Short Stories Mystery Thrillers

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant.

Every nosy neighbor, gossipy friend, and meddling relative is just one good mystery away from becoming a detective. From behind locked doors or out in broad daylight, driven by chance or curiosity, amateur sleuths get in over their heads in these six hair-raising, hilarious stories.

From the New York Times best-selling duo comes a gripping and suspenseful short story about a blind detective who uses her heightened senses to discover life-threatening secrets.

Crime just seems to follow lottery-winning couple Willy and Alvirah Meehan wherever they go. But now Alvirah can sleuth to her heart's content! In this collection of stories, the couple is targeted and pursued by ex-cons after winning the lottery in "Plumbing for Willy," they discover the body of actress Fiona Winter in their New York apartment in "The Body in the Closet," and they help Cynthia Lathem solve the murder of her stepfather in "Death at the Cape." The aura of suspense remains sky-high in two additional stories, "Stowaway" and "Milk Run."

A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore.

Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses books have fascinated fans and critics alike with their irresistible blend of fantasy, romance, and adventure. Now in Quatrain, she weaves compelling stories in four of the worlds that fans love in "Flight", "Blood", "Gold", and "Flame".

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.

Love can propel us to our greatest heights . . . and darkest depths. In this new compendium of Agatha Christie short stories, witness the dark side of love—crimes of passion, games of the heart, and deadly deceits. This pulse-pounding compendium features beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, master of charades Parker Pyne, the enigmatic Harley Quin, and the adventurous Tommy and Tuppence, all at the ready to solve tantalizing mysteries.

In Dark Property, a woman carries a dying baby across a desert waste, moving toward a fortress harboring a mysterious resurrection cult. Menaced by scavengers, she nevertheless begins to suspect that the reality within the fortress may be even more unsettling than the blasted environment outside. In Contagion and Other Stories, Evenson takes his audiences into a world that is at once apocalyptic, dark, observant, and grotesque without ever dipping into static genre conventions.

Following the success of Paris Noir, the Akashic Noir Series has expanded to include the famously diverse and sometimes controversial suburbs of this legendary city.

From the hallucinatory noir novella Go Deep to the twisted short stories "Necessary Women" and "Remmy Rothstein Toes the Line", this collection showcases the New York Times best-selling author's dark humor, limitless imagination, and masterly command of voice and character.

When CIA officer Craig Norton glimpses an unexplainable object in the sky over Mongolia, he can’t quite believe it. Frankly, he isn’t sure Langley will either. Despite his misgivings, Craig reports the sighting in a cable to headquarters detailing the incident. Fast-forward fifteen years. Craig is still reeling from the report that tanked his career and his personal life. That fleeting moment on the Mongolian steppe made him a pariah at the Agency, and he still hasn’t recovered. At this point, he doubts he ever will.

Summer. Holiday season. A time for rest and relaxation. But murder can strike anywhere, as this selection of an "unlucky 13" mysteries by Agatha Christie proves. Join Hercule Poirot, Christopher Parker Pyne, Harley Quin and James Bond on this special holiday-themed collection, and take a dip into these short stories, perfect for killing time on the beach, by the pool - or at home, when planning to get away from it all.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. In Hong Kong Noir, 14 of the city’s finest authors explore the dark heart of the Pearl of the Orient in haunting stories of depravity and despair.

A grand treasure for fans of the grande dame of mystery, The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories brings together nine rare and brilliant Christie tales of murder and detection that span nearly half a century of her storytelling genius. In "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest," Hercule Poirot unravels the psychological conundrums that motivate a killer.... In "The Actress," a great star's shady past becomes the plaything of a blackmailer.... In "The Harlequin Tea Set," Mr. Harley Quin helps a man save his loved ones from the greedy hand of murder.

Before I Wake is a thriller fan's dream, a rich, resonant collection that reminds us, once again, of its author's enduring and unmistakable importance. This is popular fiction as it should be written. It doesn't get better than this.

Seichan is ripped out of the Sigma series for an adventure all her own - but can she survive? The beautiful and elusive assassin wakes in a hotel in Paris with a deadly electronic collar fastened to her throat. Joined by a boy who is similarly threatened, she must rescue the son of a hated enemy, who has fallen under the sway of the nefarious leader of an apocalyptic cult. To survive she must venture into the dark world beneath the City of Lights, into the infamous catacombs of Paris.

This collection of 25 Hercule Poirot adventures is compiled from short stories written by Agatha Christie for The Sketch magazine in 1923 from March to December. In these stories, including "The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim", "The Veiled Lady", and "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb", the eccentric private detective slowly and surely solves mysteries involving jealousy, revenge, and greed. These stories were well-received at the time and cemented Christie's reputation as the worthy successor to Arthur Conan Doyle.

From the UK best-selling author of Abbot's Keep comes a new dimension in terror. Spanning four decades, the dark history of Church Farm House is explored within four interlinking horror stories. Welcome to the nightmare... Benedict Ashforth is the author of the UK best-selling Kindle ghost story, Abbot's Keep.

As a young reporter, Arthur Crane exposed the secrets behind the Orchid Killer, a cult murderer from the late '60s whose crimes blackened the end of the Summer of Love. Half a century later, Arthur wakes to find an orchid resting on his pillow, a symbol of death from a killer connected to his estranged younger brother, Christian. To discover the horrifying truth, Arthur will risk all - even his very soul - for Christian may not be the brother that Arthur remembers....