Great Mysteries

In the spring of 1666 everyone's first reaction to a sudden death at the palace of White Hall is that the plague has struck, but the killing of Thomas Chiffinch was by design, not disease. Chiffinch was holder of two influential posts - Keeper of the Closet and Keeper of the Jewels - and rival courtiers have made no secret of their wish to succeed to those offices. To Thomas Chaloner, ordered to undertake the investigation, such avarice gives a whole host of suspects an ample motive for murder.

Prepare to meet the most seductively female and the most shockingly fatal of femmes fatales, brought to you by 17 of today's finest authors of mystery and suspense fiction. Award-winning editor Otto Penzler presents a collection of short and sizzling masterpieces of kisses and kiss-offs, gams and gats, published for the first time anywhere.

Australia has always been a land of mysteries. Some are ancient, some are historical and many continue to perplex us today—and will probably continue to do so tomorrow. More often than most of us would like to think, things simply vanish and people disappear without explanation, leaving a trail of heartbreak across generations. Australia also has its fair share of buried loot and fabulous riches gone missing—somewhere. Master storyteller Graham Seal has gathered mysteries from around Australia.

★★★★★ "Edward's really outdid herself with this one. Each book just gets better and better." - Reader review ___ Can the words of a Psychic influence your thoughts? Your Choices? Your Destiny? What if a Psychic could see your future? Nikki is a Hollywood entertainment lawyer who thinks she's found the green-eyed man. Her soul mate; foreseen by the Psychic when she was 21. But has she? Sometimes all it takes is time... Book 3 will be hard to put down! Order your copy now and join her on her journey!

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and someone is eating the flowers in Nate the Great's garden. A green tortoise is slowly, slowly stepping across the lawn, and Nate is slowly, slowly following him. Where does Nate's green guest truly belong? It may take all of Nate the Great's patience and sharp eyesight to find out slowly.

Underneath the steps leading down to Eric's basement is a hidden storage place. It's dusty and old, nothing special at all. But when Eric, Julie, and Neal all huddle inside the gray room together, something unbelievable happens. A glittering light and then a rainbow-colored staircase appear. As the kids take their very first step down into the mysterious land of Droon, they know that only magic and adventure await them!

Nate the Great has been asked to help find his friend's parrot. It isn't just any parrot. And time is of the essence—the parrot and others are scheduled to perform at the upcoming 4th of July picnic. Nate the Great, along with his dog Sludge, are on the trail of clues and confident they can solve the case before the big day!

Please Note: This story is also part of book 10 of The Hunter Legacy series, The Long Road to Gaia. Thirteen doesn't like humans. The last thing he wants is to be assigned a mission to babysit them. Given a choice, he'd happily let them blow themselves up, after he saved all the cats first. Exactly how humans could ever have anything to do with galaxy wide consequences is completely beyond his ability to understand. When asked to perform an intervention, there was always freewill to choose not to. But in this case, does he really have a choice? This is a 5000 word short story, set in The ...

Betrayal cuts deeper than a blade… and this time, it’s personal. In the gripping finale to the DI Zennor trilogy, the Cornwall-based detective and her team face their most perilous challenge yet. When a daring operation unravels a sinister network with ties both local and international, DI Verity Zennor is thrust into a deadly game where trust is a luxury she can no longer afford. As the case takes a devastating twist, Zennor discovers a wicked betrayal that threatens not just her investigation—but the very core of her team. Meanwhile, DS Sam Cartwright is forced to confront a fear ...

Esmeralda came up with the perfect name for Rosamond's pet concert. But she lost the pink paper where she wrote the word - and she can't remember what it is. Nate the Great and his dog, Sludge, take on the unusual case, and they are soon braving pink papers and barking, oinking, and talking pets. Will Nate and Sludge find the word in time for the show to go on?

Drugged, manacled, condemned to a dank cell in the depths of London's infamous Newgate prison, the world's greatest literary detective awaits execution by a vengeful crew of formidable enemies. Escape is impossible; death, a certainty. But not for Sherlock Holmes, who, in a stunning display of intellect and derring-do, will elude his hangman's noose and live to fiddle, spy, and ratiocinate another day.

Otto Penzler presents a collection of 19 unsolved mystery stories by a number of noted authors, including Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, and Mark Twain, where the ending is left up to the listener to determine.

Rosamond is visiting Scandinavia when she loses something. She wants Nate the Great to find it, even though he doesn't know what she lost, what country she lost it in, or when she lost it. And he's thousands of miles away. But if Nate doesn't take the case, Rosamond plans to hire the King of Sweden. Nate doesn't want Rosamond to bother the poor king. And he does want the chance to solve his first-ever international case. Can Nate find whatever Rosamond lost without leaving his neighborhood?

Almost everything has been invoked to account for Trump's victory and the rise of alt-right, from job loss to racism to demography - everything, that is, except popular culture. In The Sky Is Falling best-selling cultural critic, Peter Biskind, dives headlong into two decades of popular culture - from superhero franchises such as the X-Men and the Avengers and series like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones to thrillers like Homeland and 24 - and emerges to argue that these shows are saturated with the values that are currently animating our extreme politics.

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.

Where did the coronavirus outbreak originate, and was the pandemic predicted? Did aliens help to build the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, and what were they trying to tell us? Is the food industry colluding to make us addicted to sugar? Prepare yourself for some startling revelations on these topics and many more in this updated and expanded compendium of the world’s scariest and strangest conspiracy theories.

Nate the Great and his trusty dog, Sludge, have a tricky case to solve. Nate's friend Rosamond has started a fortune-telling business, but her money box is missing. Sludge and Nate visit Claude, who helped Rosamond set up her business, and Finley, who collects boxes for his rat. They can't seem to help! It looks like the only way to clean up this case is to get down and dirty in the dumps!

Eternity is unimaginably other. It is so other that we can't even begin to wrap our minds around it, let alone understand it. It remains the ultimate mystery, the intractable unknown and unknowable. However, now and then, we are able to catch glimpses, or the hints of glimpses, of it. Often these epiphanies go unrecognized. Sometimes they are only suspected to have taken place. Now and then, they are recognized for what they are, if only intuitively.

Immerse yourself in the mysteries that exist "Beyond the Great Wall" with this riveting new eBook. Each chapter takes readers on an enchanting exploration of China's stunning borderlands, unveiling their unseen complexities and intriguing history. Starting with an intriguing overview of the enigmatic borderlands, the journey takes you through the chronicles of bygone dynasties and the intriguing significance of The Wall that extends beyond its stone edifice. Experience the cultural variations across the margins, and traverse through the historic Jade Gate. The narrative effectively paints a...

★★★★★ "A fast-paced humorous but serious book!" - Reader review ★★★★★ " Let's just say fruit salad, especially mango and bananas, I will never think of these the same again! Love Love Loved!" - Reader review ___ Life can change in the blink of an eye! Chasing Butterflies picks up where Can't Fight Fate leaves us, with Nikki searching for her elusive green-eyed man and her best friend Siobhan, heading for the biggest mistake of her life. It seems the odds are already stacked against Nikki finding her man. Nikki is an intelligent and articulate Entertainment Lawyer, she's ...