Detective Stories Anthology

Summertime - as the temperature rises, so does the potential for evil. From Cornwall to the French Riviera, whether against a background of Delphic temples or English country houses, Agatha Christie’s most famous characters solve even the most devilish of conundrums as the summer sun beats down. Pull up a deckchair and enjoy plot twists and red herrings galore from the best-selling fiction writer of all time.

Twenty-three of Shamus Award-winning author Bill Pronzini's stories, all of which display his versatility, his clean, crisp narrative style, and his keen awareness of detail. These tales, including three that feature his well-known series chararacter, the "Nameless Detective", run the gamut from psychological suspense ("Strangers in the Fog") to satire ("A Craving for Originality") to Western gothic ("The Hanging Man" and "His Name was Legion").

A fictional priest and amateur detective named Father Brown had a face once described “as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling”. This made him appear somewhat clumsy and naïve, but that didn’t take into account his keen understanding of human nature and exceptional intuition. Stories include: “The Blue Cross”, “The Secret Garden”, “The Queer Feet”, “The Flying Stars”, “The Invisible Man”, and more.

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....

This audiobook contains the first three adventures of A. E. W Mason’s enigmatic and mercurial Sûreté detective, Inspector Hanaud—a key inspiration for Agatha Christie’s celebrated sleuth Hercule Poirot. First, Hanaud investigates the murder of wealthy Mme Dauvray at the fashionable French resort of Aix-les-Bains. Then, during a visit to London, Hanaud unravels a case of theft and murder following a costume party at a prestigious hotel.

Follow Sherlock Holmes on four mysteries that his best friend and Chronicler, Dr. Watson, has decided to publish after some years. In the first story, an irritating and unsuccessful suit salesman plummets to his death from one of the highest cliffs in England...only he didn't jump. The second story recounts a chemistry professor found shot to death in his laboratory after having dabbled in alchemy and seemingly turning lead into gold. The third story finds a wealthy businessman bludgeoned to death in his locked and guarded hotel room.

This third collection of vintage detective stories includes tales by authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, R. Austin Freeman, and Emile Gaborioux.

Here for the first time are three never-before-published mysteries by Edmund Crispin, Ngaio Marsh and Leo Bruce. Together with a newly unearthed short story by Ethel Lina White that inspired Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, and a complete short novel by Christianna Brand, this diverse mix of tales by some of the world’s most popular classic crime writers contains something for everyone.

Sherlock Holmes' superb deductive abilities are truly tested in this adventure when a client asks the Great Detective to help him discover what is frightening his new wife. What seems to Watson to be just a child's drawing becomes the key to solving the mystery.

This second collection of pastiches of the immortal Sherlock Holmes offers 11 adventures of Solar Pons, who has been called by Vincent Starrett "a clever impersonator, with a twinkle in his eye, which tells us that he knows he is not Sherlock Holmes, and knows that we know it, but that he hopes we will like him anyway for what he symbolizes." Once again in the London of years ago "the game is afoot."

A young banker is suspected of stealing one million dollars in Liberty Bonds on a transatlantic journey to New York, and appeals to Hercule Poirot to clear his name. Poirot learns the identities of the three people who hold keys to the locked trunk, but it won't be as easy to identify the true thief.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson return in six further adventures which display the great detective's brilliance once more. In these adventures set across the span of the duo's lives at 221b Baker Street, Holmes and Watson travel from the highest realms of society to the lowest dens of criminality across London in pursuit of the solution to a host of baffling mysteries.

Mr. Davenheim, a wealthy financier, leaves his home to mail a letter, then fails to return. The story fills the newspapers and intrigues Hercule Poirot, who challenges Inspector Japp with the claim that he can solve the case before the police, and without leaving his flat.

Few characters have the loyal readership of Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective." The 14 stories in this collection span his entire 35-year life on the printed page. They include "It's a Lousy World," where Nameless proves that a friend did not commit the crime he was accused of; "Dead Man's Slough" and "The Ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch," which take him out of San Francisco into the hinterlands; and "Souls Burning," where he tries to help an old friend make one last try at setting things right.

Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, with the help of his friend newspaper reporter Hutchison Hatch, solves a variety of mysteries using cold, hard logic. No matter how twisted the trail of clues or how clever the perpetrator, Professor Van Dusen, aptly dubbed “The Thinking Machine”, reminds us that “two and two make four, not some times, but all the time”.

An American starlet with a mysterious diamond, a suicide that may be more than it appears, an impossibly cheap flat, a locked room murder, a million dollar robbery, an ancient pharaoh’s curse, a precious stolen jewel, a political abduction, a disappeared banker, a phone call form a dying man, and a missing will … Who could possibly solve such varied, gruesome, and dastardly crimes? None other than Agatha Christie’s beloved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot!

This is a story from The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Volume I collection. These six cases are among the last undertaken by Sherlock Holmes before he retired to the Sussex downs. However, the problems facing the sleuth are as diverse and challenging as ever.

Aristide Valentin, head of the Paris Police, is on the trail of the ingenious criminal and master of disguise Flambeau. Valentin suspects that the Flambeau is going to London to attend a conference of clergymen to steal the precious religious articles on display there. While traveling to London, Valentin encounters a Catholic priest, and he overhears Father Brown tell a lady that he is carrying the "Blue Cross", a sterling silver cross covered in precious blue stones. Valentin warns Father Brown that it is dangerous to tell anyone that he is carrying an object of immense value.

An engrossing collection of detective stories featuring all the great classic sleuths, including Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Max Carrados, J. G. Reeder, and C. Auguste Dupin. 1.The Tea-Leaf by Edgar Jepson & Robert Eustace 2.The Queer Feet by G. K. Chesterton 3.The Curious Circumstances of the Two Left Shoes by Ernest Bramah 4. The Club of One-Eyed Men by Arthur Somers Roche 5.Diamond Cut Diamond by F. Britten Austin 6.The Game Played in the Dark by Ernest Bramah

At Mr. and Mrs. Unkerton's party in Greenway's House, Mr. Satterthwaite learns of a haunted window: No matter how many times it is replaced, it always contains the image of a gentleman in a plumed hat. When gunshots are heard, Satterthwaite finds that two of the guests have been shot dead, which is shortly followed by a sighting of the gentleman in the newly-replaced windowpane. Can Mr. Quin shed light on the mystery?