Classic Suspense Fiction

William "Kid" Collins was once a respected boxer. Now he's a drifter, on the run after escaping from a mental institution. One afternoon he meets Fay, a beautiful young widow. She is smart and decent - at least when she's sober. Soon Collins finds himself involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes drastically wrong almost before it even begins. Because the kid they've picked up isn't like other kids: He's diabetic and without insulin, he'll die. Not the safest situation for Collins, a man for whom stress and violence have long gone hand-in-hand.

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.

When a postwar search for London lodgings introduces ailing doctor John H. Watson to quirky chemist Sherlock Holmes, their collaboration in the art of observation and deduction begins. Congenial flatmates and even better colleagues, the pair is quickly drawn into a case of murder and revenge that has Scotland Yard at their wits’ end.

A thriller writer is embroiled in a real-life whodunit when a friend drops dead with her hatpin impaled in his back. The violation of a sealed West Bank tomb, its rock walls intact, provides a Thebes investigator with a mystifying conundrum. Two sisters take shelter in a shuttered old house at the end of a country road . . . only to discover they're not alone. And the author's most beloved characters, Amelia Peabody and Radcliff Emerson, make an appearance in a newly uncovered tale with a witty nod to Sherlock Holmes.

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.

"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".

Three humans are dead, and the search is on for the surviving member from Vee's online group. If he's alive, Seth could hold the key to who's behind the attacks - and why the group are targets. Thanks to their broken alliance with the fae, the Four Horseman and Vee must turn to others for help and are pulled deeper into the supernatural underworld. The danger the world faces is greater than they imagined, and someone is determined the Horsemen will fail.

Vanessa March's husband, Lewis, is meant to be on a business trip in Stockholm - so why does he briefly appear in newsreel footage of a fire at a circus in Vienna, with his arm around another woman? Vanessa flies to Austria to find her husband, inadvertently becoming involved in a mystery that spans three countries...and the famous dancing stallions of the Spanish Riding School. The moonlight flooded the meadow, blanching all colours to its own ghostly silver. The pines were very black.

London, June 1965. Karl Braun arrives as a lodger in Pimlico: hatless, with a bow-tie, greying hair, slight in build. His new neighbours are intrigued by this cultured German gentleman who works as a piano tuner; many are fellow émigrés, who assume that he, like them, came to England to flee Hitler. That summer, Braun courts a woman, attends classical concerts, dances the twist. But as the newspapers fill with reports of the hunt for Nazi war criminals, his nightmares become increasingly worse.

Mystery novelist Hazel Martin's maid suspects foul play when her childhood friend Doris jumps from the third-story turret of Farnsworth Abbey. Unable to resist an investigation, especially one that's staged to look like suicide, Hazel calls in help from her chauffeur, her cook, and even the mysterious butler her husband hired before his death. Hazel soon learns that Doris's death was no accident. Someone had a secret, and they wanted to keep it that way.

These timeless stories are perfect for young fans of mystery, adventure or detective series. A store of stolen silver, a surprising view through a telescope, a shrill scream on a night out, a disappearing cash box, a dangerous accident and a trap for the Secret Seven! Solve the mystery with the Secret Seven in these six classic short stories by Enid Blyton - perfect for bedtime listening! The stories were originally published in books and magazines in the 1940s and 1950s. This audio recording features the classic texts.

Since his retirement from King's University, life has been rather quiet for Professor Daly. When he is invited back to King's University to deliver a series of prestigious lectures, his heart leaps. But on arrival he discovers that he has not been called back to the university on account of his literary knowledge. Somebody has been sending the president of King's threatening letters. Somebody within the university, it seems, wants him dead. Perhaps aware of his own arrogant, materialistic, and bullying nature and the effects it may produce, President Bradley seems genuinely worried.

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.

Six years ago federal agent Samantha Moon was the perfect wife and mother, your typical soccer mom with the minivan and suburban home. Then the unthinkable happens, an attack that changes her life forever. And forever is a very long time for a vampire. Now in Moon Island, Samantha Moon is hired to look into the mysterious drowning of a super-rich hotel tycoon. The death occurred exactly one year ago, at the family's annual retreat on a private island in the Pacific Northwest.

Der Jugendliche Alex zieht mit drei anderen Rowdys durch die Straßen. Zum Spaß verprügeln sie hilflose Passanten, rauben Geschäfte aus...

On a trip to the South of France, a shy young woman falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband's home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride is filled with dread. Friendless in the isolated mansion, she realizes that she barely knows him. In every corner of every room is the phantom of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca, and the new Mrs de Winter walks in her shadow.

When a man is found dead in a freshly dug grave adjacent to a golf course, Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings arrive on the scene only to be met by a hostile local police detective who is unwilling to share information. But Poirot's methodical investigation slowly and surely reveals the real killer amid a host of suspects and clues, including an impassioned love letter and heavy lead piping found near the body. However, as Poirot and Hastings rush to solve the murder, a similarly slain corpse and fresh clues are discovered.

Sarah Crowe left Atlanta, and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship, to live alone in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant - a parapsychologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. And as the gnarled tree takes root in her imagination, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago.

While there have been many famous vampires in modern media, none are as well known as Dracula, the modern introduction to the blood-drinking creatures of the night. In this epistolary horror novel, listeners are introduced to Count Dracula as he attempts to move to England to find new prey and create new vampires. He is thwarted by Abraham Van Helsing, a doctor who sees Dracula’s victims and gathers hunters to fight against the growing team of vampires.

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder. One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator.