Suspense Detective

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.

Christmas is approaching, and in Québec it's a time of dazzling snowfalls, bright lights, and gatherings with friends in front of blazing hearths. But shadows are falling on the usually festive season for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department, his old friend and lieutenant Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn't spoken to him in months, and hostile forces are lining up against him. When Gamache receives a message from Myrna Landers that a longtime friend has failed to arrive for Christmas in the village of Three Pines, he welcomes the chance to get away.

Erin Coleridge's used bookstore in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England, is a meeting place for the villagers and, in particular, for the local Jane Austen Society. At the Society's monthly meeting, matters come to a head between the old guard and its young turks. After the meeting breaks for tea, persuasion gives way to murder with extreme prejudice when president Sylvia Pemberthy falls dead to the floor. Poisoned? Presumably, but by whom? And was Sylvia the only target?

On the day of Alec Salter’s fiftieth birthday party, his wife, Charlotte, vanishes. Most of the small English village of Glensted is at the party for hours before anyone realizes she is missing. While Alec brushes off her disappearance, their four children—especially fifteen-year-old Etty—grow increasingly anxious as the cold winter hours become days and she doesn’t return. Then Etty and her friend Morgan find the body of Morgan’s father—and the Salters’ neighbor— Duncan Ackerley, floating in the river.

A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in London, ultimately exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government. The private, quiet “Miss White" as Elinor is known, lives in a village in rural Kent, England, and to her fellow villagers seems something of an enigma. Well she might, as Elinor occupies a "grace and favor" property, a rare privilege offered to faithful servants of the Crown for services to the nation.

Agatha Raisin’s private detective agency is working flat out on a series of shop burglaries. The break-ins seem to have taken a violent turn when a friend of Agatha’s is murdered during a raid on his shop. Although determined to nail the villains, Agatha still makes time to help Sir Charles Fraith prepare to stage a massive, hugely glamorous, promotional event in the grounds of his ancestral home, Barfield House.

Well, it's no wonder. The plot - suspicion for an elderly woman's murder falls on her mysterious lodger - is from Agatha Christie. The wonderful character happens to be the world's most famous sleuth, Hercule Poirot.

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go. But must. And there he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map.

A savage murder interrupts a May-December marriage and leaves Brother Cadfael with a dark, terrible mystery to solve. For the key to the killing - and a secret - are hid among the lepers of Saint Giles. Now Brother Cadfael's skills must ferret out a sickness, not of the body, but of a twisted soul - in the fifth Brother Cadfael Chronicle, a work that displays Ellis Peters' special genius at her best.

Une nuit à Londres, Lula Landry, célèbre mannequin, est retrouvée défenestrée. Son frère, John Bristow, ne croit pas au suicide et contacte Cormoran Strike, détective privé. Strike est un homme à la dérive : il a perdu une jambe à la guerre et sa vie est un désastre. Chargé par Bristow d'enquêter sur la mort de Lula, il se résout à plonger dans les eaux glauques que dissimulent les paillettes de la vie noctambule. Trahisons, secrets, vengeance émergeront peu à peu jusqu'à l'explication finale.

It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines. But to what end?

A year ago, local philanthropist and millionaire Nathan Lyon died a natural death in his sprawling mansion, a 150,000-square-foot converted mill, surrounded by his loving, attentive family. Or so it seemed at the time. Now Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team has discovered that almost nothing about that story was true. Nathan Lyon was actually Nick Bianchi from Providence, Rhode Island. His money came from Mafia-tainted sources. And his family now seems to be dying themselves, and their deaths are now revealed to be murders.

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one 40 years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on.

Twelve years ago, eight friends ran an exclusive group at university: the Masquerade Murder Society. The mysteries they solved may have been grisly, and brilliantly staged, but they were always fictional—until their final Christmas Masquerade, when one of the group disappeared, never to be seen again. Now our privileged young cast of old university friends are summoned to the depths of Scotland for a Christmas-themed masquerade party. But all are hiding something deep below the surface that could make or break their careers.

Summer is busy season for Mackenzie "Mac" Almeida's bicycle shop, nestled in the quaint, seaside hamlet of Westham, Massachusetts. She's expecting an influx of tourists at Mac's Bikes; instead she discovers the body of Jake Lacey. Mac can't imagine anyone stabbing the down-on-his-luck handyman. However, the authorities seem to think Mac is a strong suspect after she was spotted arguing with Jake just hours before his death. Mac knows she didn't do it, but she does recognize the weapon - her brother Derrick's fishing knife.

Arnold Landon finds himself drawn into another bitter dispute over land—in which a defenseless old woman pays the ultimate price. To the casual observer, Penbrook Farm might seem like a ramshackle hovel, buried deep in the woods of Northumberland. But to fragile old Sarah Ellis, it’s home. And the developers can have the place over her dead body. Of course, no one ever expected it to come to that.

On board the world’s finest luxury cruise ship, the days are filled with sunshine, cocktails, and incredible new places to explore. Unless you are employed as the ship’s detective, that is. That job falls to a lady called Patricia Fisher, a whip-smart sleuth whose special skills include attracting trouble, getting shot at, and running away screaming.

As Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes embark on their 11th adventure together, they find themselves immersed in the world of silent filmmaking. Here, the pirates are real—and unlike the shooting done with a camera, this sort can be deadly.

To inherit billions, all Avery Kylie Grambs has to do is survive a few more weeks living in Hawthorne House. The paparazzi are dogging her every step. Financial pressures are building. Danger is a fact of life. And the only thing getting Avery through it all is the Hawthorne brothers. Her life is intertwined with theirs. She knows their secrets, and they know her. But as the clock ticks down to the moment when Avery will become the richest teenager on the planet, trouble arrives in the form of a visitor who needs her help—and whose presence in Hawthorne House could change everything.

Edinburgh, 1869: Modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson is adjusting to her new life in Victorian Scotland. Her employers know she’s not housemaid Catriona Mitchell—even though Mallory is in Catriona’s body—and Mallory is now officially an undertaker’s assistant. Dr. Duncan Gray moonlights as a medical examiner, and their latest case hits close to home. Men are dropping dead from a powerful poison, and all signs point to the grieving widows… the latest of which is Gray’s oldest sister. Poison is said to be a woman’s weapon, though Mallory has to wonder if it’s as simple as that.