Classic Fiction Mysteries

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman---Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl.

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.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are back in Partners in Crime, Agatha Christie's delightful collection of short mysteries featuring the clever and adventurous husband-and-wife detective duo. When they take over the International Detective Agency, they find themselves entangled in a series of baffling cases, from missing jewels to international espionage. With their signature charm, wit, and a dash of daring, Tommy and Tuppence tackle each case while playfully imitating famous literary detectives.

In The Secret of the Indian, Omri vowed to lock his magical cupboard forever. But now, in The Mystery of the Cupboard, he finds an old journal written by his great-great aunt that reveals that Omri is compelled to open the cupboard just once again.

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 He is to deliver an unpublished memoir to a publisher and return a cache of letters to a woman.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.

Mr. Thipps wakes up to the worst day ever. A dead body in his bathtub wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez. So many questions. Luckily, Lord Peter Wimsey catches wind of this – for he has a keen mind for solving crimes, although he is the pampered aristocratic amateur. With the connections that privilege offers, he has returned somewhat battered from the war with a penchant for crime solving. This case of near-sighted nudity, taking place during the plague of 1918, takes on twists and turns both unforeseen and unwelcome.

At the dawn of the French Revolution, the men, women, and children of Paris have one hope to escape the guillotine: the masked and mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel. But who is this daring swordsman and quick-thinking master of disguise? London’s privileged, self-obsessed Sir Percy Blakeney. When his estranged wife, Marguerite, falls prey to French envoy Chauvelin’s blackmail, she unwittingly exposes the Pimpernel and imperils the covert league he commands.

Paris comes under siege when someone starts killing women on the streets one summer - and Maigret must hatch a plan to lure the murderer out. It was 4 August. The windows were wide open but brought no relief, since they allowed in even more warm air, which seemed to be rising from the melting tarmac, the burning hot stonework and even the Seine itself: one could imagine the river steaming like a pan of water on a stove.

Fine-art aficionado. Master of disguise. Jewelry expert. Historian. Gentleman. Burglar. Arsene Lupin is all of these and more. In 1905, Maurice Leblanc introduced his gentleman-burglar in the story "L'Arrestation d'Arsène Lupin". Shortly thereafter, the stories were collected as one single volume. In these charming adventures, Lupin orchestrates a myriad of extravagant heists in the very face of the determined Inspector Ganimard.

Chief Inspector Macdonald has been invited to a treasure hunt party at the house of the Graham Coombe, the celebrated publisher of Murder by Mesmerism. The clues of the hunt have been devised by Coombe's thriller-writer friends, disguised on the night under literary pseudonyms. The fun comes to an abrupt end, however, when 'Samuel Pepys' is found murdered in the telephone room in bizarre circumstances.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase - a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns.

Two decades into the twenty-first century, the world’s nations are becoming irrelevant. Corporations are the true global powers, with information the most valuable currency, while the smaller island nations have become sanctuaries for data pirates and terrorists. A globe-trotting PR executive for the large corporate economic democracy Rizome Industries Group, Laura Webster is present when a foreign representative is assassinated on Rizome soil during a conference for offshore data havens.

In The Lady in the Lake, hard-boiled crime-fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wives - one a rich man's and one a poor man's - who have become the objects of Philip Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo, and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

Someone's run off with Junie B.'s new black furry mittens and didn't return them to the Lost and Found! So when Junie B. finds a wonderful pen, she should be allowed to keep it, too. Right?

The Priory may look ramshackle in appearance, but Peter, Margaret and Celia are totally charmed by their newly inherited country house. But there's more to The Priory than meets the eye. Left empty for years, hardly a single person has set foot inside, and down in the village, the locals whisper of a ghostly figure that roams the halls. When a murder is committed, the new owners start to fear the rumours are true - but is their new home really haunted, or is someone trying to scare them away?

On Max's birthday, he finds a kind of magic mirror in the attic. It can make him invisible. So Max and his friends start playing "now you see me, now you don't." Until Max realizes that he's losing control. Staying invisible a little too long. Having a harder and harder time coming back. Getting invisible is turning into a very dangerous game. The next time Max gets invisible, will it be...forever?

A deadly swarm of earthquakes shakes the planet. In the sky above, the sun appears to stand still. While the world reels from the vast destruction, George Pierce and the Cerberus Group, a team of scientific and historical experts, uncover an imminent threat straight out of history that must be stopped. But not everyone wants them to succeed. An apocalyptic death cult, made up of suicidal martyrs and true believers who will do whatever it takes to ensure the destruction of all life on Earth, goes head-to-head with a billionaire tech genius commanding an army of robots on a quest to own the sun itself.

Step into the world of classic mystery with The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, now available as an enthralling audiobook. Join the brilliant detective Hercule Poirot as he faces one of his most perplexing cases yet. Summoned to France by a wealthy businessman, Poirot arrives only to find his client brutally murdered on a golf course. What follows is a masterful tale of intrigue, deception, and red herrings, where everyone is a suspect and nothing is as it seems.

First published in 1861 it tells the tale of the lonely weaver Silas Marner who, after suffering betrayal and rejection, leaves his community to become a recluse obsessed only with accumulating money. One day Silas's money is stolen by Dunstan Cass, a dissolute son of Squire Cass, the town's leading landowner. The loss of his gold drives Silas into a deep gloom, until one day a little golden-haired orphan girl wanders into his home to change his life forever.

In this delightful double-bill of Agatha Christie's first two novels, award winning narrator/comedienne Alison Larkin and TV star James Warwick bring The Secret Adversary and The Mysterious Affair at Styles to sparkling new life.