Mystery Thriller Collection

New York Times best-selling author Linda Castillo is known as a “master of the genre” (People) for her pulse-pounding mystery series set in Amish country. Now, together for the first time in print, A Simple Murder features six original short stories starring whip-smart chief of police, Kate Burkholder.

Fifteen years ago, 8-year-old Ethan Jones watched a stranger bury something in the mining ruins of the Rhyolite Desert, Nevada. Even at his young age, he knew what he’d just seen was important.

When a $3 million Bulgari diamond necklace disappears into thin air during a locked photo shoot, the suspects are all on set. There’s the magazine’s new editor-in-chief with much to prove, the tarnished photographer she’s indebted to, the fallen star who swooped in when her young rival got sick, and the grandiose stylist. But it’s the lowly assistant who must solve the case—and find the gems before taking the blame.

Frankie is a caregiver facing a meager and thankless future. Until her elderly charge dies—but not before revealing his secret. It’s buried in Death Valley. Enough money to change Frankie’s life forever. All she has to do is follow his instructions and stay on the path, and her prayers will be answered. It’s everything Frankie hopes for. But nothing like she expects.

In his introduction, guest editor S. A. Cosby observes that writing short stories is “a special skill that combines brevity with wit and cleverness and the hint of the existential malaise that imbues crime fiction with its gravitas.” The stories in this collection overflow with gravitas in the most unexpected ways: a cryptic note left on a windshield, a murder for hire meets a game of Mouse Trap, a swipe right on a dating app goes horribly wrong.

Ricki Wagner and her husband, Brock, are thrilled when they get an invite to her boss’s stunning lake house, never imagining the weekend of horror that awaits them. When a woman’s body washes up on the sandy shore, they soon find themselves tangled up in a dark crime with many threads.

It’s bad enough that its venom-dripping chelicerae can slice through flesh like warm butter. Worse? It’s right there under the bunk. It’s a fact now. To make it through the night, the children must obey the rules: don’t get out of bed, stay out of the shadows, and don’t wake the beast. But as the threats multiply, so do the rules of survival. And with the safety of dawn still hours away, the fun is just beginning.

The victims are the most popular girls in school, each murdered and arranged in a grim fairy-tale tableau. To find the killer, rookie detective Callum Pederson has gone undercover where the Princes hold court. He’s found enough secrets among the bros to bring them in for questioning - but he could very well get lost in the games the Princes play.

In the heart of gangland London, Reverend Digby Rolf witnesses a chilling prison execution, the condemned man's life ending with a snap. But it's not just a man's death that haunts him; it's the divine message he sees in its aftermath: "Vengeance is mine sayeth the lord." Driven by an unwavering faith and a sense of duty, Digby embarks on a perilous quest for justice, despite the dangers lurking in the shadows of the late 1950s underworld. As he delves deeper into the murky depths of London's criminal society, Digby must confront his own naivety and navigate a treacherous landscape where ...

Mrs. Packington felt alone, helpless, and utterly forlorn. But her life changed when she stumbled upon an advertisement in the Times that read: "Are you happy? If not, consult Mr. Parker Pyne." Equally adept at putting together the fragments of a murder mystery or the pieces of a broken marriage, Mr. Parker Pyne is possibly the world's most unconventional private investigator. Armed with just his intuitive knowledge of human nature, he is an Englishman abroad, traveling the globe to solve and undo crime and misdemeanor.

Actor and sex worker Nats is experienced at putting on a show. However, her new gig supplying intimate whispers for growgirls takes her to a place darker and lonelier than she could have ever imagined. The lab-grown dolls can respond to pleasure or pain; their synthetic heads contain only the simplest AI to prevent any pesky robo sex doll uprisings. But just because growgirls don’t have a brain, doesn’t mean they don’t have a voice...

The Detective Novels Collection is a stunning collection of 13 classic detective novels and stories, read by four award-winning narrators. Included here are stories by some of the greatest crime writers in history, including Agatha Christie; Arthur Conan Doyle; AA Milne; Edgar Allan Poe; Dorothy L. Sayers; Josephine Tey; and Freeman Crofts Wills.

For the past twenty years, Lee Child has been one of the bestselling authors in the world, thanks to the popularity of his iconic and instantly recognizable hero Jack Reacher. But even at the height of Reacher's fame, Child's short story writing was not confined to the series; throughout the course of his career, he published tales about a range of characters on both sides of the law, including assassins, a body guard, CIA and FBI agents, gangsters, and more.

In the third installment of his acclaimed anthology series, master of crime fiction Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology of short stories based on masterpieces of American art. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you'll find Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus.

Sgt. Reggie King wakes up from a battlefield injury to find himself physically intact. But the hospital staff insist he’s not fit to return to duty. As part of his psychological recovery, they introduce him to a game. Armored Souls is a tank game on steroids. Giant walking mechs called juggernauts engage in interplanetary wars as noble houses and mercenary factions wage endless battles for supremacy. For the pilots of these juggernauts, the rewards are glory, cash, and XP.

Omega Sector, an interagency task force, is made up of the country’s most elite agents. In these four classic tales by USA TODAY bestselling author Janie Crouch, they’ll be challenged like never before!

The Golden Age of Radio had incredible detective shows that kept Americans glued to their radio sets. Families gathered around their living room radios to hear their favorite Hollywood stars voicing fiction’s most famous gumshoes. This collection includes Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade searching for the Black Bird in The Maltese Falcon in a radio adaptation that co-starred the original film cast of Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.

Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson ( Pulp Fiction, Star Wars films), fresh off the success of his uproarious, Audie-nominated performance of the mock children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep, delivers a swaggering, darkly-humored rendering of Chester Himes’ classic first novel.

The iconic duo find themselves swiftly drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events: an otherworldly stone whose touch inflicts fatal bleeding; a hellish potion to unlock a person’s devilish psyche; a fiendishly clever, almost undetectable method of revenge and many more—including a brand-new Cthulhu Casebooks story.

A collection of the year’s best mystery and suspense short fiction selected by #1 New York Times bestselling author and guest editor Jess Walter and series editor Steph Cha.