Classic Fiction Mysteries

Late one moonlit night, Walter Hartright encounters a solitary and terrified woman dressed all in white. He saves her from capture by her pursuers and determines to solve the mystery of her distress and terror. Inspired by an actual criminal case, this gripping tale of murder, intrigue, madness and mistaken identity has never been out of print since its publication and brought Collins great fame and success.

August 1911. Emily Hardcastle and her inimitable lady’s maid Florence Armstrong are enjoying a fine summer until Harry, Lady H’s brother, turns up out of the blue with a mystery for them to solve. A routine parachute test at a local aeroplane factory has gone horribly wrong - with pilot Dickie Dupree plummeting to his death. Harry is certain there is more to this ‘tragic accident’ than meets the eye, having discovered that someone at the airfield is leaking top secret intelligence to foreign rivals.

The virtuous and loving Emily, the young protagonist, finds herself in the care of her aunt following the death of her father. Her aunt promptly marries the villain Montoni, a cruel and calculating man whose scheming leads him to lock both women in the dark and winding castle of Udolpho. Will they survive to tell of its terrors?

The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses, and total willingness to exploit every opportunity to enlarge his power and corrupt or destroy anyone who stands in his path.

When a postwar search for London lodgings introduces ailing doctor John H. Watson to quirky chemist Sherlock Holmes, their collaboration in the art of observation and deduction begins. Congenial flatmates and even better colleagues, the pair is quickly drawn into a case of murder and revenge that has Scotland Yard at their wits’ end.

It is 1949. Sir Francis Sherwood - WW1 hero, landowner, magistrate - is shot dead while standing at an open bedroom window in his country house. A rifle is found in the grounds. The county police seek help from Scotland Yard. Detective Chief Inspector Bryce and Detective Sergeant Haig are assigned to the case. The first difficulty for the Yard men is that nobody with even a mild dislike of Sherwood can be found. But before that problem can be resolved, others arise...... Philip Bryce is an unusual policeman. A Cambridge-educated barrister, he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1937 under ...

Step into a world of danger, intrigue, and espionage with The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie’s thrilling introduction to the adventurous duo Tommy and Tuppence. After World War I, these two spirited friends find themselves broke and in search of excitement. They soon stumble upon a shadowy conspiracy tied to a missing woman and a mysterious document that could change the course of history.

Meet Balram Halwal, the 'White Tiger': servant, philosopher, entrepreneur, murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells his story.... Born in a village in the dark heart of India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teas hop.

An espionage thriller that has been called the first great spy novel, it has sustained its popularity, being embraced by each new generation. The first in a series of five novels it features the spy Richard Hannay, an action hero with a stiff upper lip who gets caught up in a dangerous race against a plot by German spies to destroy the British war effort. When Richard Hannay offers sanctuary to an American agent seeking his help in stopping a political assassination, he takes the first step on a trail of peril and espionage.

What if I told you that heroes lived among us, that a US government agency had grown these super powered children in labs, raising them to be super soldiers? What if the technology got out? What if the tech made it all the way to Asia? You probably wouldn't believe me. You would probably would tell me that I was crazy, or that I was some type of conspiracy theorist, that there was no way that a person could turn themselves invisible, or teleport, or morph into a terrible monster. But you would be dead wrong.

Enjoy two books in the Ashcroft series that have been previously published separately as A Haunted Highland Hotel, and A Christmas Eve Murder. It is the 1950s and Lady Ashcroft a former British Agent, has found herself back in the front line of danger as she aids her friends and solves crimes linked to her past. A silly comedy fictional fun book, with romance and drama. A classic British light comedy with a cosy mystery feel to it.

First appearing in print in 1890, the character of Sherlock Holmes has now become synonymous worldwide with the concept of a super sleuth. His creator, Conan Doyle, imbued his detective hero with intellectual power, acute observational abilities, a penchant for deductive reasoning and a highly educated use of forensic skills. Indeed, Doyle created the first fictional private detective who used what we now recognize as modern scientific investigative techniques.

This Victorian best seller, along with Braddon's other famous novel, Aurora Floyd, established her as the main rival of the master of the sensational novel, Wilkie Collins. A protest against the passive, insipid 19th-century heroine, Lady Audley was described by one critic of the time as "high-strung, full of passion, purpose, and movement." Her crime (the secret of the title) is shown to threaten the apparently respectable middle-class world of Victorian England.

It's Easter in Reading, a bad time for eggs, and no one can remember the last sunny day. Ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, minor baronet, ex-convict, and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. All the evidence points to his ex-wife, who has conveniently shot herself.

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.

If you could go back in time...and witness any event...where would you go? When Dr. Tom Greenbaum faces that question after successfully discovering the secret to time travel, he knows the time, place, and event he will witness: the death and failed resurrection of Jesus Christ. Dr. David Goodman, Tom's colleague and closest friend follows Tom into the past, attempting to avert a time-space catastrophe, but forces beyond their control toss them into a dangerous end game.

It was a dark and stormy night when Mary Crane glimpsed the unlit neon sign announcing the vacancy at the Bates Motel. Exhausted, lost, and at the end of her rope, she was eager for a hot shower and a bed for the night. Her room was musty, but clean, and the manager seemed nice, if a little odd.

Juanita di Perli was a young woman when she decided to live the rest of her life on a table-top. She called it God's will, but for the order of nuns that sprang up around her, Juanita's devotion was a curse. For decades they did the bidding of the holy grouch, and the entire island of San Juan el Pirata sighed with relief when she died. Twenty years later, the islanders fight for Juanita's canonization - not because they liked her, but because a local saint would be a tourist boon. The only thing keeping the island poor is the Archduke, who refuses to ask Rome to consider Juanita for sainthood.

The classic World War II thriller from the acclaimed master of action and suspense. One winter night, seven men and a woman are parachuted onto a mountainside in wartime Germany. Their objective: an apparently inaccessible castle, headquarters of the Gestapo. Their mission: to rescue a crashed American general before the Nazi interrogators can force him to reveal secret D-day plans.

Scandal, treachery and crime are rife in Old London Town. A king blackmailed by his mistress, dark dealings in opium dens, stolen jewels, a missing bride - these are cases so fiendishly complex that only Sherlock Holmes would dare to investigate.