Classic Thrillers

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.

Aristide Rougon, known as Saccard, is a failed property speculator determined to make his way once more in Paris. Unscrupulous, seductive, and with unbounded ambition, he schemes and manipulates his way to power. Financial undertakings in the Middle East lead to the establishment of a powerful new bank and speculation on the stock market; Saccard meanwhile conducts his love life as energetically as he does his business, and his empire is seemingly unstoppable.

Vivian Lestrange - celebrated author of the popular mystery novel The Charterhouse Case and total recluse - has apparently dropped off the face of the Earth. Reported missing by his secretary Eleanor, whom Inspector Bond suspects to be the author herself looking for publicity, it appears that crime is afoot when Lestrange's housekeeper is also found to have disappeared. Bond and Warner of Scotland Yard set to work to investigate a murder with no body and a potentially fictional victim.

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?

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. His second appearance is a thrilling quest to save his own brother - the Duke of Denver - from the hangman. The Duke of Denver, accused of murder, stands trial for his life in the House of Lords. Naturally, his brother Lord Peter Wimsey is investigating the crime - this is a family affair.

Getting into Faerie is risky enough. Getting out again may prove impossible. Entering Faerie is enough of a risk, never mind trying to free a changeling. That's never been done before, but that's exactly what has to happen if I'm going to rescue my best friend. So when I run into a half-blood thief who offers to help, I can't exactly say no. I mean, the guy seriously hates the fae. After all, one of them knocked up his mother. Digging deeper into the labyrinthine fae city kingdom, we soon start to unravel a mystery I never could have imagined.

Published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll's strange association with 'damnable young man' Edward Hyde, the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer, and the final revelation of Hyde's true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil. The other stories in this volume also testify to Stevenson's inventiveness within the Gothic genre.

What else did they have to do with their days? They ambled around casually. From time to time, they paused, not because they were out of breath but to admire a tree, a house, the play of light and shadow, or a face. While taking a much-needed rest cure in Vichy with his wife, Maigret feels compelled to help with a local investigation, unravelling the secrets of the spa town's elegant inhabitants.

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.

One of the great works of the 20th century, Kafka's The Trial has been read as a study of political power, a pessimistic religious parable, or a crime novel where the accused man is himself the problem. In it, a man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. Faced with this ambiguous but threatening situation, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure.

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.

In Agatha Christie’s short story, “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb,” the widow of a famous Egyptologist consults Poirot on the suspicious death of her husband and an American financier, Bleibner. The mystery takes Poirot and Hastings to Egypt to investigate the site of an archaeological dig. But who could want the two men dead? This short story originally appeared in the September 26, 1923 issue of The Sketch magazine.

Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are now among the greatest successes in the history of publishing. They continue their captivating story with this third prequel, which leads directly to the events of Left Behind, the novel that started the phenomenon.

"Make me beautiful." That's what Marci wants from the old woman, not "inner beauty", but real, physical attractiveness to save her from being a teenage outcast. The woman offers a gift in the form of a story, a strange tale from 1940s Bosnia about a group of soldiers who terrorize a town of women and children, brutalize their priest, and murder a child.

In 1962 and 1963, Thornton Wilder spent 20 months in hibernation, away from family and friends, in the town of Douglas, Arizona. While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in Southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim’s wife and children.

The Trial by Franz Kafka, narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, begins like a nightmare - only K is awake, and he is being arrested and indicted on charges he never learns. He is caught up in a legal system that will destroy his life. This is a text that often is used in English classes because it is so deep. Kafka attacks the norms of society, religion, and the legal system.

Cherished by a Father, coveted by a king, loved by an almost-priest; tormented by demons, tortured by a madman, hunted by a cult, hounded by her father. Mouse has survived it all. Despite Mouse's power, her father always wanted a son - and now, at long last, he has him. And Mouse has a brother, someone else in the world just like her. Hiding among a tribe of the Martu in the isolation of the Australian outback near the edges of Lake Disappointment, Mouse and Angelo have seemingly evaded at least one of the predators hunting them.

A story of revenge with a shocking premise and numerous reversals, Skin tackles the issue of what true beauty is - and what's merely skin deep.

Written in 1915, Beyond Thirty is a fascinating tale of the future after World War I as seen from 1915 - as the carnage and slaughter on the fields of France stunned the world, and men of good will all wondered where civilization was headed. For Edgar Rice Burroughs, "The Great War" results in a two century division between the eastern and western hemispheres. Inhabitants of Pan-America are forbidden to cross the 30th parallel. Europe and the Old World are forever cut off from America.

Redwood Cove Bed and Breakfast manager Kelly Jackson is hosting a cooking class during the week of the Mushroom Festival to attract guests, not drama. But soon after she finishes foraging for an edible mushroom species on sacred Native American land, a local newspaper reporter gets shot dead at the same site. With suspicions spreading like fungi in the quaint Northern Californian community over the culprit's identity, Kelly and a savvy gang of sleuthing seniors known as the "Silver Sentinels" must uncover the truth about the secluded property.