Classic Mystery

John Glover reads a selection of unabridged short stories, including "Gray Matter" from Stephen King's best-selling collection Night Shift...

With its razor-sharp dialogue, brutal realism, and dark wit, Red Harvest established Hammett as a pioneer of noir fiction, cementing his legacy as the godfather of the genre. This is a relentless tale of moral ambiguity and violence, where every character walks the thin line between survival and self-destruction.

Milos Vesely, aka Cowboy, kills Nazis. After the events of SecondWorld, a failed attempt by modern Nazi forces to carry out a worldwide genocide and claim the planet for the Aryan nation, he now hunts down the enemy. Most of them are running for cover. But others, as Cowboy discovers beneath the sands of Tanis, Egypt, are searching for a way to strike again.

Laura Hunt was the ideal modern woman: beautiful, elegant, highly ambitious, and utterly mysterious. No man could resist her charmsnot even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to find out who turned her into a faceless corpse. As this tough cop probes the mystery of Lauras death, he becomes obsessed with her strange power.

Two decades into the twenty-first century, the world’s nations are becoming irrelevant. Corporations are the true global powers, with information the most valuable currency, while the smaller island nations have become sanctuaries for data pirates and terrorists. A globe-trotting PR executive for the large corporate economic democracy Rizome Industries Group, Laura Webster is present when a foreign representative is assassinated on Rizome soil during a conference for offshore data havens.

Wilkie Collins' follow-up to The Woman in White and No Name is an innovative take on mistaken identity, the nature of evil, and the dark underbelly of Victorian England. The story concerns two distant cousins, both named Allan Armadale, and the impact of a family tragedy, which makes one of them a target of the murderous Lydia Gwilt, a vicious and malevolent charmer determined to get her hands on the Armadale fortune. Will the real Allan Armadale be revealed, and will he survive the plot against his life?

Scandal hits the staid publishing house of Barnabas when one of the directors is found dead in the strong-room. Suspicion immediately falls on his wife's lover, the junior partner in the firm. But how does an unpublished Restoration comedy come to feature in the tragedy? And what of the odd disappearance of another director twenty years before?

Samantha Logan's childhood home had always been a haven, but everything changed while she was away. She has a gorgeous new neighbor, Malcolm, who introduces her to the amazing world of the dream-walking, shapeshifting Amoveo clans... but what leaves her reeling with disbelief is when he tells her she's one of them.

Was it a living woman that stood by his side, or a dead body reanimated for the time or the occasion in some strange manner?

Galina is a young woman caught, like her contemporaries, in the seeming lawlessness of the new Russia. In the midst of this chaos, her sister Maria turns into a jackdaw and flies away - prompting Galina to join Yakov, a policeman investigating a rash of recent disappearances. Their search will take them to the underground realm of hidden truths and archetypes, to find themselves caught between reality and myth, past and present, honor and betrayal... the secret history of Moscow.

The fourth book in the Shady Hollow mystery series sees Vera embroiled in a case involving star-crossed lovers whose affair may have turned deadly. It's spring in Shady Hollow, and romance is in the air. Even reporter Vera Vixen is caught up in the season as her relationship with new police...

A novelist ambles down the lanes of a cosy country village, replete with Tudor houses and quaint cottages. In her writer's mind she pictures the sordid truth beyond the veneer, a seemingly laughable proposition - until the coming of the letters. Anonymous letters from a poisoned pen, sowing discord and defaming everybody from the Rector to the 'queen of the village' Miss Decima Asprey. Naturally, where there is venom in the air and dark secrets are threatening to come to light, the shadow of death is not far behind.

In the coming-of-age story, we follow a young Italian nobleman, Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del Dongo, on many adventures, including his experiences at the Battle of Waterloo, and romantic intrigues.

A young woman is found dead in a college while the students demonstrate. It turns out she was the principal's secretary, and there was more to her than meets the eye. Who wanted her dead and why? And what does it have to do with the student revolt led by a charismatic firebrand from Iraq? Inspector John Crow is called in and has little doubt who's responsible, but a series of surprises will make him reconsider everything. Many of the faculty seem to have things to hide.

Republished for the first time in nearly 95 years, a classic winter country house mystery by the founder of the Detection Club, with a twist that even Agatha Christie couldn’t solve! Stephen Munro, a demobbed army officer, reconciles himself to taking a job as a footman to make ends meet...

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.

A Ms. Mary Morstan arrives at 221B Baker Street with a case for Sherlock Holmes and his companion, Dr. John Watson. Some ten years prior, her father, Captain Arthur Morstan, returned to London while on leave from his post in India—only to go missing. Adding another layer to the mystery are six pearls in her possession, having received one per year since 1882. The sixth and most recently received pearl was accompanied by a letter asking for a meeting, claiming Ms. Morstan is a wronged woman.

While riding in their homemade iceboat on the frozen surface of Barmet Bay, Frank and Joe Hardy and Chet Morton discuss their plans for the upcoming Christmas holiday break. They visit Cabin Island but a mysterious stranger chases them off the island. The boys are invited to the home of Elroy Jefferson, a man whose car they returned in The Shore Road Mystery. They overhear an argument between Jefferson, the owner of Cabin Island, and Hanleigh, who is trying to buy the island. Mr. Jefferson rewards the boys and grants them permission to use the cabin for Christmas

Once the toast of good society in Victoria's England, the extraordinary conjurer Edward Moon no longer commands the respect that he did in earlier times. Still, each night he returns to the stage of his theater to amaze his devoted, albeit dwindling, audience, aided by his partner, the Somnambulist - a silent, hairless, hulking giant who, when stabbed, does not bleed. But these are strange, strange times in England, with the oddest of sorts prowling London's dank underbelly.

Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Charles Swinburne are sucked into the perilous depths of a moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack - and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End.