Short Thrillers

Nobody plays accordion like Dick Contino. His skilled fingers can find beauty in even the schmaltziest Borscht Belt favorites, and with his matinee-idol looks he could be a real star. Right now, though, he’s slumming it as the headliner in a Grade Z teenybopper picture called Daddy-O. He’s too good for this movie, and finishing it is going to take him to a very dark place. Daddy-O and Dick Contino are both real, their stories dredged out of the past by James Ellroy, a master of historical crime fiction. In Dick Contino's Blues he takes us to B-List Hollywood in 1957 - a time when movies were cheerful and dirty secrets lurked just off camera.

Vitus Adamson has a second chance at life now that he's no longer a zombie. But after killing his brother, Jamie, Vitus lands in prison on murder charges. Jamie's death exposes secret government projects so deep in the black they cannot be seen - without Vitus, that is. Sprung from jail, the government hires Vitus to clean up Jamie's messes, but tracking down his brother's homemade monsters gone rogue is easier said than done. The first of them is a convicted killer assumed to be safely behind bars.

Let Ellery Queen clue you in on his special brand of high tension, brain-teasing mystery! This collection consists of novelettes and short stories from Queen's many escapades.

The stories that you will hear in this collection highlight all things Accra, everything that the city was and is - the remaining vestiges of colonialism, the pride of independence, the nexus of indigenous tribes and other groups from all over the world, the tension between modernity and traditionalism, the symbolism and storytelling both obvious and coded, the moral high ground, the duplicity and deceit, the most basic human failings laid bare alongside fear and love and pain, and the corrupting desire to have the very things you are not meant to have.

Over the years, Ian Rankin has amassed an incredible portfolio of short stories. Published in crime magazines, composed for events, broadcast on radio, they all share the best qualities of his phenomenally popular Rebus novels. Brought together for the first time, and including brand-new material, this is the ultimate Rebus short-story collection and a must-have book for crime lovers and for Ian's millions of fans alike. No Rankin aficionado can go without it.

In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in 13 relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass”, one of two stories cowritten with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.

This collection of short stories from the master of modern fiction is available only as an audiobook. In Blood and Smoke, Stephen King takes us inside a world of yearning and paranoia, isolation and addiction. It is the world of the smoker. In this audio-only collection, the now politically incorrect habit plays a key role in the fates of three different men.

In A Gladiator Dies Only Once, the second collection of his award-winning stories featuring Gordianus, Saylor more than meets his own high standards. Set between the events of his novels RomanBlood and Catilina’s Riddle, these nine stories of previously untold adventures from the early career of Gordianus - when his adopted son, Eco, was still a mute boy and his wife, Bethesda, was but his slave - will delight Saylor’s many fans while illuminating details of the ancient world like no other writer can.

A shadowy master criminal has been kidnapping experts from the food industry and stealing both food and equipment. The crimes are so unrelated no one in the world had noticed the connections. No one except Albert Smith, that is. He’s got almost nothing to go on, but with every place he visits, he gets just a little closer to the truth. He’s not working alone though, his faithful sidekick, Rex Harrison the former police dog is right there with him. Can the two of them pull off the impossible and find the man Albert chose to dub ‘the Gastrothief’?

A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative number one New York Times best-selling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.

In this gothic, virtuoso debut collection, Mike McCormack dispenses nightmares both stylish and macabre. "A Is for Ax" offers alphabetized look at the killing of a parent, while the title story tracks a chilling sibling rivalry. Other works here offer multiple-quiz on the road to Calvary, a door-to-door saleswoman trafficking in strange and menacing feats, and a self-mutilating artist pushing himself to the limit. These sly and dangerous stories show us a young writer who was already a master of wicked formal play, and whose sly takes on life and death remain profoundly unsettling.

With characters arranged alphabetically - from the Ancient Pythoness to Bethany Zanelli - best-selling author Charlaine Harris takes fans into the future of their favorite residents of Bon Temps and environs. You’ll learn how Michele and Jason’s marriage fared, what happened to Sookie’s cousin Hunter, and whether Tara and JB’s twins grew up to be solid citizens. This coda provides the answers to your lingering questions - including details of Sookie’s own happily-ever-after…

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).

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.

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, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and John D. MacDonald all 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 magazine.

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.

In a town where it's not safe to be out after dark, student Claire Danvers and her friends have had their fair share of thrills. But Morganville still has a few secrets left to tell. Now, in this collection, you can venture down the town's strange streets, revisit all the tales you've come to love, and experience six new stories featuring your favorite Morganville residents - both human and vampire.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. In his tenth appearance, he takes a job as an advertising copywriter to expose a ruthless killer. Victor Dean fell to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, but no one seems to be sorry. Until an inquisitive new copywriter joins the firm and asks some awkward questions....

From the authors of the best-selling series "CHERRINGHAM". This compilation contains episodes 4-6: "MURDER WORE A MASK": Lavinia's annual Masked Ball at Mydworth Manor is a highlight of the season - but the lavish party comes to a full stop when one of the guests is found dead down by the lake. Harry and Kat suspect that the dead man was the victim of a clever case of murder. And the killer's work is not yet done... "DEADLY CARGO": Mydworth's Excelsior Radio Company is world-famous for its expensive radio-phonographs.

Featuring North America's foremost thriller authors, Thriller is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are 32 of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous, to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.