Short Thrillers Suspense

Dan 'Spider' Shepherd's career path - soldier, policeman, MI5 officer - has always put a strain on his family. So he is far from happy to learn that MI5 is using teenagers as informants. Parents are being kept in the dark and Shepherd fears that the children are being exploited. As an undercover specialist, Shepherd is tasked with protecting a 15-year-old schoolboy who is being used to gather evidence against violent drug dealers and a right-wing terrorist group. But when the boy's life is threatened, Shepherd has no choice but to step in and take the heat.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Never before in audio, these vintage stories are the darkest of the dark, and the best of the best.

Crime fiction fans old and new will delight in rediscovering these taut, character-rich, heart-stopping tales, now on audio for the first time.

Since his debut novel, the modern classic The Ghosts of Belfast, was published a decade ago, Stuart Neville has published eight other critically acclaimed novels and achieved international recognition as one of crime fictions great living writers. Now for the first time Neville offers listeners a collection of his short fiction - 12 chilling stories that traverse and blend the genres of noir, horror, and speculative fiction and which bring the history and lore of Neville's native Northern Ireland to glittering life.

In cycle three of the series, the Harbingers team investigates more mysterious and fascinating supernatural occurrences in Hollywood, a small town in North Carolina, and elsewhere. Can they keep the growing darkness at bay? This fast-paced and ongoing collection plays like your favorite TV series, with each linked episode written by a talented author. Featuring "Leviathan", "The Mind Pirates", "Hybrids", and "The Village".

The master at his scarifying best! From heart-pounding terror to the eeriest of whimsy - tales from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time! Trucks that punish and beautiful teen demons who seduce a young man to massacre; curses whose malevolence grows through the years; obscene presences and angels of grace - here, indeed, is a night-blooming bouquet of chills and thrills.

The first collection of stories Stephen King has published since Nightmares & Dreamscapes nine years ago, Everything's Eventual includes one O. Henry Prize winner, two other award winners, four stories published by The New Yorker, and "Riding the Bullet", King's original e-book, which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade. Intense, eerie, and instantly compelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” ( Booklist).

Avec la parution de la trilogie de La Bête, David Goudreault a ébranlé le paysage littéraire québécois. Repoussant les limites de l'humour grinçant, il a offert un regard à la fois dur et tendre sur les oubliés de la résilience, grâce à un protagoniste qui, en dépit de sa violence, est touchant de naïveté.

Who would suspect that the same mind that created the most famous literary detective of all time also took on the eternally popular genre of vampires? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a contemporary of Bram Stoker, gave us some fascinating works of vampire fiction. From the bloodsucking plant in "The American's Tale" to the bloodsucking wife in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," he reveled in the horror created by creatures who survived on the blood of men and women.

The Cambodian Curse: When an ancient and supposedly cursed Cambodian sculpture disappears from an impenetrable museum, and the carving's owner is killed by an invisible assailant while a witness is a few feet away, historian Jaya Jones and her old nemesis Henry North team up to solve the baffling crime. Additional stories include: "The Hindi Houdini", "The Haunted Room", "The Library Ghost of Tanglewood Inn", "The Curse of Cloud Castle", "Tempest in a Teapot", "A Dark and Stormy Light", "The Shadow of the River", plus the bonus novella Fool's Gold.

From the collection Mary Russell's War, "Mary's Christmas" delivers the author's signature blend of narrative mastery and historical detail while shining light on previously unexplored corners of the Russell-Holmes universe. Laurie R. King blends her long-running brand of crime fiction with historical treats and narrative sleight of hand.

Newcomers to Tinker's Cove, Ty and Heather Moon have moved into a dilapidated house reputed to be a haven for ghosts. Now strange noises and flickering lights erupt from the house at all hours and neighborly relations are on edge. And when a local boy goes missing near the house, it's up to Lucy Stone to unravel the mystery of the eccentric couple and their increasingly frightful behavior.

The best-selling author of Harm Done and A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell has written dozens of gripping works under her own name and as Barbara Vine. She has received three Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and four Dagger Awards from England’s Crime Writers Association. How frightening can a book be? Ambrose Ribbon, self-appointed editor and grammar police, is about to find out.

For the Sake of the Game is the latest volume in the award-winning series from New York Times best-selling editors Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, with stories of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and friends in a variety of eras and forms. King and Klinger have a simple formula: Ask some of the world's greatest writers-regardless of genre - to be inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The results are surprising and joyous.

In this tense, riveting mind game, New York Times bestselling novelist Nelson DeMille delivers a suspenseful short story in the tradition of his classic military novels The General's Daughter and Word of Honor. A band of soldiers in its last month of service in Vietnam goes out on a patrol through enemy territory with a female sniper in its path. Recounting the mission in shattering and sometimes gruesome detail, DeMille creates a concise masterpiece of moody suspense.

In cycle two of the series, the Harbingers team investigates more unsettling mysteries that drive them to the breaking point. Will they be strong enough to keep overcoming the world's dark forces? Fast-paced and ongoing, this thrilling collection is like your favorite TV series, with each linked episode written by a talented author.

Rumpole is on the job again, bringing along his taste for claret, his penchant for poetry, and his reputation for a good story. These seven irresistible stories run the gamut from simple thievery to murder and espionage.

If our memories make us who we are, who is a man without any? Nameless has only a gun, missions from a shadowy agency, and one dead aim: dispense justice when the law fails. As he moves from town to town, driven by splintered visions of the past and future, he's headed toward the ultimate confrontation in this propulsive series of short thrillers by number one New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.

Dashiell Hammett is best known as both pioneer and master of American hard-boiled detective fiction, but these dozen and a half stories both affirm that reputation and present him in a different light. Along with the full-length treatments On the Make and The Kiss-Off, this collection includes never before and rarely published stories that explore failed romance, courage in the face of uncertainty, hypocrisy, and crass opportunism.

In the wild crags of the Dark Peak moorland, a ruthless conflict has been raging for years. The discovery of an illegal haul from the bedroom of a terraced house is a clue to what might be at stake - perhaps the entire future of one of the most prized landscapes in the Peak District National Park. For young Derbyshire police detective DC Ben Cooper, an assignment to the Rural Crime Squad means stepping into the middle of the conflict, without being quite sure whose side he's on.