Mystery Reads

Mom has a gift for Greg, but what is it? He keeps asking questions to find out…. Follow along with the clues!

Be ready for some action, humor, and mystery in this anthology with short stories. You’ll listen about gangsters, witches, magic potions, interrogations, werewolves, and murder. Several stories have a murder victim, while others are all about theft or robberies. But in many cases, they spark the imagination and make up for a great way to sit back, relax, and read or listen to stories from a completely different world.

On a cold winter morning in 1873, a crowd gathers on the shore of a Nova Scotia fishing village. A stormy sea has thrown a ship onto the rocks. The villagers work bravely to save the ship's crew. But many die. When young Will Murdoch and the local priest examine the bodies, they discover gold and diamonds. They suspect that the shipwreck was not responsible for all of the deaths. With the priest's help, Will - who grows up to be a famous detective - solves his first mystery.

Blair Charlston swapped the stock market for salvation - and now he's making a killing. Once a controversial venture capitalist, Charlston reinvented himself as a personal and business development guru after surviving an attempt to take his own life when a business deal went disastrously wrong. So when he decides to host a weekend retreat on the outskirts of Stirling for more than 300 people, Connor Fraser is drafted in to cover the security for a man who is at once idolised as a saviour and hated as a ruthless asset stripper.

David Copperfield was a little boy who grew up in an unfortunate family. His father died six months before David’s birth. Later his mother remarried to a cruel man who beat him up. David however fought back and bit him. This resulted in David getting sent to a boarding school which he did not finish because of his mother’s death. All in all, David’s life has been a string of misfortunes. His development from infancy to maturity happened unnecessarily fast.

For 19-year-old Mickey, Instagram offers a tantalizing portal into the world she wishes she inhabited. Though beautiful, cunning, and privileged, Mickey finds herself with a stalled modelling career, an escalating drinking problem, few friends, and next to nothing in the bank. To numb her growing despair, she spends her days frantically refreshing her Instagram feed, obsessively tracking the movements of Insta-famous model Gemma Anton.

It's New Year's Eve and the stage is set for a lavish party in one of Edinburgh's best postcodes. It's a moment for old friends to set the past to rights-and move on. The night sky is alive with fireworks and the champagne is flowing. But the celebration fails to materialize. Because someone at this party is going to die tonight. Midnight approaches and the countdown begins—but it seems one of the guests doesn't want a resolution. They want revenge.

Abandoned by her fugitive ex-husband, Lily Brown is rebuilding her life on the edge of a Kansas town that still feels the sting of his crimes. Lily lies low, managing the isolated storage facility where she lives with her twelve-year-old son, Everett, and planning a better future for them both. That requires keeping secrets. Everett has them too. After breaking into a storage unit, Everett finds photographs and news clippings of five girls missing for decades.

It looks like just another gray March morning in the tough urban district nicknamed Nowhere when seven lives converge. Any one of them could have a dark motive. Any one of them could be walking into a trap. When the fog lifts, it will all be much clearer - that a single, shattering act of violence has marked each of them forever.

Nate’s best friend Jeremy is missing, and Nate seems to be the only one worried that he’s been captured by hideous creatures that live in the sewers. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

Jerome, George and Harris are three hypochondriacal friends who like to spend time comparing their illnesses, although none of them is ill. One day they decide to go on a vacation by sailing down the Thames river towards Oxford. The three friends prepare a long list of things they will need and even take the dog Montmorency with them. During the journey they visit many different places and fall into various and interesting situations.

Mimi Lee is on top of the world. She has a thriving pet grooming business, the sweetest boyfriend, and a talking cat to boot. When she arrives at the elementary school where her sister Alice works, she’s expecting a fun girls’ night out - but instead finds a teacher slumped over in her car, dead.

FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto thinks she’s through with the past now that her psychopathic serial killer sister, Isabel, is locked away forever. Then Raisa receives a letter from Isabel. It’s just a single message: By the time you read this, I’ll be dead. Soon after, Isabel is discovered dead in her cell, forcing Raisa back into her depraved orbit—one that includes a band of true-crime worshippers obsessed with Isabel, her killing spree, and those who survived it.

Behind the walls of a mental hospital, Naomi Carradine feels her world breaking to pieces. She's starting to believe all the voices questioning her sanity. Only visitors from the outside world keep her tethered to reality. But deep in her thoughts, Naomi is haunted by memories of a golden summer that twisted into a waking nightmare of obsessive love and fractured truths.

After volunteering to wrap presents for charity, Mike and Kate get a special thank-you: a sleepover at the Baseball Hall of Fame! But when they’re sneaking around the museum late at night, their flashlight reveals that one of the famous baseball cards on display is a fake! Can they find the real card, catch the crook, and get the presents to the charity’s Christmas party on time? It’s up to Mike and Kate to turn this Christmas mess into a Christmas miracle!

Set in 1928 in Victoria, Australia. The Thornton family made its money in the goldfields during the 1850s and the antiques trade. Their principal home is Thornton Park, a lavish mansion close to Melbourne. They also own a home and a goldmine in Daylesford, where their close friends, the Bassetti family, are part of a thriving Swiss-Italian community.

The plan is so complex, the target so well protected that the three snipers have to rehearse the killing in the seclusion of the Arizona desert. Cole Howard of the FBI knows he has only days to prevent the audacious assassination. But he doesn’t know who the target is or where the crack marksmen will strike. Former SAS sergeant Mike Cramer is also on the trail, infiltrating the Irish community in New York as he tracks down Mary Hennessy, the ruthless killer who tore his life apart.

It's the week before Christmas, and antiques dealer Weezie Foley is in a frenzy to deck out her shop for the Savannah historical district decorating contest, which she intends to win. Weezie is ready to shoot herself with her glue gun by the time she's done, but the results are stunning. She's certainly one-upped the owners of the trendy shop around the corner, but suddenly things start to go missing from her display and there seems to be an uninvited midnight visitor to her shop.

Everything is not as it seems during those balmy summer days at one of Oxford’s most prestigious colleges. Lorcan Greene, wealthy gallery owner and expert forgery-spotter, is hired by Detective Braine of the Art Fraud Squad to investigate a tip-off in Oxford. But Lorcan gets more than he bargains for, falling in love with talented art student Frederica Delacroix. But what’s she hiding and could she even be involved in forgery herself?

How far would you go to protect your secret? Would you lie? Would you steal? Would you...kill? Having connived her way into marriage with a wealthy wine merchant, Claudia quickly grows bored, so when her secret gambling debts spiral, she hits on a resourceful way to pay off the moneylenders, offering "personal services" to high-ranking Romans.