Short Thrillers

Over the past two decades, Nick Horrigan has built a quiet, safe life for himself, living as much under the radar as possible. But all of that shatters when, in the middle of the night, a SWAT team bursts into his apartment, grabs him and drags him to a waiting helicopter. A terrorist - someone Nick has never heard of - has seized control of a nuclear reactor, threatening to blow it up. And the only person he’ll talk to is Nick, promising to tell Nick the truth behind the events that shattered his life twenty years ago.

The Sounds of Crime is an exclusive collection of five brand new short stories by some of the best crimewriters around. Using the theme of 'audio', this unique collection features brand new stories by Lawrence Block, Peter James, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Christopher Fowler.

Josephine Ying longs to overthrow Big Uncle as the best host, and after his roast duck incident, she’s finally getting her chance this Chinese New Year. Even better, her son is bringing a surprise. Unfortunately, the surprise turns out to be a gold-digging fiancée—who dies at the dinner table. Her problems just got a lot bigger than hosting the perfect meal. Certain there’s a killer at the table, Josephine sharpens her questions to find them out.

Unlike the other arts, American literature has been a powerful, influential, and leading aspect of American culture. By turns sedate and mercurial and possessing a moral mind set of various social values, the American short story reveals in its pages the psyche of a growing, sprawling nation whose sense of destiny has always been larger than life. Here are seven masterpieces that will make you smile, make you frown, and leave you pondering the mystery that surrounds the soul of a great nation.

Tales the Crows Taught Me Seventeen Supernatural Tales to Make Your Skin Crawl Fans of Ray Bradbury and the Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock, and Lord of the Flies have reason to rejoice! Here are 17 tales with a twist—many of them award-winning: a traveling sideshow, a shadowy something waiting in a deep Oregon forest, an ancient fishing village where there's a price to pay for magic, a strange parcel dragged for miles over ice and snow, a Florida boarding house full of residents who would VERY much like to meet you... The Uncanny waits to make your acquaintance. Included: Protection: ...

I didn’t know what I was walking into that night. A friend’s birthday, a high-end club, and there he was—a shadow in the corner, all piercing eyes and lethal charisma. I knew Marcus was trouble the moment he looked my way, but something in his gaze was calling me to him, despite the warning etched into every line of his face. He told me to stay away. Told me his world was too dark, that I was too good for him. But even then, I could feel it: a pull that went deeper than reason, tethering me to the danger he carried. Soon, it wasn’t enough to just watch from the sidelines—I wanted ...

PUMPKIN 31 TALES OF TERROR From the twisted mind that brought you The Hole in the Wall and A Second Skin comes a chilling celebration of horror's darkest holiday. PUMPKIN – a unique collection of 31 tales designed to unsettle, disturb, and haunt you long after the final page. One terrifying story for each night of October, culminating in a Halloween you'll never forget. Journey through landscapes of psychological terror, supernatural dread, and unflinching horror as Steven Blackmore weaves nightmares featuring haunted trick-or-treat sacks, bloodthirsty vampires, fracturing realities, and ...

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).

COLLEGE INSTALOVE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN . . . They say the muses sometimes take human form. I never believed in those fairy-tales , , , But then I see Milly in my audience . . . And as I strum my guitar a new song comes to me on the breeze. It's her song. Milly's Song. She's my muse . . . And I'm gonna make sure she stays mine. Mine forever. Drama and madness with a touch of angst. Sweetness and a hint of darkness. No cheating. No cliffhangers. And a guaranteed happy ending. This is campus-love, Annabelle Winters style. HERE'S WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE CURVY IN COLLEGE SERIES: ...

A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore.

You thought that things were crazy in the first series, just wait until you read the sequel. Melissa and August just want some peace in their life, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen with everyone from their past resurfacing. No matter how hard everything becomes between the new couple. Mike and Cassandra were finally in a place in their life that they loved, and they were in a place with each other that they loved even more. Carissa thought that she had lost everyone and felt that she was never going to be accepted again, so she did the only thing she felt was right. Side ...

WARNING: This erotic fantasy contains sex scenes. This is a suspenseful story that spans across generations, continents, class, culture and race. Daniel Walter is possessed by a lecherous demon that turns him into a slave. The demon needs his body to satisfy its carnal desires and it uses him to augment its harem. When Daniel makes out with the members of the harem, the demon shares his pleasure. Heather Holmes is a multi-millionaire and a celebrity. Her life drastically changes when she is recruited into the harem. All she knows now is that Daniel Walter is using supernatural powers to ...

Books eight through 10 in the USA Today best-selling Dead Cold series from two-million best-selling author Blake Banner.

Spring, 1918. The Great War is at a crucial stage, the Germans are making one last push into France, and the Allies are struggling to hold them back. Battle lines are shifting, and men, and their machines, are being sent up and down the front to shore up defenses. Major Heathcliff Lennox, and his batman Greggs, are told to report to their new HQ. They set off on a sunlit day to fly the distance, but the enemy is never far away, and disaster strikes. They're sent crashing to the ground behind enemy lines, where life, death, and love await.

The events of the story occupy a single June day in post-World War I Central London, as wealthy and fashionable society hostess Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party she is to give that evening. Through her thoughts and memories, the voices of others who have touched on her life and will attend her party, Virginia Woolf shows her genius as a writer who is both accessible and popular.

What do you do when you find out your entire life is a lie? A strange feeling overtakes Ally Bowen. Her arms shiver. Her hair stands on end. An overwhelming sense of terror seizes her body. It’s like nothing she has ever experienced before. Suddenly, she witnesses the murder of a handsome stranger sitting across from her in the library. Or did she? Realizing this was a premonition of his death, Ally races to warn him. He feels familiar, but why? With demons and "The Conspirators" working against her, Ally must race to uncover the truth about who she really is before it’s too late.The ...

Be ready for some action, humor, and mystery in this anthology with short stories. You’ll listen about gangsters, witches, magic potions, interrogations, werewolves, and murder. Several stories have a murder victim, while others are all about theft or robberies. But in many cases, they spark the imagination and make up for a great way to sit back, relax, and read or listen to stories from a completely different world.

Amidst the vibrant chaos and suffocating heat of Haiti, Father Thomas O’Neill arrives with a sacred, and terrifying, Vatican mandate. Accompanied only by his remarkably intuitive feline companion, Ezekiel, their mission goes beyond pastoral care. Deep within the shadows of a struggling Catholic-run medical clinic, a malevolent Voodoo sorcerer known as a Houngan preys on the vulnerable. He isn't just stealing souls; he's twisting the sick and desperate, binding their spirits to his will, transforming them into the dreaded, mindless creatures of nightmare: the zombie! Drawn into an ancient ...

More than 20 New York Times best-selling authors team up to create a first-rate serial novel -- a collaboration that combines the skills of America’s greatest storytellers to produce a gripping, spellbinding mystery.

Robert Louis Stevenson brings his mastery of story-telling and suspense to these intriguing tales of island mystery. In 1888, a year after leaving England, Stevenson and his wife left San Francisco and sailed to the South Pacific. The beauty, mystery, and lore of the islands captivated the great author, inspiring him to write several wonderful short stories. "The Bottle Imp," the main story in this outstanding collection, is a suspenseful folktale, introducing us to various ghosts, demons, and other frightening creatures.