Classic Suspense Fiction

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.

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!

Beneath the sea cliffs of the south coast, suicides are a sad but common fact. Yet even the hardened coastguard knows something is wrong when a beautiful young film actress is found lying dead on the beach one morning. However, it soon becomes clear that darker motives were afoot, and potential suspects in the death of Christine Clay stack up at a rapid pace. As the case grows murkier, the man who spent the last week of Clay’s life living with her in a remote cottage goes on the run, and Inspector Alan Grant must race to uncover the truth.

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.

The gods are dying. But for one man, death is only the beginning. Murdered as a ritual sacrifice, amateur thief and professional charmer Dustin Graves mysteriously survives, finding himself gifted with strange, dark magic. Then more dead bodies turn up. Some are human, but one is a god of the old world, slain at his own doorstep.

Anne Beddingfeld is always ready for an adventure. So when she witnesses a man wearing a brown suit die at a tube station in London, she searches for clues and finds a mysterious piece of paper nearby. The message it contains leads her on a confounding chase full of secret aliases and codes as she seeks to solve the case and catch the murderer. Featuring an appearance from Secret Service agent Colonel Race, this story from renowned mystery writer Agatha Christie is a true classic that blends adventure and suspense with the detective story.

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.

Actor David Ian Davies' telling of Poe's Gothic horror tale "The Tell-Tale Heart" captures this classic narrative of the unnamed murderer in all its exquisite vileness, its self-effacing insanity that poses rationality where none exists.

A psychological thriller before its time, James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824, takes us back to the world of 18th-century Scotland, into a mind haunted by religious obsession, and driven to commit murder. The events are told from several different viewpoints, so that truth and reality appear to dissolve in this disturbing story of the dark legacy of Calvinist doctrine, and how it led one man to madness.

When Detective Inspector Bridget Hart returns to her old Oxford college for a reunion dinner, she's hoping for a fun weekend catching up with old friends. But the reunion takes a macabre turn when body parts are served up at the college feast, and one of her friends is found murdered. With Bridget's arch rival Inspector Baxter leading the murder inquiry, and herself a potential suspect, Bridget is forbidden from taking part in the investigation. But that doesn't stop her from carrying out her own private inquiries. Bridget soon realizes that the murderer is someone known to her.

Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Sir Edward Leithen is told that he has but one year left to live. He relinquishes his law practice and resigns from public office in order to make peace with himself and to reconcile himself with his maker. However, he also wants to die standing, not to creep into the 'bleak bag's end of life'. This will involve one last physical challenge.

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.

When It Falls, book 5: After their success against the Ascendants is used by the Vestibulum as a cover for the murder of their old enemies, Sean has discovered that the Vestis are far more ruthless and dangerous than the previous two councils he's fought. After 200 years of holding on to the leadership position among all of the councils, obviously the Vestibulum isn't going to give up anything to anyone. Stand on It, book 6: Once again, Sean's home has been attacked by one of the Councils, only this time they've committed what they hoped would be an overwhelming force.

One of the greatest mystery thrillers ever written, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White was a phenomenal best seller in the 1860s, achieving even greater success than works by Charles Dickens. Full of surprise, intrigue, and suspense, this vastly entertaining novel continues to enthrall audiences today.

The Land of Mist is a novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1926. Although this is a Professor Challenger story, it centres more on his daughter Enid and her colleague. Heavily influenced by Doyle’s growing belief in Spiritualism after the death of his son, brother, and two nephews in World War I, the book focuses on Edward Malone’s at first professional, and later personal interest in Spiritualism.

Two couples vacationing in Alabama are pursued by a maniac killer who lures them to a vacant house which won't let them leave. The "house" mirrors their own heart and souls and they must defeat the evil within.

Maigret's old colleague becomes an unexpected rival in book 24 of the new Penguin Maigret series. In everyone's eyes, even the old ladies hiding behind their quivering curtains, even the kids just now who had turned to stare after they had passed him, he was the intruder, the undesirable. No, worse, he was fundamentally untrustworthy, some stranger who had just turned up from who knew where to do who knew what.

Accompanied by his trusty sidekicks, Pete Pienaar, John S. Blenkiron and Sandy Arbuthnot, Richard travels across war-torn Europe searching for a man with a secret. A prophet by reputation, the man possesses key information that could guarantee British victory, and he goes by the name of Greenmantle.

The library holds not only hidden knowledge but also the most unsettling secret the world has ever known, a secret the Templars hope to use to control humankind's destiny. Five keys are needed to access the library-to find them, Ezio must travel to the troubled city of Constantinople, where a growing army of Templars threatens to destabilize the Ottoman Empire.Walking in the footsteps of his predecessor, Altaïr, Ezio must defeat the Templars for the final time. The stakes have never been higher, and what started as a pilgrimage has become a race against time.

During an undercover case Inspector Lognon is shot in a room he was sharing with a beautiful woman who has since disappeared. Inspector Maigret retraces Lognon's secretive last few days and is drawn into the darker side of the art world.