Short Mystery Collection

Diverse, dark-humored, and deliciously bite-sized: USA Today best-selling author J. T. Lawrence ratchets up the tension with this compelling collection of short stories perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn and Roald Dahl.

The stories included in this collection are: "Cracked", "I Exist", "The Author", "Mother", "Sasquatch", "The Doctor", "Bugs", "The Cemetery", "The Final Gem", "Amnesia", "Bobby", "Santa Clause", "Bloodthirsty", and "Autonomous".

A tea shoppe along the coast of Maine is connected to a year's worth of mysterious deaths. Starting one winter day, Georgina finds the mayor poisoned by a plate of petite fours. That spring, Evie's favorite customer and recipe tester is killed. While out delivering scones for her summer job, Ashley discovers a crime scene to practice her student training in forensics. Against a backdrop of vibrant fall foliage, Ladessa discovers a corpse at table number four. How can one small shoppe's employees be connected to so many deaths, and will the business ever recover?

Two never before published novellas from some of our very best crime writers, compiled and edited by Ed McBain.

C.T. Ferguson wishes his parents would get off his case. Forced to use his brilliant hacking skills to play detective, he hopes that each investigation is a cinch. But a body near a Baltimore chapel is only the beginning, and the better the rich kid gets at his job, the more dangerous his work becomes….

Dirty Laundry in Paradise. For a moment, my estimation of the good Mr. Brae had increased somewhat, as I gathered he didn’t want one of his servants taking the blame for a deed the poor soul hadn’t perpetrated. I glanced at Holmes to determine his take on the situation, but I wasn’t surprised that he had taken little notice of Mr. Brae. “Would you pass the milk, Watson?” Ignoring the man completely as one could ignore a bumbling buffoon, as Holmes had dubbed him after our previous encounter. Dutifully, I passed him the cream which he slowly poured into his tea.

Three compelling Sherlock Holmes mysteries in one book, including "The Game of Cat and Mouse": "The interior was dark, and neither of us searched for a lamp or switch. There came a ticking of some clock or another. And the sound of a dripping faucet somewhere in the house was like a hammer to an anvil. Our breaths were loud, but my heart sounded louder to me...."

Here are five more tales of crime and mystery, telling of those who walk crooked paths and pay the price for it. Here are crooks and cops, killers and victims, and those who walk the line between good and evil. Take a few short trips down the darker side of life, where crime can be a casual or planned event. This set of stories shows people on the run and police and ordinary citizens solving crimes. Sometimes the perpetrator gets away, but so often people pay for their deeds.

Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

The Dead Witness gathers the finest adventures among private and police detectives from the 19th century and into the early 20th - including a wide range of overlooked gems creating the finest ever anthology of Victorian detective stories. "The Dead Witness", the 1866 title story by Australian writer Mary Fortune, is the first known detective story by a woman, a suspenseful clue-strewn manhunt in the Outback. This forgotten treasure sets the tone for the whole anthology....

Elliott Cooper's off to Las Vegas for a week-long P.I. convention and he's driving there in his new car. He stops for gas in Barstow and two thugs carjack him and his car. They slug him, dump him in the desert and leave him for dead. This could have been the end for Elliott Cooper had Jane not come along when she did. She takes Elliott back to her house in the middle of nowhere. Elliott had been hit so hard on the head that now he can't remember who he is, what he is and where he belongs.

Elliott is hired to find a witness to a fatal auto accident that happened right outside his office building. Matt is hired to get the goods on a nasty neighbor who seems to be vandalizing his own property in an effort to frame his neighbor. But why?

Is it possible to scare someone to death? Absolutely. And that's just what this pair of killers is doing so as not to leave any traces of trauma on the victims. Each death appears to be caused by a heart attack. Why does Elliott NOT want to get involved in this case, now that his business is called Cooper and Son again? The answers are all right here in this 122nd installment of the four generations of Coopers in the private eye business.

Neighborhood businesses are being plastered with graffiti - some of it artful and some of it garbage. The police want to hire Elliott to find these spray can artists and offer them a deal of working with the merchants. Elliott is on another case, so Gloria steps up and handles this one with surprising results. The two brothers who are leaving their marks all over the city have been tagged The Marks Brothers by the merchants.

Matt also has some big news for Elliott and Gloria. Meanwhile Gloria joins Elliott on her last case before she retires to make room for Matt. They're checking the background of a potential investor when that client turns up dead - hanging in his own living room. Suicide? Elliott doesn't think so.

Elliott and Matt are hire by the police to handle the leg work for them on a kidnap case that has brought in the FBI. The two private eyes have to check area body shops, machine shops, fabrication shops and any other place capable of manufacturing a fake U.S. Mail box, used in the ransom drop.

J. T. Lawrence is back with more short stories that are creepier than ever. You won't be able to get these deliciously twisted tales out of your head... Grab them while they're hot and sticky. If you're a fan of Roald Dahl or Gillian Flynn, you'll love these unsettling stories....

Neighbors are shocked when Harold Pardee reports his wife dead. No one even knew the eccentric TV repairman was married. Within hours, horrible rumors spread about what that poor woman must have endured for 30 years. Until the Pardees' carefully guarded world is exposed. New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh delivers an endearing short story about our misguided perception of strangers, the nature of love, and the need for secrets.

Five more sizzlingly scandalous Sherlock Holmes stories from the pen of Orlando Pearson. Mr. Pearson mixes the canon with elite sport, business high jinks, a musical mystery, a literary mystery, Realpolitik, and in "The Hounding of Peer Baskerville" rolls the most famous of all detective stories on 20 years. A must for traditionalists, lovers of mystery, and anyone who likes a rattling good listen.