Short Stories Crime Suspense

Lillian opens the door and a man is standing there with a gun. He forces his way into her home and tells her he plans to kill her husband when he gets home. Why? What'd he ever do to this punk? Uh-oh, here comes her husband. Now what?

You agree to meet with a hit man, but the person you want him to kill is... YOU. You're dying of bone cancer and this is the only way to make the insurance company pay so you can take care of your family when you're gone. This cat-and-mouse story is not all it seems, but the hit goes down exactly as planned.

Passerby is an anthology of short stories and is the second title in the series. This collection concentrates on stories that demanded a sequel and in some cases, a third part. The stories in this anthology do not fall into any particular genre because I like to "go with the flow" when I write.

Beloved author Mary Stewart's long-lost novella, now available again for the first time in 40 years. In 1879 a wealthy young woman elopes with an impoverished fisherman, leaving her family, who live on the volcanic island of Lanzarote, distraught. In 1968, 23-year-old Perdita West, secretary to the famous author Cora Gresham, visits Lanzarote, the strangest and wildest of the Canary Isles, on a research trip. They meet Cora's estranged son, Mike, and fall in love with the unusual, beautiful little island.

My hand shakes when I read the note. Everyone is here. I think. There are so many people. So many painted faces. How am I supposed to know who is missing? I knew this party was a bad idea. Now, one of my own is in trouble and as the Prez of the MC, I should know not to play a game. But we are on a timer and someone is using us as pawns. It’s up to us to save one of our own.

Berlin does not make it easy to write noir fiction - or perhaps Berlin makes it too easy. Noir tradition casts a long, influential, and even daunting shadow. Neither Döblin nor Benn, Brecht nor Lang, catered to any crime fiction traditions. They merely steeped their literary projects in a great deal of noir. And so it is with most of the stories in our anthology: they do not necessarily follow the usual patterns of crime fiction, but regard noir as a license to write as they wish, a certain way of approaching the city, and a prism through which its nature is viewed....

The "Hot Kid" of the U.S. Marshals Service, Carl Webster maintains the law with a cool, showdown attitude. He's one of the richest creations in Elmore Leonard's half century of delivering the goods. From his appearances in the critically acclaimed novels The Hot Kid and Up in Honey's Room, Carl returns to lay down the law in a novella that originally appeared as a serial in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Be ready for some action, humor, and mystery in this anthology with short stories. You’ll listen about gangsters, witches, magic potions, interrogations, werewolves, and murder. Several stories have a murder victim, while others are all about theft or robberies. But in many cases, they spark the imagination and make up for a great way to sit back, relax, and read or listen to stories from a completely different world.

A spine-tingling selection of detective stories including contributions from Edgar Wallace, Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton.

>From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask.

The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” (Booklist).

Dror Eytan is a ruthless, heartless, violent extortionist. I am a simple teacher who has never had to deal with people like Eytan. Eytan wants the money. I don't have it. My friend's life is at stake. What have I got myself into? Help.

Steve wants to leave his old life behind, the life of killing and waiting to be killed. But when it's the family business, it can be a hard habit to break.

You wake up one morning with the weight of the world on your shoulders. You just lost your job, your girlfriend dumped you and you're about to be evicted from your apartment. Is it worth even going on anymore? Maybe not, but before you pull that trigger why not give a call to the folks at the suicide hotline. Maybe they can help. How good are these people at their job? Someone's gonna die no matter what. And there ain't a thing you can do about it.

Nothing exciting ever happened to Melissa Berkley. It was time to try to change that, she thought. She stood on the stern of the ship looking out at the horizon. Most of the other passengers stayed inside, or sat on the deck chairs with something to read. Melissa had something to read herself, even if it was just a short note on a post card that read: "To whomever finds this bottle: I dropped it overboard in the middle of Lake Michigan on this, the third day of September 1997. If you find it, please mail this post card back to me and let me know where you found it."

We've all been there. Some punk with a beater car creates a road rage situation, but being that your car is a new Mercedes-Benz, you don't want to take any chances so you let it slide. But the kid's not done playing with you. He raises the stakes but pointing a revolver at you. To hell with the car, that's what insurance is for. Go get him.

Tim Murphy is a television newscaster who specializes in stories from the streets. After a long day on location, his cameraman drops him off at the studio, but it's closed for the day. He heads for his car but finds that someone has stolen it. Now, he has to walk home late at night on the same streets he's been reporting on. Can he make it home safely even though the only weapon in his pocket is a microphone? Let's find out.

Betty and Frank live a normal married lifestyle. She's a homemaker and he owns a third generation butcher shop. He's content with his life, but it seems Betty is not. She's been seeing Frank's friend, Bruce on the sly for afternoon delights. As long as Frank doesn't find out, what's the harm? Frank finds out.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. You've lost your job and your family needs money. You've exhausted all other options. Your last chance to bring home the bacon is to holdup a tavern and its patrons. As you wait in their restroom, trying to muster up the courage, two other robbers come in and proceed to rob your tavern. This is the last straw. Time for action.

Penelope was a plain, unassuming woman that nobody noticed. Her job was going nowhere. Enter Debbie, her new co-worker at the insurance company where Penelope had gone unnoticed for nearly three years. Debbie's going places in the company, and fast. Why? Because she saved her money and got breast implants. Once Penelope saw what those implants did for Debbie, she decided to have the operation herself. One way or another, she would get noticed. Be careful what you wish for, Penelope. Attention may not be all that it's cracked up to be.

It's 1964. Philip Duran has been driving all night to make a sales meeting in the wee hours of the morning in Hollywood. Vern Grayson has the purchasing power at MGM. Mr. Duran's new invention could be just the thing MGM needs to pull ahead of its competitors, but can Duran convince Grayson to buy his contraption? Find out here, because Philip Duran will do, anything for a sale.