Classic Thrillers

When a gay Los Angeles magician named Parsifal dies suddenly, he leaves behind his heartbroken assistant, Sabine, and a secret past that leads her to Nebraska and a father she never knew he had.

For 140 years, Nathaniel Cade has been the president's vampire, sworn to protect and serve his country. Cade's existence is the most closely guarded of White House secrets: a superhuman covert agent who is the last line of defense against nightmare scenarios of which ordinary citizens only dream. When a new outbreak of an ancient evil - one that he has seen before - comes to light, Cade and his human handler, Zach Barrows, must track down its source.

Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first 13 years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious - but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end. When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Saddam Hussein is buried. Baghdad lies in ruins. Now the eyes of the world are on Jerusalem as Jon Bennett - a Wall Street strategist turned senior White House advisor - his beautiful CIA partner Erin McCoy, and the U.S. Secretary of State arrive in the Middle East to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

In the six volumes of the Library of the World’s Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Julian Hawthorne presents us thrilling and mysterious short stories from all corners of the world. Some of the stories appeared in this 1907 collection for the first time translated into English, and many of them come from unexpected sources, such as the letters of Pliny the Younger, or a Tibetan manuscript. In the first volume, we find stories written by American authors.

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.

This is the 1927 book that years later inspired the movie of the same name. It is a book about criminal violence, corrupt politics and police, and illicit sex. The City of New York, from the late colonial period up to the early twentieth century, was a bustling hub of commerce, industry, and immigration. For many the city was the gateway to a new life in America, and for many others it was a place to steal a buck from their fellow New Yorkers and visitors to the city with thievery, fraud, and vice—in neighborhoods such as the Five Points, the Bowery, Hells Kitchen, and the Water Front.

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.

A haunting and enigmatic tale that will keep you awake and wondering long after you've finished this classic mystery. Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock - a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling.... St Valentine’s Day, in the midst of the hot summer of 1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some were never to return....

Two couples vacationing in Alabama are pursued by a maniac killer who lures them to a vacant house which won't let them leave. The "house" mirrors their own heart and souls and they must defeat the evil within.

A few weeks after marrying an attractive widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs. Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterward, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man's sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by "spirits" that Mrs. Underhay's first husband is still alive. Poirot has his suspicions when he is asked to find a missing person guided only by the spirit world.

The crime-fighting careers of Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings have come full circle—they are back once again in the rambling country house in which they solved their first murder together. Both Hercule Poirot and Great Styles have seen better days—but, despite being crippled with arthritis, there is nothing wrong with the great detective and his “little gray cells.” However, when Poirot brands one of the seemingly harmless guests a five-time murderer, some people have their doubts. But Poirot alone knows he must prevent a sixth murder before the curtain falls.

In noir master Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister, a movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend and a pair of siblings with a shared secret lure private eye Philip Marlowe into the less than glamorous and more than a little dangerous world of Hollywood fame. Chandler's first foray into the industry that dominates the company town that is Los Angeles.

When he falls ill on his way home from school, 15-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

In 1962 and 1963, Thornton Wilder spent 20 months in hibernation, away from family and friends, in the town of Douglas, Arizona. While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in Southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim’s wife and children.

A collection of twenty-six horror/thriller stories with surprise endings to thrill you and chill you to the bone. The creepers include: REST STOP: Martin loved the story The Lady or the Tiger so much he started playing the game with real people and hybrid beasts. THE CURSE: When Rebecca found the pharaoh's tomb, she refused to leave no matter how many perished. TILL DEATH DO US PART: Isabelle discovered her new husband had been married before, and all ten brides had disappeared without a trace. THE EXECUTION: Myers has a crazy dream he's on death row, waiting to be executed. LIFE TO THE ...

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.

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.

October “Toby” Daye is finally doing all right. She’s settling into her new role as the Countess of Goldengreen; she’s actually dating again; she’s even agreed to take on Quentin as her official squire. Life is looking up all around - and that inevitably means it’s time for things to take a turn for the worse. Someone has kidnapped the sons of Duchess Dianda Lorden, regent of the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist. To prevent a war between land and sea, Toby must not only find the missing boys, but also prove that the Queen of the Mists was not behind their abduction.

In an elaborate house known as the Cloisters, Maud Wainwright rules supreme. The queen of society in the small town of Beverly, she has a table long enough to seat 100, and she keeps an iron grip on the guest list. Her right-hand woman is Pat Abbott, a local girl who is beautiful, innocent, and kind. Pat has no idea how cutthroat high society can be, but she's about to get a deadly first lesson.