Short Thrillers

Contains books four, five, and six of the Deliver series: Devastate, Take, and Manipulate.

Patterson Blake is an FBI Agent on a mission. When she was a teenager, her older sister vanished while on a cross-country road trip and hasn't been seen since. Patterson thought she'd put the trauma of her sister's disappearance behind her, but now there is new evidence, and suddenly the old wounds reopen. Except that Patterson isn't a kid anymore. She has a badge and a gun, and the resources to follow her sister's trail. But it won't be as easy as Patterson thinks.

Felix Renn is a private investigator in a supernatural world, an alternate reality where a dark dimension called The Black Lands co-exists alongside our own. Travelling to and from The Black Lands is dangerous–and illegal–but that doesn’t stop some of the creatures that reside there from crossing over into our world from time to time.

Cherringham is devastated. Otto Brendl, the likeable old man who had hosted the classic Punch-and-Judy show for the kids each summer, died suddenly of a heart attack. But while the memorial service is being planned, Jack becomes suspicious that Otto wasn't just the friendly man next door. Maybe there's more behind the heart attack? Soon Jack and Sarah are on the trail of a particularly sinister murderer - and together they will find that there's not only one kind of justice.

In this work Horace Rumpole returns to delight us with seven new cases. We find our hero jousting with the Devil, being wooed by a beautiful violin player, and even up before the Disciplinary Tribunal of the Bar Council.

The Akashic Noir series’ forensic study of Southern California sharpens its focus on one of Los Angeles’ most recognized neighborhoods.

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.

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 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is a collection of twelve detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous literary creation, Sherlock Holmes. Contained within this collection are the following tales: A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-headed League, A Case of Identity, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Five Orange Pips, The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, and The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.

Dick Morrison's life has become a nightmare of addictions, filling his days with overeating, overworking, and smoking way too much. When an old friend tells him about a surefire way to quit, he's more than willing to give it a shot. But what Dick doesn't know is that Quitters, Inc. demands a high price from anyone who strays from their rigid rules-like a few volts of electricity for the nearest and dearest... or maybe a missing thumb?

The oldest mystery specialty bookstore in the world, The Mysterious Bookshop, has for most of its forty-five-year history commissioned an original short story as a holiday gift for its customers. Written exclusively for the store, the stories were given as a holiday gift to its customers as a thank you for their business, handed out or mailed between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

I wasn't always like this, you know - paranoid, temperamental, vindictive. I mean, sure, I've always been a bit....high strung. But, I never used to stalk my therapist patients. Or yell at them. Or hold them captive in my garage. No, all of that started after the incidents at Lonesome Woods Boarding School. And I'm not talking about the school shooter. This was something far more insidious - something....infectious. Like a cancerous disease that tore through the student body, rotting young hearts one by one.

When an American tourist goes missing in Cherringham, the local police don't see reason for concern - people often wander away from such tours. But when that tourist's sister shows up from New York, desperately looking for answers, Jack and Sarah become convinced there's more to the disappearance than meets the eye. Soon, they are entangled in a mystery with a secret history of betrayal, sacrifice, dishonor... and death.

The Perry family's new house is perfect - except for the weird behavior of the neighbors, and that odd smell coming from a dark corner in the basement. Pity no one warned the family about the house. Now it's too late. Because the darkness at the bottom of the basement stairs is rising.

Under the Great British Baking Contest tent, the competition's heating up to be crowned Best Baker in all of Britain. For amateur baker Poppy Wilkinson, there are mysteries, secrets, and lies, even murders to solve. As a fledgling witch, Poppy's having enough trouble controlling her sponge cake, never mind trying to control her powers. Besides solving crime, Poppy's also trying to uncover the mystery surrounding her own background. Will she discover who she really is before she gets sent home? Or worse?

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.

Ten years ago, Craig Johnson wrote his first short story, the Hillerman Award-winning "Old Indian Trick". This was one of the earliest appearances of the sheriff who would go on to star in Johnson’s best-selling, award-winning novels and the A&E hit series Longmire. Each Christmas Eve thereafter, fans rejoiced when Johnson sent out a new short story featuring an episode in Walt’s life that doesn’t appear in the novels; over the years, many have asked why they can’t buy the stories in book form.

Aspen is a Norm. A non-magic. A human. And in this supernatural city, that's a quick way to wind up dead. Or worse. She didn't plan on becoming an apprentice to Lucien Dunadine, one of the strongest members on the Council of Mages. She really didn't plan on taking part in a deadly competition against Isak Uchida, her handsome, aggravating, deadly opponent. But with something sinister going down in the magic boroughs, they'll all have to work together if they want to uncover the source of an ancient evil threatening their home.

Spring, 1918. The Great War is at a crucial stage, the Germans are making one last push into France, and the Allies are struggling to hold them back. Battle lines are shifting, and men, and their machines, are being sent up and down the front to shore up defenses. Major Heathcliff Lennox, and his batman Greggs, are told to report to their new HQ. They set off on a sunlit day to fly the distance, but the enemy is never far away, and disaster strikes. They're sent crashing to the ground behind enemy lines, where life, death, and love await.

Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book Series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. Among these are Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; and "Cyclists' Raid", the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One.