Classic Suspense Fiction

The streets of Bay City, California, in the early 1950s are as mean as they get. Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and the private eye business is a little slow. Then a new client is shown in: blond, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover. Almost immediately, Marlowe discovers that the man's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest and most ruthless families—and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.

Published in January 1922, The Secret Adversary is the second detective fiction novel by British crime novelist Agatha Christie. The book introduces the characters of Tommy Beresford and Prudence Tuppence Cowley, two out-of-work 20-somethings in post-war London. The two agree to form The Young Adventurers, Ltd, hiring themselves out with the slogan no reasonable offer refused. They are quickly enlisted to solve the mysterious disappearance of a young woman who was entrusted with sensitive diplomatic documents amid the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

Maigret stumbles upon a series of murders in Fontenay-le-Comte while visiting an old school friend. On his way home from a conference, Maigret stops to visit an old school friend in Fontenay-le-Comte. A man in the same train car introduces himself and asks if Maigret has come to help solve the murder case. In fact, the man's brother-in-law had been murdered four days earlier, followed by the murder of a local widow in the same way, a blow to the head with a pipe.

The Greatest Female Crime Writers of All Time is a collection of 17 classic detective novels and stories, read by three award-winning narrators. Included here are stories by some of the greatest female crime writers of the 20th century: Agatha Christie; Dorothy L. Sayers; and Josephine Tey.

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, the dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged---petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral---while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying and enchanting readers for more than 100 years.

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.

A young cabaret dancer in a black silk dress leads Maigret into a seamy world of nightclubs, drug addiction and exploitation on the streets of Montmartre. 'He opened the door for her and watched her walk away down the huge corridor, then hesitate at the top of the stairs. Heads turned as she passed. You sensed she came from a different world, the world of the night, and there was something almost indecent about her in the harsh light of a winter's day.'

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.

Mystery novelist Hazel Martin's maid suspects foul play when her childhood friend Doris jumps from the third-story turret of Farnsworth Abbey. Unable to resist an investigation, especially one that's staged to look like suicide, Hazel calls in help from her chauffeur, her cook, and even the mysterious butler her husband hired before his death. Hazel soon learns that Doris's death was no accident. Someone had a secret, and they wanted to keep it that way.

Edmond Dantes is falsely accused of treason on the day of his marriage. He is directly imprisoned in the fortress of If without any investigations being conducted. Edmond does not give up and he is determined to find his way out. The endpoint is the Isle of Monte Cristo which hides a great fortune.

At its heart, The Insulted and the Injured is a story of human tragedy and suffering, but it is also a love story. Narrated by a fictitious young author, Vanya, this book tells the story of Natasha and her lover, Alyosha, who also happens to be the son of the cruel Prince Valkovsky.

A small southern town in the 1960s. A musician found dead on the highway. It’s no surprise when white detectives arrest a black man for the murder. What is a surprise is that the black man - Virgil Tibbs - is not the killer but a skilled homicide detective, passing through racially tense Wells, South Carolina, on his way back to California. Even more surprising, Wells’s new police chief recruits Tibbs to help with the investigation.

When New York City unveils a program to roast supernaturals, I wonder if I should be sweating. The bloodthirsty Arnaud thinks so, and he's insisting that our survival depends on a wizard-vampire alliance. Never mind his history of wanting me dead. Or undead. Meanwhile, the mayor wants me on his team - an offer that's only slightly less unnerving given our recent clash. So who's really behind the purge? City Hall? The werewolves? Or is it the brainchild of the fae, whose newest advisor to the mayor slipped from my bed and life four months ago?

Thirteen classic tales of mystery and suspense dating from the early years of crime fiction, 1890-1925. Sleuths including Max Carrados, Loveday Brooke, Dr. Thorndyke, Father Brown, and the original Great Detective himself, Sherlock Holmes, investigate a range of baffling crimes including murders, country house burglaries, jewel thefts, stolen government secrets, the sensational disappearance of a popular West End actress, and an entire train which has vanished into thin air.

When Dr. Elliott Drake wakes from a mysterious fifty-year sleep, the world as he knew it is gone. Cities are now desolate, and civilization is controlled by deadly immortals. Stranger still is Elliott's extraordinary new "gift" - he has the power to heal, but it comes with fatal consequences. Jade barely escaped the immortals and is now hell-bent on revenge. She trusts no one...until she meets Elliott.

When a tramp is recovered from the Seine after being badly beaten, Maigret must delve into the man's personal circumstances to figure out just who wanted to kill him. This novel has been published in previous translations as Maigret and the Dosser and Maigret and the Bum.

After Arthur Penfold’s wife reveals she is leaving him to care for her ailing aunt, he sets upon a path of murder and deceit to avoid the social embarrassment of a second marital breakdown. But the purchase of a poetry book triggers a sequence of events that begins to unravel both Arthur and a seemingly open-and-shut murder case.

The attempted suicide of a countess and the death of a billionaire in the same luxury Paris hotel send Maigret to the Riviera and then to Switzerland, as he searches for the truth amid the glittering world of the super rich. Eyes half closed, head tilted against the back of his seat, he seemed not to be thinking, as the plane flew over a thick carpet of bright clouds. In reality, he was making an effort to bring names and shadowy figures to life, names and figures that even this morning had been as unknown to him as the inhabitants of another planet.

The rebellious son of a long line of pureblood cartographers and diviners, Valen has spent most of his life trying to escape what society - and his family - have ordained for him. His own mother has predicted that he will meet his doom in water, blood, and ice. Her divination seems fulfilled when a comrade abandons Valen in a rainy wilderness half-dead, addicted to an enchantment that converts pain to pleasure, and possessing only a stolen book of maps.

The rambling house called Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale. Left to Gilly Ramsey by the cousin whose occasional visits brightened her childhood, the cottage, set deep in a wild wood, has come just in time to save her from a bleak future. With its reputation for magic and its resident black cat, Thornyhold offers Gilly more than just a new home. It offers her a chance to start over.