Classic Suspense Fiction

Her name is Jennifer Hartman, or perhaps Dorothy Holder. She has birth certificates that say both. She got the names from old obituary files, and then went to the county clerk to ask for new copies. Her real name doesn't matter, because her former life is gone. Since she went on the run, she has surprised herself with her ingenuity. She makes her way to Los Angeles and takes a room in an unassuming, out-of-the-way motel. She destroys her credit cards but keeps her old driver's license - she has one last use for it.

Scandal, treachery and crime are rife in Old London Town. A king blackmailed by his mistress, dark dealings in opium dens, stolen jewels, a missing bride - these are cases so fiendishly complex that only Sherlock Holmes would dare to investigate.

Both the skeleton and the corpse have died with suspicious convenience for Georgia Wells, a monstrous but charming actress with a raffish entourage. Georgia's best friend just happens to be Valentine, a top couturière and Campion's sister. In order to protect Valentine, Campion must unravel a story of blackmail and ruthless murder....

The mystery begins with a coded warning of imminent danger, drawing the illustrious Sherlock Holmes and the faithful Dr Watson to a secluded country home. A trail of bewildering clues, including raincoats, dumbbells, and a missing wedding ring, leads to sleuthing in the finest Holmesian tradition - with a gripping back story of a cult that terrorized a valley in the American West.

An amoral young tramp. A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one, grisly solution; a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve.

The two strikingly original short novels brought together here - in new translations by award-winning translators - were both literary gambles of a sort for Fyodor Dostoevsky. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelgänger. Written 20 years later under the pressure of crushing debt, The Gambler is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction.

When Sheriff Mapes is summoned to a sugarcane plantation to find a dead Cajun farmer, he knows who committed the crime. Mapes finds himself powerless, however, when nearly 20 elderly black men confess to the murder. Can justice be served, or will the dead man's brutish father pass judgment his way?

Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops...and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town. In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its cham­pion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs.

The atomic submarine Dolphin has impossible orders: to sail beneath the ice floes of the Arctic Ocean to locate and rescue the men of weather station Zebra, gutted by fire and drifting with the ice pack somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. But the orders do not say what the Dolphin will find if she succeeds - that the fire at Ice Station Zebra was sabotage and that one of the survivors is a killer....

In his junior year at college, the only things on Sean's mind are doing his homework and getting out of college to get a real job. A gamer and a bit of a nerd, Sean's philosophy in life has been to keep his head down and get his work done. But when a failed kidnapping attempt leaves him with a gaping hole in his memory, his oldest friend dead, and his mother missing, Sean suddenly finds his whole world turned upside down as he's thrust into the hidden world of magic and the supernatural.

The Priory may look ramshackle in appearance, but Peter, Margaret and Celia are totally charmed by their newly inherited country house. But there's more to The Priory than meets the eye. Left empty for years, hardly a single person has set foot inside, and down in the village, the locals whisper of a ghostly figure that roams the halls. When a murder is committed, the new owners start to fear the rumours are true - but is their new home really haunted, or is someone trying to scare them away?

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.

Nurse Amy Leatheran had never felt the lure of the "mysterious East", but she nonetheless accepts an assignment at Hassanieh, an ancient site deep in the Iraqi desert, to care for the wife of a celebrated archaeologist. Mrs Leidner is suffering bizarre visions and nervous terror. "I'm afraid of being killed!" she admits to her nurse. Her terror, unfortunately, is anything but unfounded, and Nurse Leatheran is soon enough without a patient. The world's greatest detective happens to be in the vicinity, however....

Once upon a time, I was your average spunky redhead with the lamest employment history ever, a shaky relationship with my only family member, and no idea what I was doing with my life. Now, I'm a pseudo mythic with the best bartending job in the world, the most amazing (and hot) best friends I never knew I needed, and a guild of misfit magic-users who've become my extended family. And I'm about to lose it all. In my desperation to save Ezra, I stumbled into a web of ruthless deception - and seriously pissed off a sleeping hydra.

Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog find excitement and adventure wherever they go in Enid Blyton's most popular series. In book 12, somebody is flashing lights from the top of the old tower on the treacherous rocks off the Cornish coast. The Famous Five sense danger. But can they solve this mystery without getting hurt themselves?

The White Company is a motley group of English mercenaries, fighting under the leadership of Sir Nigel Loring. Bound by an unquestioning respect for social order, patriotism and a lust for adventure, the company makes its way to France to fight in the local wars. With assiduous attention to historical detail, Conan Doyle paints a convincing picture of the chivalric life and manners of the 14th century.

First conceived during a rainy summer holiday in the Highlands of Scotland in an attempt to amuse his stepson, Treasure Island began with the map. Young Lloyd Osbourne had drawn a crude version of an island, and Stevenson, looking over the boy's shoulder, began to elaborate, christening various curves and smudges the famed names of Skeleton Island and Spyglass Hill and finally adding the three red crosses marking the buried treasure.

First published in an 1839 edition of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the story of the declining physical and psychological health of the residents of the House of Usher - and the way in which the house itself reflects that. Gothic in theme and style, the story is an exemplar of Poe's philosophy of composition, which dictates that literary works should be short and methodological and have a unity of effect wherein all the elements of the story are related and relevant.

First appearing in print in 1890, the character of Sherlock Holmes has now become synonymous worldwide with the concept of a super sleuth. His creator, Conan Doyle, imbued his detective hero with intellectual power, acute observational abilities, a penchant for deductive reasoning and a highly educated use of forensic skills. Indeed, Doyle created the first fictional private detective who used what we now recognize as modern scientific investigative techniques.

Known for his looks and charm, a young man obsessed with wealth and status will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He sets his sights on a beautiful and innocent college student named Dorothy, intent on marrying her for her family’s money. But when Dorothy becomes pregnant, his careful plans start to unravel, and he begins to take cold, calculating, and drastic measures to protect his future.