick up their spirits. Will they have to face a long and lonely winter?

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.

Galina is a young woman caught, like her contemporaries, in the seeming lawlessness of the new Russia. In the midst of this chaos, her sister Maria turns into a jackdaw and flies away - prompting Galina to join Yakov, a policeman investigating a rash of recent disappearances. Their search will take them to the underground realm of hidden truths and archetypes, to find themselves caught between reality and myth, past and present, honor and betrayal... the secret history of Moscow.

Chesterton's talent as a mystery writer is displayed in this collection of detective stories, The Man Who Knew Too Much. In each story, the star detective, Horne Fisher, deals with another strange mystery: the vanishing of a priceless coin, the framing of an Irish "prince" freedom fighter, an eccentric rich man dies during an obsessive fishing trip, another vanishing during an ice skate, a statue crushing his own uncle, and a few more.

This 1896 novel follows the Mark Twain series of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom finds himself on another exciting adventure as he serves as detective for a mysterious murder in the banks of the Mississippi. Listen to this suspenseful, yet whimsical story of Tom and Huckleberry and be fascinated once again with Mark Twain's imagination.

An unabridged audio edition of Graham Greene's classic gang-war thriller. A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold, who is determined to avenge a death.... Read by Samuel West.

The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her 18th birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand.