Classic Thrillers Mystery

Dora Wildwood is escaping a most unsuitable marriage. She's on the first train to London, having smuggled herself out of the house at dead of night, like all the best books. She plans to go straight to her godmother Lady Dreda Uglow, the only woman she knows who seems to live life on her own terms, and ask to stay. Dora ducks into the London Library to hide, asking the quizzical but kind Ben Stark and the clever Miss Amani for help. And it is there, surrounded by books, where she should feel most safe, that Dora Wildwood most unfortunately stumbles across her first dead body.

Diminutive, bespectacled, and endearing, Father Brown only appears unworldly. But the cherubic parish priest is privy to the inner workings of the most surprising of sinners. And as an amateur sleuth, he intuits motives for Essex's unsolvable crimes. One of the most beloved characters in 20th-century detective fiction, the kindly cleric leverages his unrivaled insights into human nature to decipher 12 ingenious mysteries from the witty and clever mind of G. K. Chesterton.

The great financier, Sir Reuben Levy, disappears from his Park Lane home on a November night, apparently without a stitch of clothing, or even his spectacles. On the same night in a suburban bathroom in Battersea, an unknown body bearing a superficial resemblance to Sir Reuben is discovered, reclining in the bath tub, unseasonably dressed in nothing but a pair of pince-nez.

Jack and Allen need a break. They’ve decided to spend the summer before their senior year of college out in Western Massachusetts. But their quest for rest and relaxation comes to an end when they arrive in Greifsfield, MA. Their friendship is tested by a mysterious beauty and her razor-sharp smile, then broken when they’re caught up in a rash of mysterious disappearances. How will these two friends cope with the truth behind a town that craves raw meat? And how will they survive beneath the glow of the full moon?

Here is the precursor to Jurassic Park. Victorian explorers have heard there is a remote plateau where dinosaurs still survive, and a group set outs on a dangerous mission to find out more about it.

In what many refer to as one of the first and greatest science fiction thrillers, a mysterious stranger wanders into an inn, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages. What lies beneath the bandages is something even more mysterious. As Wells tackles issues of identity, deception, and the deterioration of the human mind, listeners will be drawn into the story of the mysterious man, whose own mistakes end up whisking him into a whirlwind of deceit, terror, and even murder. In the end, the question will be asked: when your sense of self and identity vanish, who will you become?

A modern masterpiece, The Godfather is a searing portrayal of the 1940s criminal underworld. It is also the intimate story of the Corleone family, at once drawn together and ripped apart by its unique position at the core of the American Mafia. Still shocking 40 years after it was first published, this compelling tale of blackmail, murder, and family values is a true classic.

On a cold February night, the police find the third corpse on the quayside in the Pool of London, her body covered with flower petals and pearls. The killer walked away, singing.

When the cargo ship, Cape Farewell, sets sail, she carries nine passengers, one of whom is known to be the murderer. Which is why Superintendent Roderick Alleyn joins the ship at Portsmouth on the most difficult assignment of his professional career....

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.

Inspector Maigret is meant to be taking a holiday, but he can't resist following the development of his colleague Janvier's case in the papers - and playing a few tricks on the way. Standing at the window in the middle of the morning, vaguely observing the comings and goings in the street, he had a feeling that reminded him of certain days in his childhood, when his mother was still alive and he was off school because he had the flu or it was the end of term. It was the feeling of finding out what went on when he wasn't there.

In the fifth of his best-selling series Ben Aaronovitch takes Peter Grant out of whatever comfort zone he might have found and takes him out of London - to a small village in Herefordshire where the local police are reluctant to admit that there might be a supernatural element to the disappearance of some local children. But while you can take the London copper out of London you can't take the London out of the copper. Travelling west with Beverley Brook, Peter soon finds himself caught up in a deep mystery and having to tackle local cops and local gods. And what's more all the shops are closed by 4pm....

This curated collection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most beloved Sherlock Holmes tales is read by the incredible Robert Hardy, known to many for playing Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

'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.

An elderly couple living in Victorian London struggle against despair as their small resources dwindle. When an eccentric and mysterious gentleman answers their advertisement for a lodger, they celebrate. But as women begin dying at the hands of "The Avenger", they start to suspect something too horrific for words.

Suspicious deaths are not usually the concern of PC Peter Grant or the Folly, even when they happen at an exclusive party in one of the most expensive apartment blocks in London. But Lady Ty's daughter was there, and Peter owes Lady Ty a favour. Plunged into the alien world of the super-rich, where the basements are bigger than the house and dangerous, arcane items are bought and sold on the open market, a sensible young copper would keep his head down and his nose clean. But this is Peter Grant we're talking about.

In 1985, Kat McCann was six years old when renowned Austrian detective Alik Lisser solved her mother’s murder. And unfortunately proved Kat’s father as the culprit. Ten years later Kat is still obsessed with the heroic criminologist. She’s also addicted to the bestselling novels inspired by Alik’s ingenious deductions—penned by the grande dame of whodunits, who’s a bit of a mystery herself. Kat has devoured them all. Even the one based on her father’s crime.

The Cotswolds, 1924. At the Old Forge in the quiet village of Maybury-in-the-Marsh a cry of anguish rings out: lady of the house Amy Phelps has been discovered dead. But with all the windows and doors to her room locked from inside, how – and by whom – was she killed? Arbuthnot ‘Arbie’ Swift finds himself in the unlikely position of detective. The celebrated author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Ghost-Hunting is staying at the Old Forge to investigate a suspected spectre, but now the more pressing matter of Amy’s murder falls to him too.

The Minister's Black Veil was first published in the 1836 edition of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir. It later appeared in Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories by Hawthorne published in 1837. Hawthorne's inspiration for this story may have been a true event. A clergyman named Joseph Moody of York, Maine, nicknamed "Handkerchief Moody", accidentally killed a friend when he was a young man and wore a black veil from the man's funeral until his own death.

Ten strangers, apparently with little in common, are lured to an island mansion off the coast of Devon by the mysterious U.N. Owen. Over dinner, a record begins to play, and the voice of an unseen host accuses each person of hiding a guilty secret. That evening, former reckless driver Tony Marston is found murdered by a deadly dose of cyanide. The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but is preparing to strike again...and again.

Boston is the novelized account of the Sacco and Vanzetti affair, which rocked the nation—and the world—in the 1920s. Two working-class Italian immigrants, both associated with radical political beliefs, stood accused of the murder of two armed guards during the commission of a payroll robbery. Sinclair’s novel weaves actual historical facts, stories, and persons with persons and events he created for the purpose of telling an interesting story, with more and deeper historical context.