Detective Short Stories Mysteries

A precious stone with a history of murders and violence behind it is discovered in the crop of a Christmas goose after being reported stolen yet again, from its owner's jewel case, and the guilt placed upon a plumber who protests his innocence.

"The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was the second tale published in The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1903.

To avoid a scandal at a prestigious school, Holmes must determine how and by whom the answers to an extremely difficult Greek exam, which will result in the award of a scholarship, have been copied.

One of the most popular of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, "Silver Blaze" focuses on the disappearance of a famous race horse on the eve of an important race, and on the apparent murder of its trainer.

"The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and is one of 13 stories in the collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

The bride of Lord St. Simon disappears on the day of their marriage. Holmes and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard are both called to help. Who will be the first to solve this mystery?

Forest Row in the Weald is the scene of a gruesome harpoon murder, and a young police inspector, Stanley Hopkins, asks Holmes, whom he greatly admires as a mentor, for some help. Holmes has already determined that it would take a great deal of strength and skill to run a man through with a harpoon and embed it in the wall behind him besides.

Professor Van Dusen solves a variety of different mysteries together with his friend, Hutchinson Hatch, a reporter for a fictional newspaper called The Daily New Yorker. The professor is known as the "Thinking Machine", and he solves problems by the remorseless application of logic. In this story, he thinks his way out of a maximum-security prison.

An unusual sequence of events in leads the legendary Sherlock Holmes to locate the precious jewel owned by the Countess of Morcar.

Dr. Watson's introduction to this Holmes case among the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, entitled "The Adventure of Silver Blaze" ( Strand magazine, December 1892) is succinct and impossible to improve upon: "There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the favourite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer."

Holmes' search for Neville St. Clair has lead him to the opium dens of Upper Swandam Lane, where the 'disappearance' of many souls in this vile alley is a sobering fact of life. Not simply those whose lives are consumed and cast into perdition by the drug, but sudden, violent exits from the mortal plane at the hands of others. St. Clair's distraught wife has seen him here in one of the dens, but he has vanished just as suddenly. Police have found his clothes and bloodstains upon an open windowsill.

Very odd happenings cause a hydraulic engineer to lose his thumb - and lead Holmes and Watson to a band of criminals.

Holmes and Watson arrive at Trinity College, summoned by a message that rugby star, Godfrey Staunton, has disappeared. Staunton is the key man on Overton's rugby team, and they will never win the important match if he cannot be found. Holmes admits that sport is a bit outside his ken, but he takes this case as seriously as any other. It proves not all elementary.

This is a story from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes II collection. In this collection are four of the finest cases of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, narrated by his faithful friend and admirer Dr. Watson. What was the mystery of the engineer's thumb? What was behind the disappearance of the race horse? Why did masked royalty walk up to see Holmes in Baker Street? These and other puzzles are solved in this collection by this bloodhound of a genius.

This is a story from the The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes III collection. In this collection are four more individual cases for Mr. Sherlock Holmes, narrated by his faithful friend and admirer Dr. Watson. They dive into the opium dens of London in "The Man with the Twisted Lip," recall the curious history of "The Musgrave Ritual," come face to face with the grisly evidence contained in "The Cardboard Box," and go on a wild-goose chase in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle." The powers of Sherlock Holmes prevail.

Previously part of a collection, this rare Ellery Queen mystery is available as a standalone audiobook for the first time. In "The Odd Man", Ellery is challenged to solve an imaginary riddle devised by three members of the Puzzle Club. With very little information to go on, he must correctly answer to his confreres which of their three imagined suspects is a secret criminal.

Sherlock Holmes' superb deductive abilities are truly tested in this adventure when a client asks the Great Detective to help him discover what is frightening his new wife. What seems to Watson to be just a child's drawing becomes the key to solving the mystery.

This is a story from the The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes I collection.

A tale of mystery, scandal and murder that may have been committed by the Ku Klux Klan in London. A young Sussex gentleman named John Openshaw has a strange story: in 1869 his uncle Elias Openshaw had suddenly come back to England to settle on an estate at Horsham, West Sussex, after living for years in the United States as a Planter in Florida and serving as a Colonel in the Confederate Army....

Holmes and Watson push the limits of the law when they confront the machinations of a blackmailer whose victims either pay dearly or suffer life-destroying humiliation. Holmes is hired by the débutante Lady Eva Blackwell to retrieve compromising letters from a blackmail artist named Charles Augustus Milverton, a man who causes Holmes more revulsion than any of the 50-odd murderers in his career.