Short Stories Mystery Thrillers

They arrive alive. They always leave dead. But before they go, they tell me everything. My name’s Jack Steen, night nurse in an asylum for the criminally insane—where mercy is optional, and every secret comes with a pulse that’s fading fast. My job isn’t to save them. It’s to listen. For years, I’ve recorded their deathbed confessions in the dead of night, one story at a time. What began as whispers caught on tape has now been transcribed—unedited, unfiltered, raw. These aren’t stories meant to be read so much as listened to, in the quiet hours when even your own heartbeat sounds too loud.

Enjoy listening to these seven short stories for all ages. This audiobook takes you on adventures in the world of imaginations, dreams, and fun. Imagine exploring a cave, talking to a fish, or getting lost in a thunder storm. Imagine magic seeds that heal or having your own pony. Each story is short enough to keep the attention of all ages, and the best part is that they all end with a fun twist or a message of encouragement.

This mesmerizing original short story—a prequel to The Sleepwalker—from Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of The Sandcastle Girls and The Guest Room, tells the tale of one strange summer when a pair of horses die, an odd boy moves to a small Vermont town, and a woman rises from her...

The handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most determined of gumshoe gals, from debutant detectives like Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange to spinster sleuths like Mary Roberts Rinehart's Hilda Adams, from groundbreaking female cops like Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly to contemporary crime-fighting PIs like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, and include indelible tales from Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells, Edgar Wallace, L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Laura Lippman, and many more.

Seven psychological stories. Seven gut-punch endings. If you think you can predict the twist, think again. From a desperate college student on the brink, to a grandmother whose faith turns to fanaticism, these short stories expose the darkest corners of the human mind. With obsession, betrayal, revenge, and raw vulnerability at the heart of each tale, no one escapes unscathed.

Hank and Josie own a small nursery in Mays Landing, New Jersey. They have three kids and a house with a mortgage. Josie has worked hard making and selling wreaths to make money for Christmas presents. Two days before Christmas, while she is collecting pine cones for her wreaths, she finds a woman named Helen lying in the woods behind her house. She is bruised and beaten, but won't let Josie call for help.

Here are 18 short stories of murder, mystery, mayhem and humor.

Hornung published this second volume of the adventures of genius cracksman A.J. Raffles in 1901. Raffles is always casing rich homes to burgle, and is always accompanied by his trusted friend and confidant 'Bunny.' While they generally score, their escapades are never without a certain degree of risk, but Raffles seems always prepared.

Discover 14 clean and fun best-selling cozy mysteries by Amber Crewes to enjoy! This is a light cozy mystery series with an amateur female sleuth, mouth-watering culinary desserts, and 14 gripping murder mysteries.

From Linda Castillo, the New York Times bestselling author of A Gathering of Secrets, comes a new Kate Burkholder short mystery, In Plain Sight: a story of star-crossed love and murder in Amish country. Seventeen year old Amish boy, Noah Kline, is struck by a car as he walks alongside a dark...

Peace on Earth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in Charlotte MacLeod’s “A Cozy for Christmas”. Peter Lovesey’s “The Haunted Crescent” delivers a holiday ghost story with a twist. A training session for department-store Santas turns up Saint Nicks who are anything but angels in Isaac Asimov’s “Ho, Ho, Ho”. Marcia Muller’s “Silent Night” finds a tough private investigator searching San Francisco’s Tenderloin district - and discovering something unexpected.

The best mysteries have one thing in common: a memorable perpetrator. For every Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade in noble pursuit, there's a Count Dracula, a Lester Leith, or a Jimmy Valentine. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations - and who often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect. Now, for the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the iconic traitors, thieves, con men, sociopaths, and killers who have crept through the mystery canon over the past 150 years, captivating and horrifying readers in equal measure.

When she came to Detroit, Isabella “Izzy” Sage was looking for answers about the death of her parents, who were killed while doing the very job she’s about to take on: managing the death gate - a border between the living and the dead, located on Belle Isle. What she found was a sense of family, a little romance, and a whole lot of adventure. This omnibus includes the first three titles in the Death Gate supernatural thriller series: Only the Lonely, Only the Quiet, and Only the Lost.

An imprisoned man is certain that his supposed murder victim is very much alive... a female driver is pursued relentlessly by a menacing figure in another vehicle... a young artist gets the biggest break of her career... a restless beauty manages the perfect birthday celebration... an escaped Iraqi on Saddam Hussein's death list pays an involuntary visit to his homeland... How will they react? How would you? "Twelve Red Herrings" is the third collection of irresistible short stories from master storyteller, Jeffrey Archer.

The expected never happens... a man calls unexpectedly on his mistress and sees another man leaving her flat. Accusing her of being unfaithful, he quarrels with her, strikes her. She dies. Leaving unseen, he tips off the police so that the other man is arrested and charged... Has he achieved "The Perfect Murder"? A tantalising opening to "A Twist in the Tale", a fantastic collection of short stories from bestselling author Jeffrey Archer.

This second volume of a must-listen collection contains 15 bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors.

A fourth floor room, a door locked with the key inside, no way in, no way out. Edgar Allan Poe is the true grandfather of the murder mystery. Decades before Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, Poe gave us C. Auguste Dupin, a man able to solve mysteries through observation and deduction.

When the Blackout arrives, Dax Harper finds himself alone and fighting for survival on the chaotic streets of New Orleans. He is on the run, desperately searching for his estranged sister as the riots intensify. An unexpected encounter with his ex-girlfriend thrusts Dax into a leadership position—one he's not sure he can accept. As the hours pass, the city floods, pitting Dax in an epic battle against time and a mysterious new enemy threatening the future of humankind.

For the first time in print comes a collection of five short stories in the Edgar award-winning Kate Burkholder series, PLUS one new, never-before-published story, from New York Times bestselling author Linda Castillo. When two young boys don’t return home from an innocent afternoon of fishing...

Lawrence Block's 17 Matthew Scudder novels have won the hearts of readers throughout the world - along with a bevy of awards including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe (Germany), and the Maltese Falcon (Japan). But Scudder has starred in short fiction as well, and it's all here, from a pair of late-'70s novelettes ("Out the Window" and "A Candle for the Bag Lady") through "By the Dawn's Early Light" (Edgar) and "The Merciful Angel of Death" (Shamus), all the way to "One Last Night at Grogan's", a moving and elegiac story never before published.