Classic Detective

A novelist ambles down the lanes of a cosy country village, replete with Tudor houses and quaint cottages. In her writer's mind she pictures the sordid truth beyond the veneer, a seemingly laughable proposition - until the coming of the letters. Anonymous letters from a poisoned pen, sowing discord and defaming everybody from the Rector to the 'queen of the village' Miss Decima Asprey. Naturally, where there is venom in the air and dark secrets are threatening to come to light, the shadow of death is not far behind.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to The Mysterious Affair at Styles and experience the compelling world of classic detective fiction, starring Belgian Hercule Poirot, private detective extraordinaire.

Cash-strapped drifter Anthony Cade agrees to two jobs at the behest of an old friend. He is to deliver an unpublished memoir to a publisher and return a cache of letters to a woman. The simple errands soon plunge Cade into dangerous international intrigue that draws together Scotland Yard, the French Sûreté, and the heir to the Herzoslovakian throne. But it’s at the historic estate of Chimneys in the English countryside that the dark secrets of a treacherous conspiracy erupt in murder.

The Bellona Club is the picture of old-world respectability—a gentleman’s retreat where war veterans and aristocrats gather for quiet conversation, brandy, and a game of chess. But on Armistice Day, the peace is shattered when the body of General Fentiman is discovered slumped in his usual chair. At first glance, it seems the elderly war hero simply passed away, but something doesn’t add up. The time of death is unclear, his stiff posture is unnatural, and an inheritance worth half a million pounds hangs in the balance.

Peter Grant is learning magic fast. And it’s just as well - he's already had run-ins with the deadly supernatural children of the Thames and a terrifying killer in Soho. Progression in the police force is less easy, especially when you work in a department of two. A department that doesn't even officially exist. A department that if you did describe it to most people would get you laughed at.

Francis Pettigrew travels to Exmoor for a holiday with his wife - an area in which as a young boy he was traumatized by coming across a dead body on the moor. In an attempt to exorcise this trauma, Pettigrew walks across the moor to the place where the incident occurred - only to find another dead body. Moreover, when he returns to the scene with the police, the body is gone. Did he really see a body, or is it a hallucination conjured up by his return to the scene of the crime that has haunted him since childhood?

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate the legend of a supernatural hound, a beast that may be stalking a young heir on the fog-shrouded moorland that makes up his estate. The best of the Holmes novels!

Detective Hercule Poirot is urged out of retirement to solve the murder of Roger Ackroyd, a wealthy widower found stabbed in his study. In the deceptively quiet village of King’s Abbot, potential motives abound - involving blackmail, revenge, legacies, and more - but they are hard to recognize amid so many layers of secrecy and misdirection...or they would be, for anyone but Poirot. Who’s hiding what, and which was the secret that ultimately provoked the crime? You can’t possibly imagine.

When Detective Inspector Bridget Hart returns to her old Oxford college for a reunion dinner, she's hoping for a fun weekend catching up with old friends. But the reunion takes a macabre turn when body parts are served up at the college feast, and one of her friends is found murdered. With Bridget's arch rival Inspector Baxter leading the murder inquiry, and herself a potential suspect, Bridget is forbidden from taking part in the investigation. But that doesn't stop her from carrying out her own private inquiries. Bridget soon realizes that the murderer is someone known to her.

Georges Simenon's gripping tale of small town suspicion and revenge, part of the new Maigret series. There was an exaggerated humility about her. Her cowed eyes, her way of gliding noiselessly about without bumping into things, of quivering nervously at the slightest word, were the very image of a scullery maid accustomed to hardship. And yet he sensed, beneath that image, glints of pride held firmly in check. She was anaemic. Her flat chest was not formed to rouse desire.

Morley's sequel to Parnassus on Wheels, his second love letter to the bookselling trade, The Haunted Bookshop, finds Mifflin and McGill now married and ensconced in Brooklyn. When Aubrey Gilbert, a young advertising man, visits the shop, he falls for Mifflin’s assistant, Titania. But something is amiss. The ghosts of literature aren’t the only mysterious visitors in Mifflin’s bookshop, where books disappear and reappear, but Mifflin is too distracted to notice. Gilbert takes Titania's safety into his own hands. Her life—and the Mifflins’—may depend on it.

As springtime comes, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have developed a bad case of spring fever. When Tom's Aunt Sally invites them to Arkansas, their malady is instantly cured. But as the duo sets out on their steamer to get down river, they learn that Tom's Uncle Silas is in considerable trouble and needs their help. This classic is the perfect listen for audiences of all ages and encapsulates the essence of American literature.

An ancient ring stolen from a Holocaust victim. A stuffed raven that once belonged to Charles Dickens. An extra body in the New York City Morgue. Only one man could follow these clues to a solution: the legendary Jorge Luis Borges. "... highly recommended for classic detective story enthusiasts who look for complexity and intellectual challenges in their characters and stories." - Midwest Book Review Two years after their collaboration chronicled in The Philosophical Detective, Nick Martin again falls under the spell of the blind poet and fabulist who calls himself Jorge Luis Borges. ...

When Lord Peter hears of an elderly woman's sudden death, dismissed by authorities as perfectly ordinary, his razor-sharp instincts detect something amiss. Teaming up with the ever-reliable Detective Inspector Parker and his clever secretary Miss Climpson, Lord Peter unravels a chilling scheme rooted in greed, manipulation, and hidden motives. As secrets come to light, Wimsey must race against time to prevent another murder and expose a ruthless culprit.

After a corpse wearing pince-nez glasses is found in a bathtub, Lord Peter Wimsey undertakes the case and investigates the deed privately. But determining whether the corpse belongs to a well-known banker or a group of mischief-making medical students is just the beginning of this tangled mystery plot.

Ten years ago, Mary Morstan’s father, an officer in an Indian regiment, vanished. Four years later, elegant pearls began to arrive, six in total, and now she holds an invitation to meet her mysterious anonymous benefactor. As Miss Morstan shares this peculiar tale with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, she urges the detectives to accompany her. Her only clues to her father’s disappearance: a map of a fortress with the names of four strangers and an assertion that she’s been dreadfully wronged.

A prominent financier vanishes before bedtime, without his clothes. Hours later, a corpse is found in a bathtub wearing only pince-nez eyeglasses. When it’s determined that the body is not that of the financier, it’s up to amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey to uncover the naked truth. As the part-time sleuth investigates what these men - one dead, one missing, both starkers - have in common, the pieces of two puzzles converge, and the case becomes more dangerous by the clue.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close - the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When "The Final Problem" was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure.

This is a story from the Murders in the Rue Morgue (The Dupin Stories) collection. Auguste Dupin, investigator extraordinaire, was the remarkable creation of Edgar Allan Poe. Written in the 1840s, Poe presented the acutely observant, shrewd but idiosyncratic character who, with his chronicler, provided the inspiration for the more famous Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Scandal hits the staid publishing house of Barnabas when one of the directors is found dead in the strong-room. Suspicion immediately falls on his wife's lover, the junior partner in the firm. But how does an unpublished Restoration comedy come to feature in the tragedy? And what of the odd disappearance of another director twenty years before?