Classic Thrillers

'No sign of foul play,' says Dr Carr after the post-mortem on Agatha Dawson. The case is closed. But Lord Peter Wimsey is not satisfied... With no clues to work on, he begins his own investigation. No clues, that is, until the sudden, senseless murder of Agatha's maid. What is going on in the mysterious Mrs Forrest's Mayfair flat? And can Wimsey catch a desperate murderer before he himself becomes one of the victims?

Time rewinds at the video store—the clerk is always hot and grumpy, and kindly retiree Mr. Hoffman rents the same thing every week. Audrey hangs around for both these reasons. But when her fellow film buff fails to appear, she goes to his house over the protests of her flannelly video store crush, who knows more than he lets on. It’s just like a movie. And she’s worried about the twist.

Lily Ivory hopes for a normal life when she opens Aunt Cora's Closet. With her magical knack for vintage fashion - she can sense vibrations of the past from clothing and jewelry - her store becomes a big hit. But when a client is murdered and children start disappearing from the Bay Area, Lily may be the only one who can unravel the crime.

An elderly couple living in Victorian London struggle against despair as their small resources dwindle. When an eccentric and mysterious gentleman answers their advertisement for a lodger, they celebrate. But as women begin dying at the hands of "The Avenger", they start to suspect something too horrific for words.

A psychological thriller before its time, James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824, takes us back to the world of 18th-century Scotland, into a mind haunted by religious obsession, and driven to commit murder. The events are told from several different viewpoints, so that truth and reality appear to dissolve in this disturbing story of the dark legacy of Calvinist doctrine, and how it led one man to madness.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

A haunting and enigmatic tale that will keep you awake and wondering long after you've finished this classic mystery. Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock - a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling.... St Valentine’s Day, in the midst of the hot summer of 1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some were never to return....

She was every man's dream - and one man's nightmare. Johnny Hayden and Doug Rance had a scheme to take real estate entrepreneur Wallace Gunderman for all he was worth. But they needed a girl on the inside to make it work. Enter Evelyn Stone: Gunderman's secretary, his lover - and his worst enemy. Gunderman had promised to marry her, but never came through. Now she's ready to make him pay...

In a world of demons, goblins, witches, sirens, werewolves, vampires, and so much more, it can be difficult to determine who is guilty of what and why. Chris White is a detective who fearlessly investigates this supernatural world, himself a unique product of it. He will take any case brought to him, but has a particular affinity for helping those who inhabit the poor districts of his city. From strange rituals and runaway vampires, to fighting sorcerers and confronting a demon lord, this paranormal detective will face any challenge-even a dance with the devil.

One of the Hardys’ favorite writers, Nathan Foxwood, has recently died in a tragic car accident. Now, the press is swarming his house in Bayport to get the scoop on the novel he completed just before his untimely death. When Joe hears that Nathan’s wife is having a giant estate sale, he drags Frank with him. Who could pass up the opportunity to see inside their favorite author’s home? Nathan’s wife says she wants to get away as quickly as possible. She’s sure the house is haunted. But Nathan’s assistant, Adam, is not so willing to blame it all on the supernatural.

A fourth floor room, a door locked with the key inside, no way in, no way out. Edgar Allan Poe is the true grandfather of the murder mystery. Decades before Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, Poe gave us C. Auguste Dupin, a man able to solve mysteries through observation and deduction.

While on a sailing trip in the Baltic Sea, two young adventurers-turned-spies uncover a secret German plot to invade England. Widely recognized as the first modern spy thriller, this 1902 lone masterpiece by World War I Royal Navy officer Erskine Childers was written as a wake-up call to the British government to attend to its North Sea defenses. It accomplished that task and has been considered a classic of espionage literature ever since.

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.

A young cabaret dancer in a black silk dress leads Maigret into a seamy world of nightclubs, drug addiction and exploitation on the streets of Montmartre. 'He opened the door for her and watched her walk away down the huge corridor, then hesitate at the top of the stairs. Heads turned as she passed. You sensed she came from a different world, the world of the night, and there was something almost indecent about her in the harsh light of a winter's day.'

Almost before the last echoes of the famous guns have died away, the three Navarone heroes are parachuted into war-torn Yugoslavia to rescue a division of partisans and fulfil a secret mission, so deadly that it must be hidden even from their own allies.

When Philo Drax receives a letter from her wealthy grandfather saying he fears for his life at the hands of the vicious Slape family, she rushes to the rescue. But too late! Katie Slape, a monstrous girl with psychic powers and a penchant for smashing skulls with her hammer, has already finished him off and gotten hold of his cash.

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.

Published in January 1922, The Secret Adversary is the second detective fiction novel by British crime novelist Agatha Christie. The book introduces the characters of Tommy Beresford and Prudence Tuppence Cowley, two out-of-work 20-somethings in post-war London. The two agree to form The Young Adventurers, Ltd, hiring themselves out with the slogan no reasonable offer refused. They are quickly enlisted to solve the mysterious disappearance of a young woman who was entrusted with sensitive diplomatic documents amid the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

Eighteen-year-old Jason Rogers’ life is turned upside-down when he finds himself in the custody of an unnamed government agency that is falsely accusing him of being responsible for the explosion that caused the death of his parents. Anya is 17 - a teenager who wishes she could be normal for once - but she’s not. A secret government agency, headed by none other than her father, knows how to leverage the dangerous capability she was born with. All goes well for her until one of the agents turns on her.

In this short story, Hercule Poirot is asked to attend a Christmas celebration in order to apprehend a jewel thief who has taken advantage of an unwary Eastern prince.