Classic Mystery

The dark side of glamorous expat life in Paris is brought to life in this new translation. Try to imagine a guest, a wealthy woman, staying at the Majestic with her husband, her son, a nurse and a governess...in a suite that costs more than a thousand francs a day.... At six in the morning, she's strangled, not in her room but in the basement locker room.... In all likelihood, that's where the crime was committed.... What was the woman doing in the basement? Who could have lured her down there, and how?

As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, a coded message draws Professor Andrew Hale back into Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Elements from his past are gathering in Beirut, including ex-British counterespionage chief and Soviet mole Kim Philby, and a beautiful former Spanish Civil War soldier-turned-intelligence operative.

From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all-time classic. Paul Sherman of Interpol's Narcotics Bureau flies to Amsterdam on the trail of a dope king. With enormous skill the atmosphere is built up: Amsterdam with its canals and high houses; stolid police; psychopaths; women in distress; and above all, murder.

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.

Maigret grapples with the American justice system on a trip to Arizona in this new translation, novel 32 of the new Penguin Maigret series. The FBI man was convinced, in short, that Maigret was a big shot in his own country but that here, in the United States, he was incapable of figuring out anything.... Well, Maigret happened to believe that men and their passions are the same everywhere.

For Portier de Savin-Duplais, failed student of magic, sorcery's decline into ambiguity and cheap illusion is but a culmination of life's bitter disappointments. Reduced to tending the library at Sabria's last collegia magica, he fights off despair with scholarship. But when the king of Sabria charges him to investigate an attempted murder that has disturbing magical resonances, Portier believes his dreams of a greater destiny might at last be fulfilled.

Susan Wittig Albert delights mystery lovers with this series based on the life and stories of beloved English children's author Beatrix Potter. When Beatrix finds an abandoned infant, Captain Woodcock and Dimity care for the child as Beatrix and her furry and feathered friends search for its mother.

He needed to get out of his office, soak up the atmosphere and discover different worlds with each new investigation. He needed the cafés and bars where he so often ended up waiting, at the counter, drinking a beer or a calvados depending on the circumstances. He needed to do battle patiently in his office with a suspect who refused to talk and sometimes, after hours and hours, he'd obtain a dramatic confession. In Simenon's final novel featuring Inspector Maigret, the famous detective reaches a pivotal moment in his career.

The newly formed Ministry of Fine Arts has a staffing problem - one minister dead within six months of its inception, his successor snuffed out shortly before the General Election. When a third victim, Permanent Secretary Edwin Pompfret is fatally crushed by the fall of a giant bust, Inspector Julian Rivers is drawn into a case of murder of artistic devilment.

First conceived during a rainy summer holiday in the Highlands of Scotland in an attempt to amuse his stepson, Treasure Island began with the map. Young Lloyd Osbourne had drawn a crude version of an island, and Stevenson, looking over the boy's shoulder, began to elaborate, christening various curves and smudges the famed names of Skeleton Island and Spyglass Hill and finally adding the three red crosses marking the buried treasure.

Peter Marlin's wife is found strangled and he becomes the prime suspect. She'd only just returned from an unexplained absence of several months. And during that time, Peter had found a new lover. Everything points to the husband but there's no real proof. Inspector John Crow is called in to help the local police. But his new colleagues aren't keen on an outsider. And Crow must solve the case before anyone else dies.

Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog find excitement and adventure wherever they go in Enid Blyton's most popular series. In book 18, the Famous Five hunt for the lost dungeons of a ruined castle on Finniston Farm. The friends are determined to find them, and whatever they hide, but they are not alone. Can the Famous Five get there first?

Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog find excitement and adventure wherever they go in Enid Blyton's most popular series. In book 16, it's holiday time at Billycock Hill, and the Famous Five make a new friend - a real pilot! But when he disappears with top secret equipment, the Five begin to wonder if their new friend could be a spy, or worse, a traitor. Whatever his motives, the gang feel duty-bound to investigate.

The Find-Outers have no mystery to solve, so Larry disguises himself as a window cleaner. But Larry, Fatty, Daisy, Pip and Bets soon discover that money has been stolen from the bungalow Larry was cleaning - and a few days later, all the furniture is gone, too! The Find-Outers are on the case to discover who the thief is....

Everything has a cost. And every act of magic exacts a price from its user---maybe a two-day migraine, or losing the memory of your first kiss. But some people want to use magic without paying, and they Offload the cost onto innocents. When that happens, it falls to a Hound to identify the spell's caster---and Allison Beckstrom is the best there is.

Investigating the disappearance of a vicar's daughter in London, the popular novelist and amateur detective Roger Sheringham is shocked to discover that the girl is already dead, found hanging from a screw by her own silk stocking. Reports of similar deaths across the capital strengthen his conviction that this is no suicide cult but the work of a homicidal maniac out for vengeance - a desperate situation requiring desperate measures.

Juanita di Perli was a young woman when she decided to live the rest of her life on a table-top. She called it God's will, but for the order of nuns that sprang up around her, Juanita's devotion was a curse. For decades they did the bidding of the holy grouch, and the entire island of San Juan el Pirata sighed with relief when she died. Twenty years later, the islanders fight for Juanita's canonization - not because they liked her, but because a local saint would be a tourist boon. The only thing keeping the island poor is the Archduke, who refuses to ask Rome to consider Juanita for sainthood.

Maigret receives an anonymous phone call concerning the brutal murder of a woman and young child. The tip off concerns the woman's nephew, a mild-mannered man by the name of Gaston Meurant. Maigret remains unconvinced of the man's guilt and at his trial exposes some shocking truths about Meurant's private life that may prove his innocence.

Written for boys and girls between the ages of six and 12, The Happy Hollisters are wholesome books, with an accent on humor and good, clean fun. Integrity always pays off and right wins over wrong. Parents, grandparents, and teachers will love these books for their healthy celebration of life in simpler times. Kids will be thrilled with the fast-paced action and will not want to put them down. This is a perfect gift for the young listener in your life!

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in Norway and Finland. When Giles Denison of Hampstead wakes up in an Oslo hotel room and finds the face looking back at him in the mirror is not his own, things could surely get no more bizarre. But it is only the beginning of a hair-raising adventure in which Denison finds himself trapped with no way to escape. One false move and the whole delicately balanced power structure between East and West will come toppling down....