Classic Suspense Fiction

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder. One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator.

This is the original classic story of Bram Stoker's undead monster. It has influenced Western portrayals (including Buffy and Angel) of vampires and vampirism for nearly a century. Even after all this time, Bram Stoker's Dracula remains the undisputed masterpiece of horror writing.

When Tim O'Hara's plane is hijacked and forced to crash-land in the middle of the Andes, his troubles are only beginning. A heavily armed group of communist soldiers intent on killing one of his passengers - an influential political figure - have orders to leave no survivors. Isolated in the biting cold of the Andes, O'Hara's party must fight for their lives with only the most primitive weapons....

Every year for two decades, David Payne invites his five closest college friends to travel with him on a weeklong humanitarian mission. And each year, they are too busy. This year, however, when David's funeral reunites them, they decide to fulfill his mission to a far-flung Pacific island. But something unplanned and mind-boggling occurs.

The classic vampire story by Bram Stoker revolves around a struggle between good and evil, tradition and modernity, and lust versus chastity. The author didn’t invent vampires, but his novel has so captured the public’s imagination that he is rightly considered their popularizer. Listen and you will meet not only the Count himself, but heroes Jonathan Harker and Abraham Van Helsing, plus an array of madmen, psychiatrists, and fair maidens who cross paths with the fanged menace.

Still reeling from the events of The Raptor and the Wren, Miriam must confront two terrifying discoveries: the Trespasser now has the power to inhabit the living as well as the dead, and Miriam is pregnant. Miriam knows her baby is fated to die, but Miriam is the Fatebreaker. And if the rules have changed for her nemesis, her own powers are changing as well. Miriam will do whatever it takes to break her curse and save her child.

After hearing scratches in the attic, Alison discovers a dinner service covered in an intriguing floral owl pattern, and a series of events are set in motion that will change her life forever. Alison, her step-brother Roger and Welsh boy Gwyn are forced into a cyclical replay of the tragic Welsh legend of Blodeuwedd, in which a woman is turned into an owl as a punishment for betraying her husband.

In Agatha Christie’s “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan,” Poirot and Hastings are called on to solve the case of Mrs. Opalsen’s missing set of pearls, apparently stolen during a stay at the Grand Metropolitan Hotel. The two suspects are Mrs. Opalsen’s maid and the hotel chambermaid, but both blame the other. Who is the real thief? This short story originally appeared in the March 14, 1923 issue of The Sketch magazine.

"This is a surreal and hilarious insight into millennial dating with a big twist, and the narrator will have you hooked from the very beginning." -Buzzfeed "Crosley reads with an incisive understanding of Lola's psyche. She hits all of the notes of sarcasm and reluctant self-reflection, and...

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.

Seven of Charles Dickens' best ghost and thriller stories, which have been widely read and beloved worldwide. This collection celebrates the 200th anniversary of his birth. These stories provide a wonderful introduction Dickens before embarking upon his long novels; after these stories, listening to his longer novels becomes even more of a pleasure. Perfect for students and teachers seeking an understanding and appreciation of Dickens, without the time to engage with his long novels.

Nicolai Gogol's classic ghost story set in the streets of St. Petersburg in the 19th century.

In this searing novel, Kathrine Kressmann Taylor brings vividly to life the insidious spread of Nazism through a series of letters between Max, a Jewish art dealer in San Francisco, and Martin, his friend and former business partner who has returned to Germany in 1932, just as Hitler is coming to power. A powerful and eloquent tale about the consequences of a friendship - and society - poisoned by extremism, Address Unknown remains hauntingly and painfully relevant today.

Blair Wilkes is having a trying week. Her best friend stands accused of murdering a vampire, and dead bodies are showing up in the forest. She knows Alissa is innocent, but with the vampires out for blood - more than usual - tensions in the small town of Fairy Falls are at a tipping point. As if that's not enough, Blair's witchcraft lessons aren't going well, with her wand gaining a life of its own - not to mention her familiar. And then she discovers something startling about her family that puts her burgeoning relationship with former paranormal hunter Nathan under pressure.

Ten years ago, Mary Morstan’s father, an officer in an Indian regiment, vanished. Four years later, elegant pearls began to arrive, six in total, and now she holds an invitation to meet her mysterious anonymous benefactor. As Miss Morstan shares this peculiar tale with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, she urges the detectives to accompany her. Her only clues to her father’s disappearance: a map of a fortress with the names of four strangers and an assertion that she’s been dreadfully wronged.

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?

With a horse between his thighs and a weapon in his grip, the dashing Brigadier Etienne Gerard, Colonel of the Hussars of Conflans, gallops through the Napoleonic campaigns on secret missions for his beloved Emperor and his country. He encounters danger and hair-breadth escapes but never loses his bravado, his eye for a pretty girl, his boastfulness or his enormous vanity.

Traveling schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, doesn't believe the rumors about witches and spirits haunting the idyllic village of Sleepy Hollow. The townsfolk, led by the rich Van Tassel family, are friendly and welcoming to strangers. On Halloween night, Ichabod is caught in the clutches of a frightening specter. But the Headless Horseman is not the devil he has been led to believe, and Ichabod finds himself falling for the lonely spirit.

The Trottevilles have a houseguest named Eunice, and Fatty will do anything to avoid her. While hiding from Eunice his disguise leads a mystery right to him: there's an escaped prisoner in Peterswood who is also a master of disguise. Now Fatty, Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets have to find the man and avoid Eunice at the same time....

Wieland (1798) is an early American novel set in 1760s Pennsylvania. Based on a real case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the story is imbued with suspense and intrigue, adopting Gothic devices such as ventriloquism and spontaneous combustion. The satanic interloper Carwin exercises his power over the narrator, Clara Wieland, wreaking havoc over the Wieland family with disastrous consequences. A central theme in the novel is the issue of the values that formed the basis of a new democratic and republican America.