Short Thrillers

Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley is building makes her own impossible decision - veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?

Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren confronts the strangest case of her career in this exclusive short story by the #1 New York Times bestselling author. D. D. Warren was pretty sure she’d seen it all. Then a man walks into police headquarters, attempting desperately to convince the squad that he’s dead. Explaining to him that he’s very much alive, they finally send him on his way…and then hours later, he turns up actually dead. And it’s on D. D. Warren to figure out how and why the dead man died…twice.

Ever since Angie Russo woke up from a near fatal run-in with a coffee maker, she's been able to talk to - and even worse, understand - one very spoiled tabby named Octavius. He says his owner was murdered and that she's the only one who can help bring the killer to justice. And, well, that's just the first of the wonderfully whacky mysteries they solve together. Add in a traumatized terrier witness and two murderous Sphynx cats who speak only in riddles, toss on your favorite deerstalker cap, and let's go sleuthing!

Ten excited guests arrive at the Westlake Estate, expecting a lavish retreat. They are the winners of a sweepstakes to "Live Like a Billionaire for a Week." But what was supposed to be a promising escape soon turns into a horrific nightmare. Within hours of arrival, the guests sit down for an extravagant dinner. When they pull their party poppers as instructed, a loud chorus of bangs resounds, followed by earsplitting screams as the guest seated at the head of the table bursts into flames and slumps to the floor.

Janie is the last person Hannah and Christopher Bauer want to see again. But Janie’s moved back to Clarksville. She’s no longer the frail child Hannah and Christopher adopted over eleven years ago. The child who destroyed their lives. Now Janie is out of juvenile detention—a beautiful, confident young adult—and publicly promoting her new tell-all memoir.

John Glover reads a selection of unabridged short stories, including "Gray Matter" from Stephen King's best-selling collection Night Shift...

New adventures of the iconic sleuth, an icon of detective fiction. Readers, listeners, investigators, and artists have come across Sherlock Holmes and his mythical stories of crime and adventure for generations. Now comes an outstanding anthology of never-before-seen short fiction stories featuring the much-loved powers of deduction and unerring quest for the truth - however improbable it might first appear. The Book of Extraordinary New Sherlock Holmes Stories brings together some of the most renowned American and British crime and thriller authors of today.

Before he was the Nowhere Man, Evan Smoak was a highly trained government operative known to a few as Orphan X. But he now lives by hiding in plain sight, keeping his head down and his eyes clear. So when a local summer intern for a tabloid news site finds herself trailing an aggressive reporter into a crime zone, things go terribly awry. The only person who can help her is a man with the background and the skills of the Nowhere Man.

Keep Your Friends Close is the third story in Granelli's hard-hitting series of Mafia tales. Using the vibrant backdrop of Palermo, old characters reappear to continue the internecine struggles of the Tomasso Cruci Family, where double-dealing, treachery, and violent retribution seem the norm. Granelli also brings in a police element for the first time in the form of Carlo 'CC' Carpanini and his memorable sidekick Leo Bracchi. It seems they are up against insurmountable odds.

Discover six clean and fun best-selling cozy mysteries by Ava Zuma to enjoy! This audiobook includes: Makeup and Mayhem, Eyebrows and Evil Looks, New Nails and a Nasty Nightmare, Highlighters and Upheaval, Christmas Carols and Lipstick Perils, and Foundation and Temptations.

I didn’t think they’d dismantle the paranormal military with a wave of their bureaucratic magic wand, but they did. Everything I’d spent the previous 15 years of my life doing and being was ripped away from me in an instant, out of my reach—and now that the paranormal military’s gone, I’ve got nothing left to fight for.

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.

Roger Ferris is one of the CIA's soldiers in the war on terrorism. He has come out of Iraq with a shattered leg and an intense mission: to penetrate the network of a master terrorist known only as "Suleiman". Ferris' plan for getting inside Suleiman's tent is inspired by a masterpiece of British intelligence during World War II: he prepares a body of lies, literally the corpse of an imaginary CIA officer who appears to have accomplished the impossible by recruiting an agent within the enemy's ranks.

A New York City ex-cop with too many rules and a Spanish ex-spy with too few make the perfect bounty hunters to track down the world’s most wanted.

Jack and Maggie Harris are adrift on ravaged streets during the London Blitz. Their home is gone. They have nowhere to go and nothing left to lose. With only the memories of their greatest loss - the death of their child during a Christmas years before - Jack and Maggie settle in a seemingly deserted mansion for the night.

Join Annie Fuller, widowed boarding house owner, and Nate Dawson, local lawyer, as they investigate their first crimes in the first four books in the romantic and suspenseful Victorian San Francisco Mystery series: Maids of Misfortune, Uneasy Spirits, Bloody Lessons, and Deadly Proof. Annie Fuller is a young widow who supplements her income by giving financial and domestic advice as Madam Sibyl. When one of Madam Sibyl’s clients dies in mysterious circumstances, Annie goes undercover as a domestic servant to find out the truth about his death.

For decades, Marge has been spying on her neighbors Doris and Bob, reporting every sordid thing she sees to her husband, Harold. Flamboyant Doris and boring Bob are an odd couple, but as Marge watches their comings and goings, she starts to wonder if there’s more than meets the eye. Is Doris’s latest hobby—flamenco dancing, of all things—an attempt to spice things up, or is there something more sinister going on in the house across the street? Soon enough, Marge learns that digging into her suspicions means digging herself into a very deep hole.

Mack Holland might as well have the word “former” tattooed across his chest. He’s a former Green Beret. A former CIA Ground Branch Team Leader. A former husband. A former father. At least his dog, Blue, still appreciates him. But when a black SUV with government plates crunches down the gravel driveway of his remote backwoods home, Mack’s quiet, post-operator life is shattered. The G-man who steps out brings news Mack never expected to hear: his daughter Lindsey, officially dead and buried for five years, is alive. And she’s being held hostage in Syria.

Once a privileged heiress, Annabelle Ross is now struggling to hold her home and her life together through the devastation of the War Between the States. But with a forced marriage and a desolate future on the horizon, her hopes are beginning to dwindle. When she discovers an encrypted note on a dying soldier, she seizes the opportunity to use it to deliver a message of her own. Instead, she’s mistaken for a spy and captured. Can she unravel a conspiracy before her secrets cost a man his life? The complete trilogy of exciting Accidental Spy novels.

A modern short story collection featuring the great detective.