Detective Short Stories Mysteries

There's a chill in the air and the days are growing shorter.... It's the perfect time to curl up in front of a crackling fireplace with this winter-themed collection from legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie. But beware of deadly snowdrifts and dangerous gifts, poisoned meals and mysterious guests. This compendium of short stories, some featuring beloved Detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, is an essential omnibus for Christie fans and the perfect gift for mystery lovers.

When a grieving widower walks into Samantha Moon’s office with a vampire-hunting kit in his pockets and revenge in his heart, she’s ready to help him find his wife’s killer. But Ron doesn’t want a detective—he wants a monster. Specifically, he wants to become one, if only for a night. All he needs is one swallow of her cursed blood to give him the speed, strength, and fury to face the creature who destroyed his life. But nothing is simple in Samantha’s world of dark bargains and moral lines. As the price of vengeance unfolds in violence and tragedy, she’s forced to question ...

Gus has traveled out of state and up to the city of Seattle to visit his daughter. She’s sharing an apartment with two criminology majors. Naturally their thoughts turn toward talking about crime and they ask Gus to talk about one of his cases. Since he doesn’t want to discuss anything too recent or else his daughter might know the people involved, he digs down deep into his memory banks for the perfect case from his first year as a sheriff. It also just so happens to be the first case he crossed path with Father Xavier. As he remembers it, Gus was called in to investigate an apparent ...

In this thrilling selection of stories, a young porter is found dead in a coal tub; Colbeck devises a trap to catch a thief; and a burnt train carriage holds a gruesome secret in a small coastal village. As Colbeck and his trusty aide Sergeant Victor Leeming begin to piece together clues and motives for each crime, it becomes clear the pair must stay a step ahead of the culprits to solve the cases. With a new suspect at every turn, can the duo unearth the real villains?

Join Holmes and Watson on 11 original adventures, spanning their earliest collaboration to their service to the Crown in the Great War. Revisit A Study in Scarlet, return to "The Copper Beeches", and learn the shocking truth behind the "Bogus Laundry Affair". There will be murder under the big top, ancient prophecies come true, and a mysterious new queen of crime all putting the great detective to the test in these action-packed stories.

Gus suspected Father Xavier asked him out for Thanksgiving dinner for more than just the friendly company. When you’re the sheriff of a small county you learn quickly that people only put on airs of wanting to be with you out of friendship. Typically instead these people think they’ve spotted a crime that they want you to deal with. The father suspects something rotten is in the air concerning a holiday family reunion involving the daughter of a once rich rancher, her famous author older brother, and her less than famous younger brother, the loan writer from Santa Fe. Gus isn’t one to...

Gus has the unfortunate task of judging the local art show at the Tannehill Ranch. The only thing Gus knows about art is you shouldn’t eat the macaroni after your child has glued to their artwork. Given the art show is displaying art from the daughters of most of the wealthier members of society in his state, Gus could hardly have said no to the request to be a judge. Things heat up at the art show when one of the teenage contestants ends up missing. It is the sort of news that isn’t exactly easy to tell parents with large bank accounts. Worse, it turns out she’s likely run away with ...

Are you a Law & Order or CSI crime junkie? In these You Solve It mini mysteries, you get to be the lead detective who takes on the case. You will read the case file, collect the evidence and solve the crime. Become an iDetective.

A banker finds a photograph of a woman who later appears to him on the street. Could she be leading him to an inexorable appointment with fate? Does she even exist? The Adeptus Exemptus and Imperator of the Esoteric Society of the Roseate Morn is being menaced by a magician with an improbable name. Could there be something to his curse? Can Holmes and a young girl solve an old riddle about her family before the Christmas pudding is served? Who is Cassandra and why was she trying to disgorge a fish from her throat? Join Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as they untangle these mysteries.

First published in an 1841 edition of Graham's Magazine, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is often cited as the first modern detective story. The first of three stories to center around C. Auguste Dupin, Poe's fictional detective, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" involves Dupin's investigation of two women's murders. Establishing many of the tropes that would later become common to detective fiction, the story begins with an explanation of Dupin's theory of ratiocination, a concept that greatly influenced the creation of detective fiction.

A return to power. A town living in fear. A detective who wants to reach the end. When a child is taken, Harper and Liam are on a race to find out why? Why would the Seven Deadly Sins Killer take an innocent child? Why make it look as if another child is the culprit? As the killer's mind begins to spiral downward, something happens that reassures him that he is still in power. Join Harper and Liam as they fight through the seven sins, shoving their relationship aside. A madman and his assassin needed to be brought to justice before the final sin. The one where he would demand retribution ...

This is a story from the The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes I collection.

It will be good news to many devotees of the deductive story - particularly the pastiche of Sherlock Holmes - that Solar Pons is back in a third major collection after a lapse of seven years. In his introduction to this collection, Mr. Smith echoes the sentiments of many readers and listeners when he says, "These pastiches come the closest of any that have been written, consistently, to capturing the true flavor of the Holmesian saga and to making its people and its places and its happenings entirely credible."

The rather disgruntled pair is sequestered in the Grand Adlington Hotel having made a pig’s ear out of their latest case. But, whilst sipping mournful cocktails, with Tommy oddly dressed as a Parson, they are gleefully accosted by their old acquaintance Mr. Bulger who has London’s most beautiful stage actress, Gilda Glen, in tow. Whilst Tommy and Tuppence mull over the note, in storms a man, an old flame of Gilda’s claiming he wants to ring someone’s neck.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” ( Booklist).

1980s India. Simple times. And a nation mesmerized by the exploits of fictional detective Karamchand. A young boy among them. Years later he’s in California, having turned his childhood dream into reality by becoming a private investigator. But the PI life doesn’t turn out as expected until a woman shows up at his door, imploring him to find her missing husband. It’s the kind of challenge he has been waiting for, one that puts his skills to the test. Soon the case gets complicated - and dangerous - raising some questions. Who can he trust? And more importantly, will he find the ...

Lance Cooke doesn’t want much. He’s lived his whole life quietly in the town of Belvidere, New Jersey. He just wants to be remembered as a good man. And that’s not too hard when you’re a small town police chief. Cooke’s time is mostly spent worrying about traffic violations and town festivals, and whether he will finally kiss Lucy, the beautiful coffee shop queen. But trouble is terrorizing Belvidere, in the form of the Walker brothers, the town’s resident bullies. Why does Cooke seem to protect them? As the Walkers grow bolder, the town’s peaceful facade is shattered. Cooke ...

The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths is the latest collection from legendary murder mystery editor and writer Maxim Jakubowski. Filled with impossible murders and puzzling plot twists that keep your brain on the mysteries until the last minute. Clever fictional crime stories. Some of mystery fiction's most inventive talents from the USA and UK offer a series of brand-new ingenious murder stories that will have you scratching your brow until the very last minute and delighting in Machiavellian solutions.

Is the ‘perfect murder’ possible? Can that crime be committed with such consummate care, with such exacting skill, that it is unsolvable—even to the most astute investigator? In this unique collection, legendary crime writers Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike each attempt to create the unsolvable murder, which Superintendent Cornish of the CID then attempts to unravel.

The 13 mysteries in this collection were originally published in The Strand Magazine and Collier's in Great Britain and the United States. Published in 1905, this book was the first Holmes collection since 1893, when Holmes died in a confrontation with his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty in "The Final Problem". The success of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was published in 1901-1902 and is set before Holmes's death, created great pressure on Doyle to revive his famous character.