Classic Fiction Mysteries

Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1936, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.

The girl in the photograph has been missing for five years. Neither her body nor the secret documents she was carrying have ever been found. Now, post-war England's economic recovery depends on finding her and getting the papers back. But the two young Brits working undercover for the ministry know only that her name was Jane Finn, and the only photo of her is in the hands of her rich American cousin.

Ranofer struggles to thwart the plottings of his evil brother, Gebu, so he can become master goldsmith like their father. Young listeners will love this exciting tale of ancient Egyptian mystery and intrigue.

Laura Hunt was the ideal modern woman: beautiful, elegant, highly ambitious, and utterly mysterious. No man could resist her charmsnot even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to find out who turned her into a faceless corpse. As this tough cop probes the mystery of Lauras death, he becomes obsessed with her strange power.

Described as an "excellent yarn", "amazingly clever", and a "thrilling adventure", Agatha Christie's tale of a dauntless pair of amateur detectives, Tommy Beresford and Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley, who stumble upon a puzzling mystery, was recently adapted for a BBC TV series that will air in 2015. The story begins on the doomed RMS Lusitania and takes the listener through a web of intrigue, murder, and mayhem.

Haggard wrote Allan Quatermain immediately after King Solomon's Mines. Quatermain is wearied with the traditional English lifestyle. He longs for the wilds of Africa. He convinces his friends Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good as well as the Zulu chief Umbopa to return to Africa in search of a fabled race of white people. Fierce Masai warriors, subterranean rivers, creatures from the deep, and a spectacular civil war are all in store for our seasoned adventurers. It's an adventure you won't want to miss!

A new translation of Georges Simenon's gripping tale of lost identity. A man picked up for wandering in obvious distress among the cars and buses on the Grands Boulevards. Questioned in French, he remains mute... A madman? In Maigret's office, he is searched. His suit is new, his underwear is new, his shoes are new. All identifying labels have been removed. No identification papers. No wallet. Five crisp thousand-franc bills have been slipped into one of his pockets.

Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Charles Swinburne are sucked into the perilous depths of a moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack - and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End.

The sinister Madame de Rougierre is employed as governess to the young Maud Ruthven, bringing with her a dark cloud of impending doom that hangs over the whole household. The governess eventually leaves, in possession of a dark secret, but that is not the end of her, much to Maud’s dismay.

On the eve of Elaine Southey's 21st birthday, Ivan Sweet has been found dead in his flat in the basement of the Southeys' historic north London home. A slick charmer to some of the tenants and a loathsome young scoundrel to others, his death doesn't draw out many tears among the house's residents and neighbours. And yet the sordid truth starts to seep into the heart of their small community. A murderer is living among them, and who's to say when they might strike again?

What else did they have to do with their days? They ambled around casually. From time to time, they paused, not because they were out of breath but to admire a tree, a house, the play of light and shadow, or a face. While taking a much-needed rest cure in Vichy with his wife, Maigret feels compelled to help with a local investigation, unravelling the secrets of the spa town's elegant inhabitants.

Horace Manning, scientist, recluse and 'closed book' even to his friends, is found dead in his study at 4a.m., following a dinner in honour of his daughter's engagement. An ivory-handled carving knife rests between his shoulder blades as the houseguests gather round to witness the awful crime. The telephone line has been sabotaged - a calculated murder has been committed. Rewinding twelve hours, the events of the afternoon and evening unfold, revealing a multitude of clues and motives from a closed cast of suspects.

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.

The Land of Mist is a novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1926. Although this is a Professor Challenger story, it centres more on his daughter Enid and her colleague. Heavily influenced by Doyle’s growing belief in Spiritualism after the death of his son, brother, and two nephews in World War I, the book focuses on Edward Malone’s at first professional, and later personal interest in Spiritualism.

The unassailable Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot travels to northern France to investigate a millionaire’s cry for help. Unfortunately, he arrives a day too late. Paul Renauld is found on a golf course in a freshly dug, shallow grave. Stabbed to death, he is in possession of a cryptic love letter. Pitting his wits against the hostile Paris Sûreté, Poirot is looking into Renauld’s past when another corpse surfaces on the same grounds - with wounds from the same murder weapon. But this time, the victim is a total stranger.

'A brilliant new translation of Simenon's critically acclaimed masterpiece.' And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage...unable to cover the filth. Nineteen-year-old Frank - thug, thief, son of a brothel owner - gets by surprisingly well despite living in a city under military occupation, but a warm house and a full stomach are not enough to make him feel truly alive in such a climate of deceit and betrayal.

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.

Maigret's old colleague becomes an unexpected rival in book 24 of the new Penguin Maigret series. In everyone's eyes, even the old ladies hiding behind their quivering curtains, even the kids just now who had turned to stare after they had passed him, he was the intruder, the undesirable. No, worse, he was fundamentally untrustworthy, some stranger who had just turned up from who knew where to do who knew what.

It's a race against the clock in this tale of danger and intrigue. In the glitzy era of the 1920s, charming armature sleuths, Tommy and Tuppence set out to solve the mysterious disappearance of a client and unravel a mysterious plot involving blackmail, international intrigue, and perhaps even the sinking of the Lusitania. When labor unrest erupts in England, the situation could turn deadly if a state secret falls into the wrong hands, but Tuppence has no qualms in accepting a job offer to stop that from happening.

When ne’er-do-well Robert Ablett is found dead at his brother’s idyllic country house, a crime of passion or an unfortunate accident seem the most obvious explanations. But to dapper would-be sleuth Antony Gillingham, the death – and the baffling disappearance of the man of the house – suggests a far stranger story. Eagerly assisted by his friend Bill Beverley – the Watson to his Holmes – Gillingham sets out to discover the truth.