Classic Thrillers

Long before Western writers had even conceived the idea of writing detective stories, the Chinese had developed a long tradition of literary works that chronicled the cases of important district magistrates. One of the most celebrated of these was Judge Dee, who lived in the seventh century.

Both the skeleton and the corpse have died with suspicious convenience for Georgia Wells, a monstrous but charming actress with a raffish entourage. Georgia's best friend just happens to be Valentine, a top couturière and Campion's sister. In order to protect Valentine, Campion must unravel a story of blackmail and ruthless murder....

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman---Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl.

His Majesty’s Prison BlackRock is where Evil is sent to die. None of the killers imprisoned on the island prison, 30 miles off the coast of Scotland, will ever leave. When Scottish billionaire, social philanthropist, and prison reformer, Ethan Mackay, is murdered during a VIP visit to the island, it becomes dangerously clear that not all the murderers are behind bars. Cut off from the mainland during a ferocious winter storm, the rest of the VIP tour take refuge in the Governor’s residence and patiently wait for the storm to pass. But what secrets lurk beneath the surface? What ...

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.

Late one night, a drawing teacher meets a mysterious woman dressed in white. Who is she, and what is her connection to the teacher's new pupil, a beautiful heiress? Serialized in 1859 - 1860, and first published in book form in 1860 it is still regarded still as one of the best plots in English literature. Told from multiple perspectives, the story is brought to life by its marvellous villains and complex, spirited and believable female characters.

Secret agent Richard Hannay travels across war-torn Europe in search of a German plot and an Islamic messiah. He is joined by three others: John S. Blenkiron, an American who is determined to battle the Kaiser; Peter Pienaar, an old Boer Scout; and the colorful Sandy Arbuthnot, who is modeled on Lawrence of Arabia. Their success or failure could change the outcome of the First World War.

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.

Assassinations, political upheaval, student riots, and conservative rage. In the thick of the Cold War it was the perfect recipe for revolution, and it only took a gentle push to send a nation toppling into dictatorship. But what if it happened in the United States? Miles Dorn can make it so. A hired killer with no past and no future, he steps out of retirement and sets his sights on the political leaders holding America back from the brink.

After a corpse wearing pince-nez glasses is found in a bathtub, Lord Peter Wimsey undertakes the case and investigates the deed privately. But determining whether the corpse belongs to a well-known banker or a group of mischief-making medical students is just the beginning of this tangled mystery plot.

Two pirates do battle on an old junk ship in Singapore Harbor. They leap nimbly from deck to rigging, crossing swords like fencing masters. And then one surprises the other, slicing a rope and sending the unfortunate pirate tumbling into the bay. This is how stuntman Angelo Sacchetti dies. Edward Cauthorne was his opponent, a fellow stuntman whose career died along with Sacchetti. He’s selling used cars when two thugs approach him.

A land-surveyor, known only as K., arrives at a small village permanently covered in snow and dominated by a castle to which access seems permanently denied. K.'s attempts to discover why he has been called constantly run up against the peasant villagers, who are in thrall to the absurd bureaucracy that keeps the castle shut, and the rigid hierarchy of power among the self-serving bureaucrats themselves.

A collection of horror/thriller stories with surprise endings to chill you and thrill you to the bone. The nightmares include: The CONDOM IN THE COFFIN: A wife finds a condom in the lining of her husband's coffin which triggers suspicions someone at the mortuary is a necrophiliac. THE LOOKER: Kidnappers abduct an unusually beautiful woman to harvest her organs for half a million dollars. THE BEAST OF SPOOKY HOLLOW: A freelance writer goes to his college reunion and decides a legendary beast devouring the locals there may be his ticket to a Pulitzer. THE ALIEN: A man struck by lightning ...

Rorke Burgess returns to his homeland, Nemthia, seven years after the end of a civil war in which the old regime lost. The throne is now occupied by Prince Maren, who overthrew his father, King Broman, with the aid of a mysterious sorcerer known as the Necromancer. When the Necromancer raised the dead and made them fight again, Rorke fled the battlefield, abandoning his country and his family. With such sorcery at their command, Maren and the Necromancer easily defeated King Broman, including his famed and feared Fifth Legion, also known as Broman's Blades. The Blades were warriors, but ...

The discovery of Sir Robert Boniface's body on the floor of his limousine was made quite accidentally on a sultry Friday evening towards the end of June. The industrial and financial tycoon, and former stalwart of the British Cabinet, was shot in the head and left in the quiet Vale of Health. Nearby, a rejected portrait of Sir Robert is found riddled with bullets in the studio of the now missing artist Matt Caldwell.

What would you give to be a hero? Stephen Russ never expected to have to answer that question; he went to work, he stayed in his apartment, sometimes had friends over, and the worst thing he'd had to face was looking for a new job after losing his old one.

Peter Grant is learning magic fast. And it’s just as well - he's already had run-ins with the deadly supernatural children of the Thames and a terrifying killer in Soho. Progression in the police force is less easy, especially when you work in a department of two. A department that doesn't even officially exist. A department that if you did describe it to most people would get you laughed at.

Sir Charles Baskerville is dead. His body was discovered on the grounds of his Devonshire estate, face frozen in fright, not far from the footprints of a large beast. The cause of death has been determined to be a heart attack, but family legend tells another tale, and Detective Sherlock Holmes is determined to uncover the truth.

Welworth Garden City in the 1940s is a forward-thinking town where free spirits find a home - vegetarians, socialists, and an array of exotic religious groups. Chief among these are the Children of Osiris, led by the eccentric High Prophet, Eustace K. Mildmann. The cult is a seething hotbed of petty resentment, jealousy and dark secrets - which eventually lead to murder. The stage is set for one of Inspector Meredith's most bizarre and exacting cases.

While on routine patrol in the tinder-dry Topanga Canyon, environmental scientist Rafael Salazar expects to find animal poachers, not a dilapidated antique steamer trunk. Inside the peculiar case, he discovers a journal, written by the renowned Robert Louis Stevenson, which divulges ominous particulars about his creation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It also promises to reveal a terrible secret - the identity of Jack the Ripper.