Short Thrillers

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. In his tenth appearance, he takes a job as an advertising copywriter to expose a ruthless killer. Victor Dean fell to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, but no one seems to be sorry. Until an inquisitive new copywriter joins the firm and asks some awkward questions....

Martin Lorensen is a twenty-three-year-old counselor for disturbed teenagers. He’s bright, compassionate, attractive, and outgoing. He’s also—and this is the most interesting thing—not dead. Martin has improbably survived not one but two deadly disasters that claimed dozens of lives. The kid is riding one hell of a lucky streak. Two federal agents think there is something darker at play. Now that they’ve arranged to interview Martin, they want answers. Martin is ready to share everything he knows. One thing is for certain: when it comes to escaping death, luck doesn’t figure into it at all.

Is the perfect murder ever possible? Find out in this collection of stories where plenty of mysterious and strange crimes occur. Featuring some of the best writers of this genre, from Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins to Edgar Allen Poe and Ruskin Bond, these stories will keep the listener hooked as they try to guess the motives, alibis and identity of the murderer. Baffling and exciting, this book is for those who enjoy pitting brains against some of the most accomplished writers of mystery stories.

In the enchanting world of hospitality, Drake, Adam, Talia, and Jason are some of the most influential in their profession. Success and luxury come with a price when deception is used as a stepping stone. How well does one really know their coworkers? Invited to attend a Friday meeting in the executive suite, the lights go out and the doors bolt shut. Trapped with no way to escape, the team has to encounter cryptic clues about their past indiscretions and darkest secrets. They either confess to their colleagues or pay the ultimate price.

When a young actress is found murdered under chillingly mysterious circumstances in his mansion, celebrity medium Jacob Shepherd's carefully crafted act begins to crumble. Desperate and out of his depth, he turns to Michael Merlyn, a renowned psychic and exorcist with real powers—and secrets of his own. Alongside Merlyn’s paranormal detectives, Kate and Victoria, they dive into a labyrinth of dark energies and hidden truths within the house. As they peel back the layers, they uncover a force that threatens not just their lives but the very fabric of reality itself.

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.

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horse-drawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. Brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

Shelby works as a dog walker in northern California, and she’s just finished up her bi-weekly trip to the park with a husky named Pluto. When she brings him back to his house, she finds his owner - Todd Burke, a well-known local businessman and founder of an organic supplements company - lying on the bathroom floor, dead. A detective arrives on the scene. As she interviews Shelby, the body is inspected by a medical examiner, and more cops search Todd’s home, it becomes clear that the victim’s life was less picture-perfect than his clean-cut persona might lead you to believe.

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.

Mystic Caravan is full of monster hunters, moonlighting as entertainers. Led by Poet Parker, the motley group of mayhem seekers is always looking for—and finding—trouble. Despite the death and destruction constantly raining down on them, the show must go on...and Mystic Caravan is always up for the challenge. Join them as they travel from city to city, taking on formidable foe after formidable foe. They’ll never stop, and neither will the enemies coming after them.

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.

A decade ago, fourteen-year-old Suzanne Lombard, the daughter of Benjamin Lombard - then a senator, now a powerful vice president running for the presidency - disappeared in the most sensational missing-person case in the nation's history. Still unsolved, the mystery remains a national obsession. For legendary hacker and marine Gibson Vaughn, the case is personal - Suzanne Lombard had been like a sister to him.

Sam Hunter is a bit of an animal. He's a former Twin Cities cop who lost his badge because of excessive force. Abusive husbands, child molesters, and other lowlifes wound up looking like they'd been mauled by a dog...or a wolf. Now Sam's a low-rent PI in Philadelphia. He takes the kinds of cases no one wants. His clients are usually on the fringes of society. The kind who are prey for all manner of predators - human and otherwise.

A modern short story collection featuring the great detective.

This bundle includes three romantic suspense novels: Betrayal, Deadly Isle, and Code of Ethics.

Two women have gone missing, and LAPD detective Harry Bosch has a strong suspicion that an avid fisherman named Denninger is the culprit. Bosch needs something stronger than a suspicion to bring Denninger in, but all he has are a handful of photos - prior mug shots and pictures of Denninger posing with his prize fish. It's not much to go on, and Bosch is running out of time, which is why he calls in FBI agent Rachel Walling. What she sees in these photos could blow his case wide open.

From former Green Beret and USA Today best-selling author Jason Kasper comes a gripping set of thrillers.

First published in an 1839 edition of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the story of the declining physical and psychological health of the residents of the House of Usher - and the way in which the house itself reflects that. Gothic in theme and style, the story is an exemplar of Poe's philosophy of composition, which dictates that literary works should be short and methodological and have a unity of effect wherein all the elements of the story are related and relevant.

Alden McCausland and his mother are what they call “accident rich”; thanks to an unexpected life-insurance policy payout and a winning Big Maine Millions scratcher, Alden and his Ma are able to spend their summers down by Lake Abenaki, idly drinking their days away in a three-room cabin with an old dock and a lick of a beach. Across the lake, they can see what “real rich” looks like: the Massimo family’s Twelve Pines Camp, the big white mansion with guest house and tennis court that Alden’s Ma says is paid for by “ill-gotten gains” courtesy of Massimo Construction.

In a forgotten Cold War bunker, a cold-blooded arms dealer counts his cash and watches from a distance as cities collapse into violence. Pledged to stop him is a man without a past, guided by a teenage boy through the tunnels under the corrupted port city. With each stealthy move toward their target, the path ahead grows ever darker.