Mystery Reads

One freezing winter morning a dead body is found in the backyard of the Dharma family’s house. It’s the body of Anu Krishnan. For Anu, a writer seeking a secluded retreat from the city, the Dharmas' "back-house" in the sleepy mountain town of Merrit's Point was the ideal spot to take a year off and begin writing.

Set in 1928 in Victoria, Australia. The Thornton family made its money in the goldfields during the 1850s and the antiques trade. Their principal home is Thornton Park, a lavish mansion close to Melbourne. They also own a home and a goldmine in Daylesford, where their close friends, the Bassetti family, are part of a thriving Swiss-Italian community.

Ahab is the captain of a whaling ship named the Pequod. His great obsession with the giant whale, Moby Dick, makes him embark on a dangerous voyage. Some years before, the captain lost his leg because of the whale and now Ahab’s main desire is to take his revenge on the whale by killing it. He is so obsessed, that Ahab is ready to sacrifice everything he has, including the Pequod and all the members of his crew, and even his own life.

You have certainly heard of Dracula. But do you know the whole story? Everything begins with Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor who travels to Transylvania. He is about to sell a piece of real estate to Count Dracula. The locals warn Harker of the strange things that occur near Count Dracula’s castle, but Harker doesn't listen. Shortly after he realizes that he has fallen into captivity.

Isidore Smythe is in danger. He has received threating letters and he does not see a way out. John Angus offers Smythe his help and Smythe is escorted back to his flat. Angus is determined to find out who has sent the letters and he heads out to the former criminal Flambeau and the private detective Father Brown. Before he leaves Smythe’s apartment, he instructs four people to keep an eye on him. Yet when he comes back Smythe is missing and there's a bloodstain on the floor.

"The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins is one of the forefathers of detective fiction, cementing the foundations of the genre. At the centre of it lays the theft of a diamond, dating in origin from a religious Indian shrine, which prompts detective Sergeant Cuff to take up the case. It is an absolute page-turner of a story and goes through the accounts of the different characters, winding and meandering from fact to fiction and vice versa.

Pip is a poor orphaned boy who lives together with his sister and her husband. Pip is not educated but has great dreams of the future. He is determined to get out of the low class and seek progress in the higher class. One day a lawyer appears. Pip has suddenly received a large fortune from a secret benefactor and he has to get to London to start his education. Pip’s life changes in a second. But he is ready to embark on his next journey.

France and Great Britain are waging a fierce war for the control of the North American colonies. Cora and Alice Munro are two sisters who travel through the forest to visit their father - Colonel Munro. Major Duncan Heyward and an Indian named Magua escort the two girls. However, unbeknownst to them, many dangers are lurking in the forest and stand reading to strike unsuspecting travellers.

The first season focuses on the short story tradition, and B. J. Harrison has selected some of the most prominent representatives of the genre. As far as the thematic aspect is concerned, the stories cover crime and mystery episodes like Arthur Conan Doyle’s "The Speckled Band", or revenge-driven ones like Shakespeare’s "Hamlet". There are also supernatural and horror classics such as Hawthorne’s "The Devil and Tom Walker" and W. W. Jacobs’ masterpiece "The Monkey’s Paw".

Every choice leaves a ghost. Every silence, a scar. Across fractured timelines where forgotten prophecies echo and names unspoken wield power, three wanderers are called by a signal that doesn’t belong to any world still standing. Hunted by reality’s architects and haunted by selves they never became, they traverse collapsing bridges of memory, carnivals of regret, and oceans inked with unspoken legacies. But something ancient has stirred in the spirals of fate—an echo born of mercy and defiance, threatening to rewrite not just the future, but the cost of remembering it.

Could Earth’s apocalypse really be worse than puberty for Daniela Rose-a depressive schizophrenic girl destined to meet a mysterious orphan boy who haunts her chaotic dreams? One girl. One boy. One mission. To protect their home-Earth-from invasion by the planet’s previous occupants...This epic story weaves an intricate tapestry of Divine guidance, faith, isolation, hope, and loss as it follows two children from their beginnings to their ends. If you knew your ending, how would you have lived your beginning?

When John Glass's billionaire father-in-law hires him to write his biography, he feels he can't refuse. Then his research assistant on the book discovers some very sensitive information about John's in-laws, and is murdered before he can tell anyone what he knows. John is on his own to find out...

Hungary during the Ottoman wars: Turks attack Buda and set up a siege of Eger. Gergely Bornemissza is a poor half-orphan who is about to become a national hero. "Eclipse of the Crescent Moon" follows Gergelys life from the age of eight until his early thirties. His life is a vivid combination of poverty, love, battles and dangers. He is on the front line when the Turks capture Buda and later when they approach Eger. His country is in danger and so is his family. The battle is one of life or death.

"Murder at the Mill by M. B. Shaw is a great sweeping adventure. Ideal for holiday reading." —M. C. Beaton, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author A picture hides a thousand lies... And only Iris Grey can uncover the truth. Iris Grey rents a quaint cottage in a picture-perfect...

Pierre Aronnax is a famous marine biologist, who works together with his manservant Conseil and harpoonist Ned Land. The three brave men are tirelessly hunting a mysterious sea monster in the dangerous sea waters. But a great danger loom over them. Why are the three sailors chasing the monster? Why do they want to kill it at any cost? Will they succeed or will the creature attack and kill them? Find out all the answers in Jules Verne’s classic science fiction and adventure novel "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" from 1870. B. J.

It’s 1927 in Victoria, Australia. A time after the Great War when women have more options opened to them. At a weekend house party at Thornton Park, Alexandra Thornton decides to break the news to her father that she wants to be an antiques dealer, like her father, grandfather and great-grandfather before her. Guests include Zhang Huo, a Chinese antiques dealer who, with his son, has brought a Ming dragon statue from China for Thomas Thornton, Alexandra’s father. Benedict Archer, manager of Thornton Antiques in Melbourne, is also invited.

When four unconnected serial killers simultaneously commit identical murders across four different US cities, FBI Special Agent Shannon Wallace faces an unprecedented threat—a cooperative of killers working in unison. Each homicide is witnessed by a survivor, and now these lucky ones need to decide how to tell their stories to the world. Their posts about the horrific murders create a media storm and a new term is soon coined for the killers: The Alliance.

One poisoned cupcake just might close this bookstore’s doors forever. Enjoying the success of their small town bookstore Read Wine, Trixie, Cora, and Sally can finally focus on other aspects of their lives—like planning Cora's upcoming wedding. As the friends prepare for the big event, they discover someone in town is poisoning baked goods, and they are being served at the bookstore. This is not a good look for their business, and they need to act fast before their customers disappear. Can they discover who the culprit is and get their friend down the aisle? Only time will tell.

Dylan Shepherd—operative turned pariah—confronts the shadows born from the missions he never wanted to survive. Jill Cunningham—once his closest ally, now his fiercest adversary—hunts the truth buried in his past and her own bloodline. And Thread, the prototype daughter raised from regret and war, must decide whether to continue their legacy… or end it.

An electrifying new voice in crime fiction: Allison LaMothe’s debut is a gritty, fast-paced mystery about a reporter running down two huge stories at once “Allison LaMothe is a wildly talented writer with an exacting eye for detail and her tenacious tabloid reporter, Parker Snow, is gutsy...