Classic Thrillers Mystery

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives - presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

Art teacher Walter Hartright is on the road to London when he encounters an enigmatic woman dressed entirely in white. She's an unnerving portent of strange things to come as Hartright starts a new job as drawing-master at Limmeridge House. There the teacher falls in love with Laura, his betrothed pupil, who bears a striking resemblance to the woman in white. Soon Walter is drawn into a family intrigue of greed, secrets, madness, and revenge.

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.

Following a mysterious explosion, the offices of Excelsior Joinery Company are no more; the three directors are killed and the peace of a quiet town in Surrey lies in ruins. When the supposed cause of an ignited gas leak is dismissed and the presence of dynamite revealed, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is summoned to the scene. But beneath the sleepy veneer of Evingden lies a hotbed of deep-seated grievances. Confounding Littlejohn's investigation is an impressive cast of suspicious persons, each concealing their own ax to grind.

Emily Inglethorp has been poisoned. And it seems everyone at Styles Court, from the hired help to family members, had a motive - and the means. But with Detective Hercule Poirot out of retirement and on the case, no one's getting away with murder. The Mysterious Affair at Styles was not only Agatha Christie's debut; it also introduced her illustrious detective character to the world.

A new translation, by David Bellos, of this chilling novel, set on the Belgian border. "She wasn't an ordinary supplicant. She didn't lower her eyes. There was nothing humble about her bearing. She spoke frankly, looking straight ahead, as if to claim what was rightfully hers. 'If you don't agree to look at our case, my parents and I will be lost, and it will be the most hateful legal error..." Maigret is asked to the windswept, rainy border town of Givet by a young woman desperate to clear her family of murder.

She was every man's dream - and one man's nightmare. Johnny Hayden and Doug Rance had a scheme to take real estate entrepreneur Wallace Gunderman for all he was worth. But they needed a girl on the inside to make it work. Enter Evelyn Stone: Gunderman's secretary, his lover - and his worst enemy. Gunderman had promised to marry her, but never came through. Now she's ready to make him pay...

Nobody plays accordion like Dick Contino. His skilled fingers can find beauty in even the schmaltziest Borscht Belt favorites, and with his matinee-idol looks he could be a real star. Right now, though, he’s slumming it as the headliner in a Grade Z teenybopper picture called Daddy-O. He’s too good for this movie, and finishing it is going to take him to a very dark place. Daddy-O and Dick Contino are both real, their stories dredged out of the past by James Ellroy, a master of historical crime fiction. In Dick Contino's Blues he takes us to B-List Hollywood in 1957 - a time when movies were cheerful and dirty secrets lurked just off camera.

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?

Georges Simenon's tragic tale of lost identity, translated by David Coward as part of the new Penguin Maigret series. What was the woman doing here? In a stable, wearing pearl earrings, her stylish bracelet and white buckskin shoes! She must have been alive when she got there because the crime had been committed after ten in the evening. But how? And why? And no one had heard a thing! She had not screamed. The two carters had not woken up.

The Duke of Denver, accused of murder, stands trial for his life in the House of Lords. Naturally, his brother Lord Peter Wimsey is investigating the crime - this is a family affair. The murder took place at the duke's shooting lodge and Lord Peter's sister was engaged to marry the dead man. But why does the duke refuse to co-operate with the investigation? Can he really be guilty, or is he covering up for someone?

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 this new translation of Simenon's twisted tale, a forgotten crime comes to light in the Parisian summer. The sunshine almost as thick as syrup in the quiet streets of the Left Bank...there are days like this, when ordinary life seems heightened, when the people walking down the street, the trams and cars all seem to exist in a fairy tale. A story told by a condemned man leads Maigret to a bar by the Seine.

Since his retirement from King's University, life has been rather quiet for Professor Daly. When he is invited back to King's University to deliver a series of prestigious lectures, his heart leaps. But on arrival he discovers that he has not been called back to the university on account of his literary knowledge. Somebody has been sending the president of King's threatening letters. Somebody within the university, it seems, wants him dead. Perhaps aware of his own arrogant, materialistic, and bullying nature and the effects it may produce, President Bradley seems genuinely worried.

Ninety-year-old General Fentiman was definitely dead, but no one knew exactly when he had died—and the time of death was the determining factor in a half-million-pound inheritance. Lord Peter Wimsey would need every bit of his amazing skills to unravel the mysteries of why the General's lapel was without a red poppy on Armistice Day, how the club's telephone was fixed without a repairman, and, most puzzling of all, why the great man's knee swung freely when the rest of him was stiff with rigor mortis.

'There will be ten teacups at number 4, Berwick Terrace, W.8, on Wednesday, July 31st, at 5 p.m. Precisely. The presence of the Metropolitan Police is respectfully requested.' The note was delivered to New Scotland Yard, its words evoking a cold murder case and its unsolved mystery of the ten teacups found beside the body. Scrambling to prevent a second killing, the police set up a watertight cordon at Berwick Terrace. But gunfire rings out from the top floor at 5 p.m.

A classic Christie mystery. Read by Hugh Fraser who plays Hugh Fraser in the popular TV series. At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce – a hostile thirteen-year-old – boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the ‘evil presence’. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer…

Wieland (1798) is an early American novel set in 1760s Pennsylvania. Based on a real case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the story is imbued with suspense and intrigue, adopting Gothic devices such as ventriloquism and spontaneous combustion. The satanic interloper Carwin exercises his power over the narrator, Clara Wieland, wreaking havoc over the Wieland family with disastrous consequences. A central theme in the novel is the issue of the values that formed the basis of a new democratic and republican America.

Georges Simenon's haunting tale about the lengths to which people will go to escape from guilt, translated by Linda Coverdale as part of the new Penguin Maigret series. A first ink drawing showed a hanged man swinging from a gallows on which perched an enormous crow. And there were at least twenty other etchings and pen or pencil sketches that had the same leitmotif of hanging. On the edge of a forest: a man hanging from every branch.

Something has stolen the darkling mage's face. Reports of arcane theft and violence are pouring in from all over Valero. They all have one thing in common: a perpetrator who looks exactly like Dustin Graves. But Dust has been hanging in the hideout, barely out of sight of his bloodthirsty companions. An impostor is clearly on the prowl, and soon a vampire clan, the Lorica, and even Dust's own allies are giving him hell for crimes he didn't commit.