Short Thrillers Suspense

Join Meredith & Hodge in the murky world of crime, in this three-book boxed set full of mystery, murder and intrigue.

For The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, writer and anthologist Michael Sims did not summon the usual suspects. He sought the unfamiliar, the unjustly forgotten, and little-known gems by writers from outside the genre. This historical tour of one of our most popular literary categories includes stories never before reprinted, features rebellious early “lady detectives," and spotlights former stars of the crime field—Austrian novelist Auguste Groner and prolific American Geraldine Bonner among them.

Join teacher Kate Hamilton as she puzzles her way through crimes from rural Virginia to inner city Washington DC, in this USA Today best-selling series.

All you need to know about this great collection of the best mystery stories from the past century are the names of the great authors inside: Robert Bernard, Robert Bloch, Lawrence Block, Anthony Boucher, Frederic Brown, James M. Cain, Max Allan Collins, Jeffery Deaver, Stanley Ellin, Harlan Ellison, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ed Gorman, Anna Katharine Green, Jeremiah Healy, Patricia Highsmith, Reginald Hill, Tony Hillerman, Evan Hunter, Stephen King, and more.

Before he was Oldtimer, he was Craig Emilson, a young doctor,sucked into military service at the outbreak of World War III. Enlisting to become a Special Forces suborbital paratrooper, Craig is selected to take part in the most important mission in American military history, a sortie into enemy territory to eliminate the world's first strong artificial intelligence.

Susan Harris lived in self-imposed seclusion, her mansion featuring numerous automated systems controlled by a state-of-the-art computer. Every comfort was provided. Her security was absolute. Until her security system is breached - from the inside. In the privacy of her own home, and against her will, she will experience an inconceivable act of terror and become the object of the ultimate computer’s consuming obsession: to learn everything there is to know about human flesh.

When Jack and Sarah are called in to investigate mysterious pranks at an exclusive girls' private school, it seems at first that it might be the work of a few mean pupils with a grudge. But things quickly turn serious when a popular teacher meets a sudden, violent death. Now, with murder in the air, Jack and Sarah have their own lessons to learn about the Cherringham Girls School, its dark secrets... and who wanted that teacher dead before they learned the truth.

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.

A sociopath cuts a path of destruction across the rural Midwest. In pursuit: a vigilante detective and a prosecutor, one bent on revenge, the other on virtue. And in the wrong place at the wrong time: a doctor in a life-and-death moral struggle. Barreling toward justice, their fates converge in these four interlocking short stories of cunning misdirection by internationally bestselling author Jeffery Deaver.

From Linda Castillo, the New York Times bestselling author of SWORN TO SILENCE and GONE MISSING, comes LONG LOST: a powerful and moving story about a troubled young woman and a decades old mystery set in the world of the Amish. It's autumn in Painters Mill, and Chief of Police Kate Burkholder...

From the author of the Wayward Pines Trilogy, comes this collection of short stories.

This set includes the first three novels in the Cape Bay Cafe Mysteries, starring amateur sleuth Francesca Amaro—barista, baker, and owner of Antonia’s Italian Café: Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse; Tea, Tiramisu, and Tough Guys; and Margaritas, Marzipan, and Murder.

Reflecting a city still divided, Belfast Noir serves as a record of a city transitioning to normalcy, or perhaps as a warning that underneath the fragile peace darker forces still lurk. Featuring brand-new stories by: Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Garbhan Downey, Lee Child, Alex Barclay, Brian McGilloway, Ian McDonald, Arlene Hunt, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Claire McGowan, Steve Cavanagh, Lucy Caldwell, Sam Millar, and Gerard Brennan.

There is something of both the absolutely spectacular and positively disgraceful about Tehran. But most writers around the world are inclined to think that their own sprawling metropolis is the capital of every imaginable vice and crime, of impossible love and tenderness and cruelty and malice in measures that seldom exist anywhere else. For me, Tehran's case is no different - except that there really is a difference here. The city may be a hothouse of decadence, a den of inequity, all that. But it still exists under the watchful eye of a very unique entity, the Islamic Republic.

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished 10 years before. Four years later, she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Watson to accompany her.

An unusual sequence of events in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" leads the legendary Sherlock Holmes to locate the precious jewel owned by the Countess of Morcar. The story is read by a true master, Edward Hardwicke, a talented actor who plays Sherlock Holmes's associate, Dr. Watson, in the popular PBS series Mystery!

This is a story from the Murders in the Rue Morgue (The Dupin Stories) collection. Auguste Dupin, investigator extraordinaire, was the remarkable creation of Edgar Allan Poe. Written in the 1840s, Poe presented the acutely observant, shrewd but idiosyncratic character who, with his chronicler, provided the inspiration for the more famous Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Retired Delta Force officer Brad Taylor delivers an action-packed short story that sets Pike Logan's partner, Jennifer Cahill, against a fellow Taskforce operator in a mission that will put their authority, careers, and innocent lives on the line. Fresh off of a brutal mission with the Taskforce - a top-secret counter-terrorist unit that operates outside the bounds of U.S. law - Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill are still dealing with its aftereffects. With his injuries on the mend, Pike is forced to let Jennifer take the lead when another Taskforce team asks for her help.

After suffering a personal tragedy, Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine Coon Cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos. What Abby thought she needed was alone time to heal.

The 13 mysteries in this collection were originally published in The Strand Magazine and Collier's in Great Britain and the United States. Published in 1905, this book was the first Holmes collection since 1893, when Holmes died in a confrontation with his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty in "The Final Problem". The success of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was published in 1901-1902 and is set before Holmes's death, created great pressure on Doyle to revive his famous character.