Short Stories Crime Suspense

When acclaimed mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers first began compiling anthologies of the best crime stories in the 1920s and ’30s, the genre was in the flush of its first golden age. While it is hard to imagine today - after every possible mystery plot has been told, retold, subverted, and played straight again by hundreds of writers over nearly a century - in Sayers’s day there were still twists that had never been seen, and machinations of crime that would shock even jaded Jazz Age fans.

A judge’s first murder trial. A defense attorney in over his head. A prosecutor out for blood and glory. The accused, who is possibly innocent. And the killer, who may have just committed the perfect crime.

Exit Wounds is a thrilling anthology of crime stories written by masters of the genre, including Dean Koontz, Val McDermid, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Elly Griffiths, Dennis Lehane, Joe R. Lansdale, and others.

Many of the greatest Russian authors, including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Pushkin, produced crime and mystery fiction, a type of literature that was largely suppressed during the Soviet era because it did not glorify the state, but rather, gave significance to individual characters. With the fall of the Soviet Union, mystery writers have become some of the most successful novelists in Russia, and there is a renewed interest in, and appreciation of, the great crime classics of an earlier era. This volume is the first collection ever devoted entirely to Russian crime fiction.

Paige Barrett was living her dream as a journalist in New York City, racking up bylines as a staff writer at The Razor, a cutting-edge online magazine. But when she’s suddenly fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend, she finds herself back home in the quaint seaside town of Shoreham, Florida, waiting tables and living in her sister’s guesthouse. Restless and itching for something meaningful to occupy her time, she decides to launch a true-crime podcast about the death of Jessica Cady, a beloved teacher who died mysteriously 20 years earlier.

A master storyteller at his best - the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story. Magnificent, eerie, utterly compelling, these stories comprise one of King's finest gifts to his constant fan. "I made them especially for you," says King. "Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth."

Containing over 47 stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train - a bullet couldn't pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes.

Miss Marple: The Complete Story Collection gathers together in one magnificent volume all of Agatha Christie’s short stories featuring her beloved intrepid investigator, Miss Marple. It’s an unparalleled compendium of murder, mayhem, mystery, and detection that represents some of the finest short form fiction in the crime fiction field, and is an essential omnibus for Christie fans.

Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and...no qualms about a little murder. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only 18, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late 80s, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father's ancient armchair. It's a solitary existence, and she likes it that way.

This collection includes four book-centered mystery novellas from four masters of the craft: The Scroll, Reconciliation Day, The Compendium of Srem, and The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy.

The legendary writer Patricia Highsmith is best remembered today for her chilling psychological thrillers The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. A critically acclaimed, best-selling author in Europe, Highsmith has for too long been underappreciated in the United States. Eleven is Highsmith's first collection of short stories, an arresting group of dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability.

Five thrilling tales of mystery, mayhem, and murder from an exceptional quintet of Edgar, CWA Dagger, and National Book Award winners.

In the title story, a white aspiring professor is convinced she is being followed. No need to panic - she has a handgun stowed away in her purse, just in case. But when she turns to confront her black male shadow, the situation isn't what she expects. In "The Rescuer" a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral. But she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers.

Veronica Ruiz is on the run for the first time in her life—though certainly not the last. After being falsely accused of stealing money from her college sorority, she packs up and heads to her cousin Ramón's apartment, planning to change her name and rebuild start over away from backstabbing girls and university drama (and far, far away from her arrest warrant in Maryland). At the local bank on the first morning of her new life, it occurs to Vero that she'd be a better bank teller than most of the current employees.

Discover Dorothy L. Sayers' inimitable Golden Age detective in this complete collection of the complete Lord Peter Wimsey stories, together in one volume for the first time. Presented in chronological order, these short stories see Lord Peter Wimsey bringing his trademark wit and unique detection skills to all manner of mysteries.

First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond...then came the "suicide" that was murder...the mystery of the absurdly cheap flat...a suspicious death in a locked gun room...a million-dollar bond robbery...the curse of a pharaoh's tomb...a jewel robbery by the sea...the abduction of a prime minister...the disappearance of a banker...a phone call from a dying man...and finally, the mystery of the missing will. What links these fascinating cases? Only the brilliant deductive powers of Hercule Poirot!

Detective Ulf Varg from the Department of Sensitive Crimes is often called upon to investigate unusual matters. But rarely is he asked to conduct an inquiry on behalf of his own family. Is such a thing ethical? Adding to Ulf's moral discomfort is the fact that he does not exactly see eye to eye with his younger brother Bjorn - a leading player in one of Sweden's right-wing parties, the Moderate Extremists. Still, family is family, so Ulf finds himself working to uncover the mole leaking secrets to a rival party, the Extreme Moderates.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Never before in audio, these vintage stories are the darkest of the dark, and the best of the best.

Crime fiction fans old and new will delight in rediscovering these taut, character-rich, heart-stopping tales, now on audio for the first time.

In late summer of 1994, Jack Noble, a former All-American quarterback, is in the middle of the toughest event he's ever taken part in: marine corps recruit training. After eight weeks he's managed to make enemies of every drill instructor and every recruit in his platoon. Then on one particularly humid South Carolina day, an odd sequence of events changes everything. Contains an excerpt of Noble Intentions: Episode 1.

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.