Classic Mystery

Mary Connon froze out her husband, Sam, long ago. She likes the attention of other men—like the fellow members of Sam's rugby club. Naturally, when she's found dead in her sitting room with a hole in her head, Sam is a suspect. If only he hadn't suffered a dizzying scrum injury that's left everything a blur. He isn't sure that he didn't kill her. But Det. Inspector Andrew Dalziel and his partner, Peter Pascoe, are looking outside the unhappy home. Because it seems everyone within spitting distance of the suburban femme fatale wanted Mary dead.

In a desolate orphanage in what remains of post-Communist Romania, a desperately ill infant is given the wrong blood transfusion - and flourishes when he's supposed to die. The discovery of his unique immune system may hold the key to the long-awaited cure for cancer and AIDS - and a link to a clan of vampires.

"This comprehensive study guide provides a deep exploration of J.D. Salinger's classic novel, "The Catcher in the Rye." Designed to enhance listeners' understanding and analysis of the text, the guide delves into key themes, character analysis, literary techniques, and societal context. It offers thought-provoking discussion points, critical thinking questions, and reference to specific chapters for further exploration.

Penniless graduate Blair Wilkes has always felt one step behind everyone else. Unemployed and out of luck, with the uncanny ability to cause havoc wherever she treads, when she receives a job offer from a strange town called Fairy Falls, she's certain it's too good to be true. It turns out Fairy Falls isn't just eccentric: it's magical...and so is Blair.

The ghost story has long been a staple of world literature, but many of the genre's greatest tales have been forgotten, overshadowed in many cases by their authors' best-selling work in other genres. In this spine-tingling anthology, little known stories from literary titans like Charles Dickens and Edith Wharton are collected alongside overlooked works from masters of horror fiction like Edgar Allan Poe and M. R. James. In bringing these masterful tales back from the dead, Ghost Stories will enlighten and frighten both longtime fans as well as new listeners of the genre.

Children’s classics for decades, Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown stories have garnered a Young Readers’ Choice Award and a Special Edgar Award. In this installment, the 10-year-old detective’s probing questions continue to trip up thieves, frauds, and other scoundrels—from a headless haunter to a slimy slanderer. Kids will love trying to crack each of these 10 cases before the pint-sized super sleuth reveals his solution.

Based in part on Donn Pearce’s own experiences working on a Florida road gang, this classic story of Cool Hand Luke, the defiant survivor who refused to be defeated by the forces of corrupt authority, is earthy, sensitively written, and revealing.

In The Killer Inside Me, America's "Dimestore Dostoevsky" Jim Thompson goes where few novelists have dared to go, giving us a pitch-black glimpse into the mind of the American Serial Killer years before Charles Manson and Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, in the novel that will forever be...

Nero Wolfe's last recorded case! Wolfe never works without a well-heeled client and a sizable fee, but when a bomb racks his brownstone, killing his favorite waiter from his favorite restaurant, the world's greatest gourmet takes it as a personal affront. What kind of unsavory killer commits...

When a self-made man appeals to Maigret for protection at his lavish home, a years-old grudge from the past resurfaces and the inspector finds himself questioning his own motives. Conflict rather than harmony probably reigned in eight out of 10 of the still magnificent houses that surrounded the park. But he had rarely had the opportunity to breath such a strained atmosphere as the one between these walls.

Maigret stumbles upon a series of murders in Fontenay-le-Comte while visiting an old school friend. On his way home from a conference, Maigret stops to visit an old school friend in Fontenay-le-Comte. A man in the same train car introduces himself and asks if Maigret has come to help solve the murder case. In fact, the man's brother-in-law had been murdered four days earlier, followed by the murder of a local widow in the same way, a blow to the head with a pipe.

Nineteen-year-old Frank - thug, thief, son of a brothel owner - gets by surprisingly well despite living in a city under military occupation, but a warm house and a full stomach are not enough to make him feel truly alive in such a climate of deceit and betrayal. During a bleak, unending winter, he embarks on a string of violent and sordid crimes that set him on a path from which he can never return. Georges Simenon's matchless novel is a brutal, compelling portrayal of a world without pity; a devastating journey through a psychological no-man's land.

Brought to you by Penguin. A classic espionage thriller from master storyteller Graham Greene. Carleton Myatt meets Coral Musker, a naïve English chorus girl, aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe to Constantinople. As their relationship develops, they find themselves caught up in...

In this revised and expanded edition of his essential volume Dark City Dames, Eddie Muller—Turner Classic Movies host and author of Dark Cityand Noir Bar—offers a uniquely intimate look at the women who defined film noir, now featuring updated text and 10 new star profiles. Film noir was...

A celebrated writer by the time the war broke out in 1914, Maugham had the perfect cover for living in Switzerland. Multilingual and knowledgeable about many European countries, he was dispatched by the Secret Service to Lucerne - under the guise of completing a play. An assignment whose danger and drama appealed both to his sense of romance and of the ridiculous. Ashenden is a collection of stories rooted in Maugham's own experiences as an agent, reflecting the ruthlessness and brutality of espionage, its intrigue and treachery, as well as its absurdity.

The attempted suicide of a countess and the death of a billionaire in the same luxury Paris hotel send Maigret to the Riviera and then to Switzerland, as he searches for the truth amid the glittering world of the super rich. Eyes half closed, head tilted against the back of his seat, he seemed not to be thinking, as the plane flew over a thick carpet of bright clouds. In reality, he was making an effort to bring names and shadowy figures to life, names and figures that even this morning had been as unknown to him as the inhabitants of another planet.

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer’s half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of the famous author of Albinos in Black, The Back of the Moon, and Doubtful Asphodel. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, the novel concludes “ I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.”

After the explosive events of the Copper Heart, Lydia must deal with a secret service operative with murder in his heart. The mysterious Mr Smith has sent a professional assassin after Lydia and the bonds of blood are stretched to breaking point when it turns out to be someone very close to home. Meanwhile, the head of the powerful Silver Family is demanding a favour and Lydia must comply or risk their fledgling alliance. To be strong enough to beat the odds stacked against her, Lydia must delve deep into Crow Family lore, but what she discovers is far from a fairy tale.

Sean's found himself trapped in the realm of the demons, and he's also found a mystery there as well - a lioness. How and why she's there, and if she'll help him, he doesn't know yet. But if anyone knows the lay of the land, the demons, and how to get out of there, he figures it would have to be her.

A novel set in the underbelly of upstate New York that's as hardboiled and punchy as a swift right hook to the jaw, a classic noir for fans of James Ellroy and John D. Macdonald. Isaiah Coleridge is a mob enforcer in Alaska--he's tough, seen a lot, and dished out more. But when he forcibly ends...