Short Crime Thriller

When a baby - only hours old - is discovered on the Amish bishop's front porch in Painter's Mill, Ohio, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is called in to investigate. The newborn is swaddled in an Amish crib quilt, and the only other item found with the child is a hand-carved wood rattle, which Kate also recognizes as Amish.

Even a city that boasts three hundred days of sunshine a year has its sudden, often violent storms—and writers have long taken advantage of that metaphor. Renowned authors Katherine Anne Porter, Jack Kerouac, Stephen King, Rex Burns, Robert Greer, Michael Connelly, and Kali Fajardo-Anstine—among many others—have brilliantly portrayed this picturesque but often merciless city. Today, Denver is home to a thriving literary scene, with writers of all stripes finding inspiration in its people and streets. The authors and stories featured in Denver Noir are no exception....

A city at once ancient and modern, Istanbul is the quintessentially postcard-perfect metropolis. But don’t let the alluring vistas fool you. For beneath its veneer as the meeting place of cultures, religions, and ethnicities lies a heart of darkness, seething with suppressed desire, boiling with frustration, and burning with a fervor for vengeance.

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together a selection of rare tales by masters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a newly discovered Agatha Christie crime story that has not been seen since 1922. At a time when crime and thriller writing has once again overtaken the sales of general and literary fiction, Bodies from the Library unearths lost stories from the Golden Age, that period between the World Wars when detective fiction captured the public’s imagination.

Containing over 47 stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train - a bullet couldn't pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes.

After a long run as a respected journalist, Edward “Fitz” Fitzhugh is on his way out when he stumbles across the story of a lifetime. The Gravedigger is a serial kidnapper who taunts the police with riddles. The other puzzle is his motive, which Fitz is determined to piece together. When an eyewitness to the latest abduction leads Fitz closer to the facts, he realizes that the last great story of his career is not at all what it appears to be.

The oldest mystery specialty bookstore in the world, The Mysterious Bookshop, has for most of its forty-five-year history commissioned an original short story as a holiday gift for its customers. Written exclusively for the store, the stories were given as a holiday gift to its customers as a thank you for their business, handed out or mailed between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged for a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims’ families, but its impact travels even further: into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes. Highway Thirteen, Fiona McFarlane’s newest collection, takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more.

YOU CAN NEVER BE CLOSE ENOUGH TO THE TRUTH This is not the story of a disappearance. It's the story of what happens after a happy ending. A suspense novel. An addictive psychological thriller about love, betrayal, and the consequences of our decisions, that will hook the reader from its very first pages. Popular actress Anna Guirao was never known for being a victim, despite being forcibly taken and locked in an underground hideout on the afternoon of April 19, 2019. Thirteen months later, when everyone assumed she was dead, she's found lost in a forest near the town of Portella, Lérida, ...

New owners of a dream cottage on a remote Maine lake find themselves taunted, then menaced by an unknown figure. When the local authorities refuse to help, they turn to retired Maine game warden Charley Stevens and his young protege Mike Bowditch for protection. But Charley begins to suspect there is more to the mystery than the couple is letting on—and if he and Mike don’t act fast, the situation will explode into violence.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Christmas Scorpion by Lee Child. Jack Reacher likes to head south for the winter, to stay warm, so just before Christmas he arrives in a small town in Southern California. But the weather there is not warm and dry, as it’s supposed to be: he arrives in a freak blizzard. Reacher finds refuge in a snowed-in roadhouse with four other strangers stranded by the storm.

It's autumn in Painter's Mill, and 14-year-old Katie Burkholder has been tasked with picking apples in Zimmerman's Orchard with her brother. It's just another day filled with chores - until her best friend, Mattie, arrives to help. Somehow boredom transforms into fun and games whenever the girls are together. The innocent fun comes to an end when Billy Marquardt and his gang of friends interrupt. Katie is no prude, but she knows better than to associate with the older English boys.

Go on vacation with Allison Brennan’s Lucy Kincaid, where she saves a man from drowning, only to discover he is in far greater danger on land. Meet Roxanne St. Claire’s “bullet catcher” - bodyguard Donovan Rush - who may have met his match in the sexually charged “Diamond Drop.” Debut author William Simon shows us what happens when the president's granddaughter is kidnapped. And Lee Child’s pitch-perfect “I Heard a Romantic Story” puts a whole new spin on Love Is Murder.

It looks like just another gray March morning in the tough urban district nicknamed Nowhere when seven lives converge. Any one of them could have a dark motive. Any one of them could be walking into a trap. When the fog lifts, it will all be much clearer - that a single, shattering act of violence has marked each of them forever.

Poirot Investigates a host of murders most foul—as well as other dastardly crimes—in this intriguing collection of short stories from the one-and-only Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie’s classic Murder in the Mews presents four mystifying criminal conundrums that will seriously test the superior detecting skills of the unflappable Hercule Poirot.

An outlaw private eye meets a woman who has a horribly-blackened eye and offers to do something about it. Unlicensed outlaw private eye Joe Beck stops off at bar in Trinidad, Colorado. Inside, he meets a woman named Brandi, a brunette bombshell who's working behind the bar. She's slim, tanned and attractive. She has it all. Except, her left eye is horribly blackened, something she admits to having been caused by the hand of an abusive ex-boyfriend. Beck offers to deal with the guy, no questions asked in a move that sees him sucked into the dealings of a couple of crooked cops and a local ...

Every year Lady Repton opens up her grand estate to host 'Cherringfest' - the Cotswold's favourite music festival. And this year will be special, featuring not just the return of the legendary and infamous metal rock band, Lizard... but also the home debut of the young and wildly successful new group, Unlost. But what should be a summer weekend of fantastic music, food and fun for all, turns frightening when murder is threatened, and one performer is nearly killed. Soon Jack and Sarah are in a race against time, trying to untangle a web of jealousy, egos and revenge before this Cherringfest ends in a deadly climax.

Dramatisations and readings of five of Josephine Tey's classic mystery novels. Scottish novelist and playwright Josephine Tey was one of the greatest Golden Age crime writers and the author of eight mysteries, including six featuring Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant. The most famous of these, The Daughter of Time, was acclaimed the greatest crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association. A full-cast dramatisation of this iconic story is included here, along with adaptations of four of her other much-loved mystery novels.

Accidents happen to Charley Clutterbuck. Always just scraping by, living on his ramshackle boat, not above the dodgy deal here and there... So when his body is found floating down river, accidental drowning seems the logical conclusion. But Charley's pal Ray thinks it's murder. And when Jack and Sarah get involved... they find themselves facing an unexpected danger as they uncover the strange truth. Set in the sleepy English village of Cherringham, the detective series brings together an unlikely sleuthing duo: English web designer Sarah and American ex-cop Jack.

When a divorced writer is tailed by a Mexican gang member, he and his twelve-year-old daughter are forced to defend themselves. But when it’s discovered that the young lady is capable of some professional grade bad-assness, Dad realizes he not only has a special child on his hands, but that she’s an absolute killing machine. Twists and turns, surprises and thrills from New York Times bestselling, Thriller and Shamus Award winning mystery author, Vincent Zandri.