Classic Thrillers

Mr Fortune Explains is HC Bailey's sixth collection of eight golden-age mysteries for the eclectic surgeon-detective Mr Reginald Fortune. Including a child kidnapped from a picnic; a milliner's assistant vanishing from home without a word to her friends; a strange visit, followed by a violent attack on Mr Fortune himself; a raid on a jeweler's shop, and the theft of a photograph; an ill-situated rock garden, and a haunted man; a rigidly saintly clergyman suspected of a trivial theft; a dead policeman and a broken bicycle lamp; and a curiously disturbing picture in the Paris salon.

In the Welsh borders, isolated by heavy snow and flooding from the thaw, cut off from telephone access, a tragedy has occurred. Old Dr Robinson known to be 'a menace' on the roads has met his end in a car crash, his big saloon thrown from the track down the steep hillside. But when the police arrive there is more to the tragedy than meets the eye: why was there a second body - an outsider to these parts - in the back of the vehicle?

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.

The story involves a huge diamond, the moonstone, originally stolen from an Indian shrine. The gem is given to an English girl on her 18th birthday but disappears that same night. What follows is a spellbinding mystery that to this day has the power to draw the listener into its world of danger, suspense, and surprise.

During a quiet spell in June, Maigret, is called to investigate the disappearance of a reputable businessman. When a body is discovered near the famous Père Lachaise cemetery, Maigret struggles to find any clues to the perpetrator and loses his temper when his own reputation is threatened by the case.

'You see, I mainly work at night. I've ended up getting to know everybody. They're used to me in Pigalle, I exchange a few words with this person or that person. I go into the bars and cabarets where they give me a quarter bottle of Vichy without waiting for me to order anything.' An anonymous tip-off regarding the death of a restaurant owner sends Maigret into the world of Parisian nightlife, a notorious criminal gang and a man known as 'the Flea'. This novel has been pubished in a previous translation as Maigret and the Flea.

These six cases are among the last undertaken by Sherlock Holmes before he retired to the Sussex downs. However, the problems facing the sleuth are as diverse and challenging as ever. What with seeking the whereabouts of the stolen Mazarin Diamond, discovering the importance of being called Garrideb, encountering a mysterious murder on Thor Bridge, searching for eternal youth and the threat of a vampire in Sussex, there is no sign of Holmes' deductive powers slowing down.

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.

Nicolai Gogol's classic ghost story set in the streets of St. Petersburg in the 19th century.

These classic mystery short stories feature Maurice Lebanc’s famous rogue, Arsène Lupin. A master of disguise, Lupin moves between high society and a burglar’s life, stealing from the rich and powerful and creating mischief for Detective Ganimard.

Chief Inspector Macdonald has been invited to a treasure hunt party at the house of the Graham Coombe, the celebrated publisher of Murder by Mesmerism. The clues of the hunt have been devised by Coombe's thriller-writer friends, disguised on the night under literary pseudonyms. The fun comes to an abrupt end, however, when 'Samuel Pepys' is found murdered in the telephone room in bizarre circumstances.

Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! When young Jim Hawkins unexpectedly inherits a treasure map, he little knows what adventures await him. Pursued by pirates, betrayed by friends and beset by skulduggery, Jim must brave high seas and low cunning before he reaches the shores of Treasure Island. His fellow treasure hunters include the inflexible Captain Smollett, the indefatigable Doctor Livesey and the irrepressible Squire Trelawney.

In the shadow of World War II, in the heart of Yorkshire, Edward Smith, a diligent librarian, embarks on a unique cataloguing assignment at the secluded Hackthwaite Hall. The estate's owner, Dr. Lovegrove, a retired industrial chemist, reveals an unexpected obsession with the arcane art of alchemy, claiming to have conjured a supernatural creature of impossible powers. Smith's initial amusement and skepticism dissolve as eerie phenomena begin to haunt the hall's ancient walls, and he finds himself drawn into the alchemist's wild tales

While hot on the heels of serial coupon-racketeer Gordon Ginner, Chief Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard receives word of an intriguing incident up in Lancashire – the summer cottage of local farmer Giles Hoggett has been broken into, with an assortment of seemingly random items missing which include a complete reel of salmon line, a large sack, and two iron dogs from his fireplace. What first appears as a simple break-in quickly spirals into a mystery of contested land grabs for fishing between farmers, made all the more enticing to MacDonald when a body is then found in the river.

In what many refer to as one of the first and greatest science fiction thrillers, a mysterious stranger wanders into an inn, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages. What lies beneath the bandages is something even more mysterious. As Wells tackles issues of identity, deception, and the deterioration of the human mind, listeners will be drawn into the story of the mysterious man, whose own mistakes end up whisking him into a whirlwind of deceit, terror, and even murder. In the end, the question will be asked: when your sense of self and identity vanish, who will you become?

Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up in Kerouac’s own birthplace, the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. There, Doctor Sax, with his flowing cape, slouched hat, and insinuating leer, is chief among the many ghosts and demons that populate Jack’s fantasy world. Deftly mingling memory and dream, Kerouac captures the accents and textures of his boyhood in Lowell in this novel of a cryptic, apocalyptic hipster phantom.

For Portier de Savin-Duplais, failed student of magic, sorcery's decline into ambiguity and cheap illusion is but a culmination of life's bitter disappointments. Reduced to tending the library at Sabria's last collegia magica, he fights off despair with scholarship. But when the king of Sabria charges him to investigate an attempted murder that has disturbing magical resonances, Portier believes his dreams of a greater destiny might at last be fulfilled.

In the swirling mists of post-World War I England, a character emerged from the pen of "Sapper", (H.C.McNeile) whose adventures would captivate readers and endure through the ages. Bulldog Drummond, the invincible hero, burst onto the literary scene with a resounding force that echoed the sentiments of a society grappling with the aftermath of conflict and the winds of change.

Diminutive, bespectacled, and endearing, Father Brown only appears unworldly. But the cherubic parish priest is privy to the inner workings of the most surprising of sinners. And as an amateur sleuth, he intuits motives for Essex's unsolvable crimes. One of the most beloved characters in 20th-century detective fiction, the kindly cleric leverages his unrivaled insights into human nature to decipher 12 ingenious mysteries from the witty and clever mind of G. K. Chesterton.

Lord Darcy and Master Wizard Sean O. Lauchlainn return in this authorized sequel to the stories of Randall Garrett. In 1988, in an alternate universe in which the Plantagenets still rule Britain, France, and the New World, magic has displaced science.