Classic Suspense Fiction

Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter, Elizabeth, is in trouble; she just doesn't know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact she has had with Elizabeth for years. Now, Elizabeth has sent her a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at San Francisco's most luxurious hotel. Yet she has not tried to contact Martha since she arrived, leaving her lonely, confused, and a little bit worried. Into the story steps Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who lives at the hotel and is drawn to Martha's good nature and ability to pinpoint the truth of a matter.

Maigret savoured the sensations of his youth again: the cold, stinging eyes, frozen fingertips, an aftertaste of coffee. Then, stepping inside the church, a blast of heat, soft light; the smell of candles and incense. The last time Maigret went home to the village of his birth was for his father's funeral. Now an anonymous note predicting a crime during All Souls' Day mass draws him back there, where troubling memories resurface and hidden vices are revealed. Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903.

Once a city of enormous wealth and culture, Prague was home to emperors, alchemists, astronomers, and, as it’s whispered, hell portals. When music student Sarah Weston lands a summer job at Prague Castle cataloging Beethoven’s manuscripts, she has no idea how dangerous her life is about to become. Prague is a threshold, Sarah is warned, and it is steeped in blood. Soon after Sarah arrives, strange things begin to happen.

With the sole idea that, through a pleasant, or at least fascinatingly strange story, some will be brought to the threshold of realization wherein the partially explored activities and functions of the mind contain many profound mysteries and principles of considerable import, and that those so illumined may be tempted to seek for more light in the chamber of the unknown, this book is offered to those constantly asking for the unusual in fiction and the mystical in romance.

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.

A mysterious note in invisible ink leads the Sugar Creek Gang on a hunt for buried treasure. Is the key to the treasure in the weathered log house, or is it in the icehouse? Will the Gang have a run-in with the accomplice to the Ostberg kidnapping? Find out with the boys the terrible effects sin has on families when it has a hold on the father.

After her philandering husband's boat went down, newly single Mia Carina went back to Astoria, the bustling Queens neighborhood of her youth. Living with her nonna and her oversized cat, Doorstop, she's got a whole new life - including some amateur sleuthing...Mia is starting work at Belle View, her father's catering hall, a popular spot for weddings, office parties, and more. Soon she's planning a bachelor party for a less-than-gentlemanly groom. But it goes awry when the gigantic cake is wheeled in and a deadly surprise is revealed.

The classic vampire story by Bram Stoker revolves around a struggle between good and evil, tradition and modernity, and lust versus chastity. The author didn’t invent vampires, but his novel has so captured the public’s imagination that he is rightly considered their popularizer. Listen and you will meet not only the Count himself, but heroes Jonathan Harker and Abraham Van Helsing, plus an array of madmen, psychiatrists, and fair maidens who cross paths with the fanged menace.

The Trial by Franz Kafka, narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, begins like a nightmare - only K is awake, and he is being arrested and indicted on charges he never learns. He is caught up in a legal system that will destroy his life. This is a text that often is used in English classes because it is so deep. Kafka attacks the norms of society, religion, and the legal system.

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.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. His second appearance is a thrilling quest to save his own brother - the Duke of Denver - from the hangman. The Duke of Denver, accused of murder, stands trial for his life in the House of Lords. Naturally, his brother Lord Peter Wimsey is investigating the crime - this is a family affair.

Man against nature, Leiningen against ants. Leiningen, an owner of a plantation, gets one day warned that an army of ants is approaching his fields and that it would be smartest to leave. Leiningen is however not going to give up on his land without a fight. The ants arrive and a long and exhausting battle follows. The technology and the power of the human brain are on Leiningen’s side. However the ants have a numerical superiority.

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?

Boston blueblood Charlotte Vale has led an unhappy, sheltered life. Lonely, dowdy, repressed, and pushing 40, Charlotte finds salvation at a sanitarium, where she undergoes an emotional and physical transformation. After her extreme makeover, the new Charlotte tests her mettle by embarking on a cruise and finds herself in a torrid love affair with a married man which ends at the conclusion of the voyage. But only then can the real journey begin, as Charlotte is forced to navigate a new life for herself.

One of the great works of the 20th century, Kafka's The Trial has been read as a study of political power, a pessimistic religious parable, or a crime novel where the accused man is himself the problem. In it, a man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. Faced with this ambiguous but threatening situation, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure.

Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Sir Edward Leithen is told that he has but one year left to live. He relinquishes his law practice and resigns from public office in order to make peace with himself and to reconcile himself with his maker. However, he also wants to die standing, not to creep into the 'bleak bag's end of life'. This will involve one last physical challenge.

Before Kendi learned to use his talent of navigating the plane of mental existence known as the Dream, he had to escape his physical existence as a slave.

The Cure is a genre-bending thriller reminiscent of Michael Crichton or Douglas Preston, about the biological underpinnings of psychopathy. As a child, her family was taken from her by a serial killer. Erin Palmer is left orphaned and forever scarred. She dedicates her life to the study of psychopaths, conducting one-on-one interviews and tests with inmates. When Erin finally finishes years of exhaustive research, she finds herself in possession of the key to ending psychopathic behavior - in the species - forever. That' s when they try to kill her.

A year ago Millie lost her legs and her filmmaking career in a failed suicide attempt. Just when she's sure the credits have rolled on her life story, she gets a second chance with the Arcadia Project: a secret organization that polices the traffic to and from a parallel reality filled with creatures straight out of myth and fairy tales. For her first assignment, Millie is tasked with tracking down a missing movie star who also happens to be a nobleman of the Seelie Court.

Arthur Conan Doyle ranked "The Red-Headed League" second in his list of his 12 favorite Sherlock Holmes stories. It is one of Holmes' most intriguing cases, in which he has to solve a problem caused by a strange society in which the only criteria for admission is bright red hair!