Mystery Thriller Collection

Forty breathtaking short stories of gripping adventures, secrets and strange conspiracies. 'The Dust That Was Barren' by P. C. Wren. 'The Deserter' by Stacy Aumonier. 'The Lighthouse on Shivering Sand' by J. S. Fletcher. 'The Secret of the Smoked Spectacles' by William Le Queux. 'The 39 Steps' by John Buchan. 'Three Pennyworth of Luck' by Basil Murray. 'The Secret of Dr. Vaux’s Intrigue' by William Le Queux. 'A Thread of Scarlet' by J. J. Bell. 'How I Became a Secret Agent' by Dr. A. K. Graves.

Spanning from a mediocre spa in Florida, to New York’s gritty East Village, to death row in Alabama, this collection reveals boundless suspense in small, quiet moments, offering startling twists in the least likely of places. From a powerful response to hateful bullying, to a fight for health care, to a gripping desperation to vote, these stories are equal parts shocking, devastating, and enthralling, revealing the tension pulsing through our everyday lives and affirming that mystery and suspense writing is better than ever before.

Jetta needs to escape… As a kitchen maid who has finally managed to escape abuse at her master’s hand, she finds herself at the scene of a crime. Now she's involved in a murder. How many times can her life be turned upside down? Never knowing her parentage, she has struggled alone for too long. Dominic is a friend of the king… Enjoying a peaceful life was never his choice. He wanted a change from the monotony. But finding his Farrier murdered, with only a slip of a girl as the likely culprit, was possibly taking things too far.

Finally, life is good for reluctant family law attorney Jamie Quinn - her father may get his visa soon, her boyfriend is the bomb, and her law practice is growing like crazy - but when she agrees to take on a high-profile divorce case, everything falls apart. What looked like an opportunity to work with her friend Grace and make some serious bucks has turned into a deadly game, one that could destroy their friendship and tear their town apart. Why couldn't Jamie just leave well enough alone?

Sgt. Reggie King wakes up from a battlefield injury to find himself physically intact. But the hospital staff insist he’s not fit to return to duty. As part of his psychological recovery, they introduce him to a game. Armored Souls is a tank game on steroids. Giant walking mechs called juggernauts engage in interplanetary wars as noble houses and mercenary factions wage endless battles for supremacy. For the pilots of these juggernauts, the rewards are glory, cash, and XP.

You will have ninety minutes to solve the murder. A startling declaration by a new Harvard instructor: sixty-seven-year-old Frances Glessner Lee. It’s 1945. Before her, six wary male students given to assumptions—especially when it comes to women without a formal education—are challenged to solve a real-life whodunit using Mrs. Lee’s creation, the crime scene diorama. Every detail is accurate. And every detail matters when solving a crime with no survivors…

The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark.

Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley is building makes her own impossible decision - veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?

For decades, Marge has been spying on her neighbors Doris and Bob, reporting every sordid thing she sees to her husband, Harold. Flamboyant Doris and boring Bob are an odd couple, but as Marge watches their comings and goings, she starts to wonder if there’s more than meets the eye. Is Doris’s latest hobby—flamenco dancing, of all things—an attempt to spice things up, or is there something more sinister going on in the house across the street? Soon enough, Marge learns that digging into her suspicions means digging herself into a very deep hole.

New York Times best-selling author Linda Castillo is known as a “master of the genre” (People) for her pulse-pounding mystery series set in Amish country. Now, together for the first time in print, A Simple Murder features six original short stories starring whip-smart chief of police, Kate Burkholder.

Lust. Revenge. Greed. Hunger. Desire doesn’t care if you’re at the bottom of the ladder or the top of your game. Six masters of psychological suspense craft tales about people crossing moral lines in pursuit of their deepest desires. In these short stories, even the most mild-mannered characters can spin out of control when passion is at play. Hold on tight—there’s no turning back.

Time rewinds at the video store—the clerk is always hot and grumpy, and kindly retiree Mr. Hoffman rents the same thing every week. Audrey hangs around for both these reasons. But when her fellow film buff fails to appear, she goes to his house over the protests of her flannelly video store crush, who knows more than he lets on. It’s just like a movie. And she’s worried about the twist.

It’s an offer Grace Logan can’t refuse: ghostwrite the memoir of Claudia Blackwood, a successful novelist once accused of a ghastly triple murder. Did she really do it? In self-imposed exile in her island mansion, the frail Claudia is finally bringing her notorious past to a close. But for Grace, the end of Claudia’s story may be more than a sinister reveal…

In his introduction, guest editor S. A. Cosby observes that writing short stories is “a special skill that combines brevity with wit and cleverness and the hint of the existential malaise that imbues crime fiction with its gravitas.” The stories in this collection overflow with gravitas in the most unexpected ways: a cryptic note left on a windshield, a murder for hire meets a game of Mouse Trap, a swipe right on a dating app goes horribly wrong.

It’s been ten years since Jade lost her father in a tragic accident, and the lingering guilt and grief have dragged her down to rock bottom. Then one night, she’s out at a restaurant and sees the impossible through the window: her father, alive. By the time she reaches the crowded sidewalk, he has disappeared. After so much despair, Jade isn’t going to lose him again—no matter what sinister truths may come from following him.

Welcome to Beechwood Harbor. Betwixt is a collection of the in-between stories featuring your favorite paranormal pals in Beechwood Harbor. Betwixt Volume Two contains seven short stories and novellas, including two brand new, never before publishes shorts featuring Lacey Vaughn and Harmony Winters! If you love Beechwood Harbor, this is a can't miss collection!

Drone: A rebel CIA director takes on China and almost turns a trade war into a real one. Thunderbolt: A US senator's scam has North Korea prepping their nukes. Condor: A shot at the intelligence jackpot of a lifetime occurs, deep in the heart of Russia. At the center of all three? Miranda Chase: Air-crash genius investigator for the NTSB, team leader, and high-functioning autistic. What's at risk if she doesn't solve the crash and the crises? Everything!

Nero Wolfe is a fictional detective, created in 1934 by the American mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe's confidential assistant Archie Goodwin narrates the cases of the overweight detective genius. In total, Stout wrote 33 novels and 39 short stories from 1934 to 1974, with most of them set in New York City. Wolfe's residence, a luxurious brownstone on West 35th Street, features prominently in the series. Many radio, television and film adaptations were made from Stout's stories.

The life of secret agent James Bond has begun to fall into a pattern that threatens complacency…until the sunny afternoon when M is kidnapped. The action ricochets across the globe to a volcanic Greek island, where Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People's Liberation Army of China collaborates with an ex-Nazi atrocity expert in a world-menacing conspiracy. Stripped of all professional aids, Bond faces, unarmed, the monstrous devices of Colonel Sun....

Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book Series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. Among these are Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; and "Cyclists' Raid", the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One.