Short Stories Mystery Thrillers

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

When a man is shot in the head, Bree Taggert and her new partner, veteran detective Dana Romano, respond to the call. They break the news to the victim’s ex-wife and learn the estranged couple’s five-year-old daughter was supposed to have been with him. What starts as a murder investigation quickly morphs into a desperate search for a missing child. The case stirs memories of Bree’s own traumatizing childhood. To find the little girl, Bree will have to relive her own terrifying past.

Myron Nolan has done the unimaginable — he has killed a man. As he tries to survive the homicide investigation and battle the searing flames of guilt that threaten to engulf him, his relationship with his wife takes a toll. Can he escape the consequences of his actions?

In this short story magical fantasy, an oddball group of sailors embark on a botanical research expedition. However, at the journey’s onset, the starkly differing personalities in the vessel would clash and misunderstandings festered. As if being on a four-month-long journey wasn’t bad enough, the crew had to contend with the possibility that the waters beneath them may purposefully have been working against their progress.

This original short story takes us back in time to show us how it all began. On a whirlwind, action-packed thriller ride through Italy, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, it shows us the beginning of CIA operative Agent Zero's career - and brings us up to the fateful moment when his memory came to be lost.

Every child in Leith knows the legend of Shelly Rock, home to a gigantic fiend who stalks the North Sands at night and wreaks lethal havoc. When the body of Englishman Richard Sawyer is found in the early hours of Christmas Day under the shadow of Shelly Rock, locals are quick to blame the mysterious creature. Was it a tragic accident? Or is there a sinister, supernatural reason for the lawyer's death? Inspector McLevy is determined to uncover the truth.

After almost twenty years, Mary Ellen’s return to her hometown is like entering a surreal and haunting nightmare. She had thought she left this all behind for good. The reason for her return? Her father’s funeral. But this trip back is more than just grieving and receiving condolences - it’s a reckoning with the ghosts of a past she worked hard to forget.

Short Fuse contains five short stories, including "Starting Over", "Now What Do We Do", "You Here with Anybody", "Time's Up", and "Doppelganger".

My husband is dead. I attended his funeral. I watched his casket be lowered six feet into the ground. (Actually, it may have been only five feet, but that still seems like more than enough.) And then we ate an array of finger sandwiches and deviled eggs and miniature beef wellingtons that cost more than my first car. My point is, Grant is gone. And so are all his many, many deep, dark secrets which I never really ever bothered to ask him about. He is never coming back.

In this psychological short thriller, an elderly loner, who spends most of his days at home, becomes the subject of a home invasion. A young and unmasked man with a gun soon arrests the elder to a chair, beginning a daylong ordeal that both men will never forget.

Three lives are indefinitely altered on a little girl’s birthday. Two decades later, this small town girl ventures off to the big city to seek higher education and better opportunities. Becky navigates successfully through life in the big city of Brockville, but is soon caught off guard by the baggage that comes with her job. Her family history, and the reason why her father had no pictures of her as a baby, would abruptly and painfully catch up to her.

When a star running back is gunned down by a cop with a questionable history, the city of L.A. is on the verge of a racial explosion. Enter a lawyer who comes to the cop's defense...but a desire for justice has nothing to do with it.

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.

This is collection of 18 crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

Here in one recording is every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally appearing in serial form, these famous stories are here presented in the order in which they were first published beginning in 1887. Included in this definitive, award-winning collection are four novels and 56 short stories, a total of 60 titles. The 56 short stories are aggregated into five named collections, just as they were originally published in book form.

Fashion designer turned amateur sleuth Maddie Springer can't wait to spend the holidays with her boyfriend, LAPD Detective Jack Ramirez. It's their first Christmas together, and Maddie wants it to be perfect. But between her zany family and wacky friends, Maddie's having a hard time finding alone time with her man. But come Christmas morning, this is one holiday she'll be sure to remember - naughty or nice!

Sometimes the only way to do the right thing is to break the rules. Love, Lies, and Murder is a collection of 19 short stories that explore the extremes of human emotion and the conflicts that result. Every story will leave you tense and breathless as the characters race to a conclusion that is as unexpected as it is satisfying. Intense and gripping, each story features a hero that seeks justice and the triumph of good over evil by whatever means necessary - regardless of what society’s rules find acceptable.

Anthony Horowitz selects and introduces the best mystery stories from the past year, under the auspices of the world's oldest mystery fiction specialty bookshop.

At age 26 Agatha Raisin has already come a long way. She has clawed her way up since leaving the Birmingham slum where she was born. She's lost her Birmingham accent, run away from her drunken husband, and found a job at a public relations office as a secretary. Then her boss asks Agatha to go to the home of Sir Bryce Teller to tell him that he is soon to be arrested for the murder of his wife and that the agency no longer wants to represent him.

The Grand Hotel is a horror novel by esteemed best-selling author Scott Kenemore ( Zombie, Ohio) that takes the reader on a thrilling ride through an interconnected series of stories narrated by the desk clerk and the residents of the hotel itself. And while it is not known whether or not the desk clerk is actually the devil incarnate, it is strange that so many visitors who come for a tour of the hotel have a way of never leaving.