Short Mystery Collection

In this classic novella, harried human explorers must try to figure out the lifeways and motivations of some extremely strange and enigmatic alien creatures on one of the strangest planets ever portrayed in science fiction - and do it all before the clock runs out...

The bestselling author Jeffrey Archer once again astonishes, delights, and electrifies with this audio collection, Twelve Red Herrings. Featuring bonus interviews with the author. Archer, the internationally bestselling author of Honor Among Thieves and Kane & Abel, serves up this inventive...

Colum McCann's Everything in This Country Must, a writer of fierce originality and haunting lyricism, turns to the troubles in Northern Ireland and reveals the reverberations of political tragedy in the most intimate lives of men and women, parents and children. In the title story, a teenage...

Cold case expert Evangeline Reed and forensics legend Harry Steinbeck are on their way from Minneapolis to Costa Rica. They’ve been ordered to keep close watch on a protective mother and her daughter, both of whom have troubling connections to a Minnesota serial killer. Are they on holiday? In hiding? Or on the run? It’s time for Van and Harry to close in on the truth. And there’s more at risk than anyone can imagine.

He trusted the wrong hands, and now his work is gone. Betrayal cuts deep, twisting friendships into threats as suspicion takes hold. And when the shadows close in, he learns too late that no one is truly safe. She returns home searching for peace, but the past awakens in whispers and screams. Some horrors never died, and now they want her to remember. Can she survive what waits in the dark?

Brash and bold and daring, Lieutenant Lee Briscoe will never back away from a good cause or a good fight. Briscoe’s gone undercover to infiltrate a slave-labor camp on an island in Southeast Asia, knowing full well that once he goes in, he may never get out. Posing as a man on the run for murder, he may soon wish he had run in the opposite direction. His adversary on the island is Schwenk - a man who is not only a connoisseur of cruelty, but an expert at delivering it.

Does size matter? Is bigger better? That’s no small question to Tom Little - the circus midget with giant dreams. Tom may be king of the midgets, but he’s got far grander ambitions - to become the muscleman at the top, the ringmaster. Now, drawing on some dark ancient secrets and mystic texts, he’s about to get his wish.... Assuming another man’s identity, Tom discovers he must also take on his sins, debts, and enemies. He may be living large - but now there are those who want to make him pay for the big man’s sins.

The Chinese city of Shunkien is under siege, the Japanese military laying it to waste. In the middle of the city sits the American consulate, a fragile sanctuary packed with refugees, threatened not only by artillery, but by the ravages of starvation and cholera. 200 miles away, on the USS Miami, stands their only hope - Marine Gunnery Sergeant James Mitchell. As tough as Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan - and just as stubborn - if anybody can negotiate a crucial supply of gold and medicine through 200 miles of bullets, bombs and butchery, it’s Sergeant Mitchell.

Lynn Taylor and his kid brother Frank may not be angels, but they’re not devils, either. They’re just a couple of men - two-fisted Texans who have landed on the wrong side of a corrupt lawman. Young Frank’s been framed for robbery, rustling, and murder, and if Lynn doesn’t think fast, his brother’s going to end up the guest of dishonor at a hanging party. Lynn cooks up a daring plan to clear his brother’s name and rope in the real outlaw.

Flying into action, daredevil photojournalist Johnny Brice is always looking for trouble...and more often than not, finding it. But he doesn’t know what real trouble is until he rescues the beautiful woman he calls Jinx from a sinking ship. They’re made for each other - even if they are a dangerous mix.

As a young man Monte Calhoun was as wild as they come, thinking the measure of a man was how hard he could drink and how straight he can shoot. But several years of schooling back East have changed him. Monte has become The No-Gun Man. The East Coast has civilized him, and he’s bringing some of that civilization home to Superstition, Arizona...even if it means refusing to avenge the murder of his own father.

Every man walks with a shadow...but what happens when he acquires a second one? Just ask Brazos, a cold-blooded killer for hire with blood on his hands and a posse on his tail. Desperate for cash, Brazos accepts $200 to gun down a local man named Brant. He’ll earn every penny...but in the end there’ll be the devil to pay. Because to put a bullet in Brant means putting one in his partner as well - an eerie stranger schooled in the black art of witchcraft. This is one killing that brings with it a deadly curse - and a second shadow.

Fay may have never left the security of academia, but she knows how destructive multi-level marketing businesses can be for women. When she gets a grant to research Bribre, a company selling clothes at home parties, she’s determined to use this opportunity to help others understand how these companies prey on our insecurities and destroy our finances. She thinks she’s maintaining objectivity, but the longer Fay’s involved, the more immersed she is in a world of secrets and betrayal.

"We must all hang together," Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said to his revolutionary peers, "or we will assuredly all hang separately." This is a sentiment that's even more appropriate, and more urgent, when you're lost between the stars in a crippled and out-of-control ship, your...

Rain fell in sheets and lightning flickered through the sky as two boys snuck into the abandoned theatre. What they find will change their lives forever. If they live.

An eclectic selection of short stories.

Here are three crime stories in an historical setting. All of them have been inspired by a true incident and their settings have been rigorously researched to give you the sense of being there in 1854, 1863 and 1872. From Richmond, Virginia, at the height of the American Civil War to the dry Southwest riding along with John Wesley Hardin and Wild Bill Hickok, you are there.

While renovating her Victorian home, Ana Clementine finds an ornate door buried under forty years of earth. Once she restores it to the attic, she starts hearing whispers, her loving husband has become a stranger, and her baby daughter learns a chilling new word. Maybe Ana has unlocked the house’s secrets. Or maybe she’s becoming just a little unhinged herself.

Bad things have been happening since Mia began to mature. Her dad left. Boys at school can’t keep their hands to themselves. A lecherous stepfather has moved in. Her only refuge is an abandoned lot on her suburban cul-de-sac, crawling with feral felines - one of which follows Mia home. Ghostly white and affectionate, she is Mia’s new companion and - as Mia’s tormenters will soon discover - her fierce protector.

"Till death us do part." Those words she’d sworn never to break. Jill didn’t want a divorce, but the violence had to stop. One way or another, her marriage was going to end. "How to Get Away with Murder" is one of seven sinister tales featured in this genre-hopping collection of short fiction from Frank J. Thomas.