Classic Thrillers Mystery

One by one the lighted windows went dark. The silhouette of the dead man could still be seen through the frosted glass like a Chinese shadow puppet. A taxi pulled up. It wasn't the public prosecutor yet. A young woman crossed the courtyard with hurried steps, leaving a whiff of perfume in her wake. Summoned to the dimly-lit Place des Vosges one night, where he sees shadowy figures at apartment windows, Maigret uncovers a tragic story of desperate lives, unhappy families, addiction and a terrible, fatal greed.

The first English publication of Georges Simenon's compelling novel about summer escape and elusive obsessions. 'The island itself. Its throbbing heat as if in a bell jar under the sun, the scorpion in his son's bed, the deafening sound of cicadas.' During his first holiday on the island of Porquerolles, Dr Mahé caught a glimpse of something irresistible. As the memory continues to haunt him, he falls prey to a delusion that may offer an escape from his conventional existence - or may destroy him.

He needed to get out of his office, soak up the atmosphere and discover different worlds with each new investigation. He needed the cafés and bars where he so often ended up waiting, at the counter, drinking a beer or a calvados depending on the circumstances. He needed to do battle patiently in his office with a suspect who refused to talk and sometimes, after hours and hours, he'd obtain a dramatic confession. In Simenon's final novel featuring Inspector Maigret, the famous detective reaches a pivotal moment in his career.

The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her 18th birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand.

A new translation, by David Bellos, of this chilling novel, set on the Belgian border. "She wasn't an ordinary supplicant. She didn't lower her eyes. There was nothing humble about her bearing. She spoke frankly, looking straight ahead, as if to claim what was rightfully hers. 'If you don't agree to look at our case, my parents and I will be lost, and it will be the most hateful legal error..." Maigret is asked to the windswept, rainy border town of Givet by a young woman desperate to clear her family of murder.

One morning the residents of an English estate, Styles, are horrified to find the lady of the manor in the throes of fatal strychnine poisoning. They seek the help of Poirot, a refugee who is staying in a nearby village after fleeing Belgium during World War I. On the day of her death, Mrs. Inglethorp was overheard arguing with an unknown man and became so upset that she altered her will, but no one can find a copy of it and a murderer is on the loose.

In this gripping work of historical fiction, Endore's werewolf, an outcast named Bertrand Caillet, travels across pre-Revolutionary France seeking to calm the beast within. Stunning in its sexual frankness and eerie, fog-enshrouded visions, this audiobook was decidedly influential for the generations of horror and science fiction authors who came afterward.

Miss Cornelia Van Gorder has left her New York City home for a vacation in an isolated country mansion with her beautiful young niece, neurotic maid, pompous butler and a mysterious but genteel young man, only to find herself the victim of a elusive master criminal, the Bat.

In 1985, Kat McCann was six years old when renowned Austrian detective Alik Lisser solved her mother’s murder. And unfortunately proved Kat’s father as the culprit. Ten years later Kat is still obsessed with the heroic criminologist. She’s also addicted to the bestselling novels inspired by Alik’s ingenious deductions—penned by the grande dame of whodunits, who’s a bit of a mystery herself. Kat has devoured them all. Even the one based on her father’s crime.

Blair is one step closer to finally getting her own wand and becoming a real witch-in-training. The only person standing in her way is the notoriously grumpy wand-maker wizard. One small problem: he's just hired her to find him a new assistant, and the job is cursed. With every possible employee turning into a rodent, it's up to Blair to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Ten years ago, Mary Morstan’s father, an officer in an Indian regiment, vanished. Four years later, elegant pearls began to arrive, six in total, and now she holds an invitation to meet her mysterious anonymous benefactor. As Miss Morstan shares this peculiar tale with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, she urges the detectives to accompany her. Her only clues to her father’s disappearance: a map of a fortress with the names of four strangers and an assertion that she’s been dreadfully wronged.

Big-game hunter Sanger Rainsford has washed ashore on isolated Ship-Trap Island in the Caribbean Sea. On the island he finds the palatial château of General Zaroff and his hungry hounds. There, Rainsford becomes party to a twisted sport. Zaroff hunts too. And his preferred game is human. The trapped and terrified Rainsford is given a three-hour advantage to disappear into the jungle. If he can survive for three days, he will be set free. Beyond that, there are no rules. It’s Rainsford’s need to survive versus Zaroff’s desire to kill. Time to play.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie. It was written in the middle of the First World War in 1916. Styles was Christie's first published novel. It introduced Hercule Poirot, Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp, and Arthur Hastings. Poirot, a Belgian refugee of the Great War, is settling in England near the home of Emily Inglethorp, who helped him to his new life. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery.

Albert Platt is a rotten man. Bred in the rough parts of Brooklyn, he made his name as a killer and has built a fortune from gambling, loan sharking, and the other pastimes of a standard thug. His latest gambit? Buying banks, robbing them, and collecting the insurance. He's a hard man, and no one ever stood in his way until he brushed up against Eddie Manso. Manso is no ordinary veteran.

Francis Pettigrew travels to Exmoor for a holiday with his wife - an area in which as a young boy he was traumatized by coming across a dead body on the moor. In an attempt to exorcise this trauma, Pettigrew walks across the moor to the place where the incident occurred - only to find another dead body. Moreover, when he returns to the scene with the police, the body is gone. Did he really see a body, or is it a hallucination conjured up by his return to the scene of the crime that has haunted him since childhood?

The attempted suicide of a countess and the death of a billionaire in the same luxury Paris hotel send Maigret to the Riviera and then to Switzerland, as he searches for the truth amid the glittering world of the super rich. Eyes half closed, head tilted against the back of his seat, he seemed not to be thinking, as the plane flew over a thick carpet of bright clouds. In reality, he was making an effort to bring names and shadowy figures to life, names and figures that even this morning had been as unknown to him as the inhabitants of another planet.

First published in 1911, The Innocence of Father Brown contains stories involving one of the greatest characters in the history of detective fiction: Father Brown. He is a Roman Catholic priest who has an uncanny insight into human evil. Rather than the large serial villains in, for example, Sherlock Holmes stories, the mysteries Father Brown solved were more local murders by small-town crooks, narrowing the suspect list down to those in the area of the crime.

When Maigret's .45 revolver is stolen from his home, he becomes embroiled in a murder in which the gun may have played a deadly role. Maigret is the victim of a burglary in which the .45 revolver he had received as a gift from the FBI is stolen. That evening Maigret attends a dinner where François Lagrange, an acquaintance of Maigret's friend, is expected but fails to appear due to ill health. Following his instincts, Maigret decides to investigate Lagrange's absence and uncovers a body stowed in a trunk....

A young woman named Lulu, who has a history of brushes with the law and once lived on the streets of the 18th arrondissement, is found murdered in Paris. Maigret is called to the scene and soon learns that her boyfriend, a musician, has gone into hiding upon reading the news of her death. And when the inspector learns that the young victim was pregnant, he begins to suspect the case might be more sinister than he imagined.

Carl Kolchak was just your average reporter until the day he put two and two together and came up with evil. A reluctant paranormal investigator, Kolchak couldn't stop tripping over the unusual even if he wanted to. And for all of his efforts of seeking the truth... unemployment and ridicule have followed him like the plague. Someone, or something, is tearing people up into little pieces in small town West Virginia.