Classic Suspense Fiction

A land-surveyor, known only as K., arrives at a small village permanently covered in snow and dominated by a castle to which access seems permanently denied. K.'s attempts to discover why he has been called constantly run up against the peasant villagers, who are in thrall to the absurd bureaucracy that keeps the castle shut, and the rigid hierarchy of power among the self-serving bureaucrats themselves.

A small southern town in the 1960s. A musician found dead on the highway. It’s no surprise when white detectives arrest a black man for the murder. What is a surprise is that the black man - Virgil Tibbs - is not the killer but a skilled homicide detective, passing through racially tense Wells, South Carolina, on his way back to California. Even more surprising, Wells’s new police chief recruits Tibbs to help with the investigation.

Jacquelyn Frank’s sensual prose and deft storytelling have made her a New York Times best-selling author. Drink of Me features a fanged tribe of warriors led by Reule, who boasts telepathic powers unmatched among his people. But when his pack comes upon an outlander named Mystique, the woman’s enticing beauty drives Reule toward the breaking point—and toward ultimate release.

There have been ghosts on the London Underground, sad, harmless specters whose presence does little more than give a frisson to traveling and boost tourism. But now there's a rash of sightings on the Metropolitan Line and these ghosts are frightening, aggressive, and seem to be looking for something. Enter PC Peter Grant, junior member of the Metropolitan Police's Special Assessment Unit, AKA The Folly, AKA the only police officers whose official duties include ghost hunting.

The classic World War II thriller from the acclaimed master of action and suspense. One winter night, seven men and a woman are parachuted onto a mountainside in wartime Germany. Their objective: an apparently inaccessible castle, headquarters of the Gestapo. Their mission: to rescue a crashed American general before the Nazi interrogators can force him to reveal secret D-day plans.

At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of 16th-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers.

In three beautifully crafted, dramatic acts, James's little-known novel unravels the painfully complicated emotional bonds which exist within a group of friends and lovers connected by two neighboring homes as they fight publicly for preferment, reciprocation, and successful marriage....

At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they’ve been told - that local students’ strange demises at Whitewood, a local reformatory, were all tragic accidents. But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece, PolterDog, goes horribly awry - and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood - Rex and Leif are forced to question everything they know about their unassuming hometown and its cherished school for delinquents.

Set adrift by his pirate crew, Pocket of Dog Snogging - last seen in The Serpent of Venice - washes up on the sun-bleached shores of Greece, where he hopes to dazzle the Duke with his comedic brilliance and become his trusted fool. But the island is in turmoil. Egeus, the Duke’s minister, is furious that his daughter Hermia is determined to marry Demetrius, instead of Lysander, the man he has chosen for her. The Duke decrees that if, by the time of the wedding, Hermia still refuses to marry Lysander, she shall be executed...or consigned to a nunnery.

The address of 221-B Baker Street in London became almost as well known as the mental marvel who lived there. That, of course, was the remarkable genius Sherlock Holmes. This is the final collection of a half dozen adventures by the intrepid detective and his faithful companion, Dr. Watson, as they examine and solve six cases that puzzle clients, baffle the police, and provide listeners with the thrill of the chase.

Ellison Russell is planning the event of the season - and she's stressed. Why not yoga? Because the yoga instructor gets murdered during class - and Ellison's stress level rises exponentially. Now, in addition to raising a ridiculous amount of money, she's babysitting a deranged cat (named after the devil himself), taking 10 million phone calls (most of them from Mother), and finding more bodies (they're popping up like dandelions after a spring rain). There's no such thing as balance when the killer makes it personal. Can Ellison catch a murderer or will her next namaste be her last?

"With the roar of thunder and the speed of a galloping horse comes the tide to Mont St. Michel", goes the old nursery song. So when the aged patriarch of the du Rocher family falls victim to the perilous tide, even the old man's family accepts the verdict of accidental drowning. But too quickly, this "accident" is followed by a bizarre discovery in the ancient du Rocher chateau: a human skeleton, wrapped in butcher paper, beneath the old stone flooring. Professor Gideon Oliver, lecturing on forensic anthropology at nearby St. Malo, is asked to examine the bones.

Here is the precursor to Jurassic Park. Victorian explorers have heard there is a remote plateau where dinosaurs still survive, and a group set outs on a dangerous mission to find out more about it.

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....

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.

To Have and Have Not is the dramatic story of Harry Morgan, an honest man who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair.

Philip, Dinah, Lucy-Ann and Jack are not pleased when the wimpish Gustavus has to come with them on holiday. Even Kiki the parrot dislikes him! But when Gustavus is kidnapped along with Philip, Dinah and Lucy-Ann, Jack bravely follows them to a faraway country and unravels a plot to kill the king.

Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s imperial Russia, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the emotions and destiny of three men - Onegin the bored fop, Lensky the minor elegiast, and a stylized Pushkin himself - and the fates and affections of three women - Tatyana the provincial beauty, her sister Olga, and Pushkin's mercurial Muse.

Dealing with dragons is hard. Dealing with a teenage daughter is even harder. My new mission involves both. Weird things are happening in Northern Idaho, and my boss is sending me to investigate. Unfortunately, my daughter and ex-husband are vacationing in the town that’s at the center of the trouble. Coincidence? Or is someone targeting them to get at me? I’m a wanted woman right now. Not only by the criminal werewolves, orcs, and trolls that I’m often hired to kill. But by the Dragon Justice Court.

A prominent financier vanishes before bedtime, without his clothes. Hours later, a corpse is found in a bathtub wearing only pince-nez eyeglasses. When it’s determined that the body is not that of the financier, it’s up to amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey to uncover the naked truth. As the part-time sleuth investigates what these men - one dead, one missing, both starkers - have in common, the pieces of two puzzles converge, and the case becomes more dangerous by the clue.