Short Stories Mystery Thrillers

The first of Maurice Leblanc's collections about his devilish, debonair rogue, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar presents eight dazzling short stories that display some of Lupin's greatest thefts and escapes. Lupin robs from within prison, leaves its walls with ease, steals priceless diamonds from the rich and outwits the greatest detective of all: Sherlock Holmes. Witty, cunning, and taunting, Lupin is a genius on the wrong side of the law, although his noble code of ethics and Robin-Hood-like ways often see him use his talents for good.

Best-selling author Robert Cormier's suspenseful and masterfully told novel takes bold steps into some of the most difficult topical territory ever conceived for young adult fiction.

There's something out there in the dark. There's always something watching. There's always something reaching for you. Always. And sometimes there?s someone you can call. Someone you can hire. Someone who knows these dark streets and back alleys. Someone who knows how things work in this part of town. Private eyes who are often as dark as the things they hunt. Investigators who know how to look in the shadows for the things that go bump. Good guys but not always nice guys. Hardboiled Horror collects fifteen original tales of noir mystery shot through with elements of horror and the supernatural.

In Lisa Gardner’s first-ever short story following 13 best-selling novels, "The 7th Month" takes listeners between the books and into a day in the life of Boston Detective D. D. Warren.

In her seventh month of pregnancy, D.D. should be taking it easy. Instead, she accepts a small consulting role on the set of a serial-killer film shooting in Boston. D.D. figures she’ll be useful to someone for at least one night, serving as a police expert and making a little extra money in the bargain. It seems like a simple task—until the previous film consultant, a former Boston cop, is found beaten to death.

From former Green Beret and USA Today best-selling author Jason Kasper comes a gripping set of thrillers.

If it knocks four times -- don’t answer. When Liam inherits his late uncle’s remote hunting cabin deep in the Ridge 9 backwoods, he expects quiet isolation — not claw marks on trees, not torn-up trail cams, and certainly not a journal filled with paranoid ramblings about "four knocks" in the night. But the deeper Liam digs into his uncle’s final days, the more disturbing the entries become — detailing a presence that circles the cabin, leaves no tracks, and never comes in… unless you open the door. Now snowed in, with no way to contact the outside world, Liam finds himself alone...

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.

INSTA-LOVE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN . . . ANNABELLE WINTERS STYLE! We were two nameless strangers sharing a smoke on a dark highway. Though as I walked back to my truck I wish we’d shared more. Still, she's married to some fancy big-city surgeon, and so I tell myself that walking away is the right decision. But now fate crosses our paths again . . . And this time I don't walk away. This time I make a decision: To heck with keeping promises, I decide . . . I'm gonna keep her instead. If you've read my other novella series, you know how crazy my stuff can get. So get ready for drama, madness,...

Suddenly I’m neck-deep in a world that I’ve never really believed in, no matter what my crazy great-aunt Mabel used to say. Seriously, I have more than enough drama in my life already, without adding an irresistibly mesmerizing nightclub owner to the mix. My boss - a man with a penchant for trouble and the echo of tragedy lurking behind his dark gaze. My new coworkers appear to be universally insane. My deadbeat ex is in trouble with a capital “T”, and if history is any indication, he’ll do his best to drag my son and me right along with him.

I am sixteen years old, and my teacher believes I might be the most powerful supernatural in the mortal realm. It’s quite a burden. Not least because I must fight so hard to avoid using magic to silence the bitches at school. Do you wonder what would happen if I let my control slip? Today is the day I find out.

Nikki and the grannies have learned there’s no such thing as quiet golden years. Who’d want that anyway? When things are quiet at the retirement home, they go looking for danger, and find it everywhere. Even at the bowling alley. They will have to uncover devious plots, decipher codes, and take a road trip to one of America’s favorite vacation destinations to make sure the criminals get their just desserts. Stories Included: Living on a Spare, Crack the Code, and Road Trip.

Jonas Pickett, solicitor and commissioner of oaths, leaves London to set up a practice in a genteel Sussex resort. This collection of nine inter-linked stories tell the stories of his clients: from a retired Admiral to the queen of the gypsies.

When the world's most horrible editor turns up dead, investigator Jon Scieszka has his work cut out for him. The suspect list is long. Very long. Think eighty-three-famous-YA-authors long, including Libba Bray, David Levithan, John Green, Lemony Snicket, Lauren Myracle - you get the picture. They've all got alibis, collected in this very anthology. But the question is ... Who done it? A 2013 AudioFile Editors' Pick.

What really happened to the girl who walked into the woods and vanished forever? It’s a never-forgotten mystery that clings like a shadow in a short story about dark memories and inescapable fears.

Death and deception: Appearances are often deceiving and that is the underlying premise in this collection of short crime fiction. In "Live Free or Die" naive 21-year-old Emmy falls hard for 31-year-old Jack, an efficiency expert from New Hampshire who is not all what he seems. In "Murder in the Marsh" cyclist Carrie Anne Camack discovers more than she bargained for in the fertile farmlands of Ontario's Holland Marsh. In the final story, "The Cycopaths", a triathlon team's open-water swim training in Collingwood, Ontario, has deadly consequences.

Heart-pounding Fear. Chilling Anguish. Heartbreak. Priceless Love. The Ultimate Sacrifice. All in less than a minute. Sometimes precious moments is all there is. Between one heartbeat and the next, Susa is plunged into a devastating nightmare, wounded and broken, yet desperate hope filled her heart and soul. Nothing in her life had ever prepared her for this. Adam Manning arrives at a crime scene and quickly sees that not everything is as it seems. Unknown to the town’s small police force, neither is he. If you enjoy clean mystery romance and inspirational women’s fiction filled with ...

With her stalker captured, antiques dealer Amanda Crosby can finally sleep at night. Having worked hard to put the nightmare behind her, Amanda has vowed to never be a victim again. But when her business partner, Derek England, is found with a bullet through the back of his head just hours after she left an incriminating message on his voice mail, Amanda finds herself in danger of becoming a victim of another sort.

It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.

In the parish of St. Bruno, sex is easy, corruption festers, and double-dealing is a way of life. Rene Shade is an uncompromising detective swimming in a sea of filth. As Shade takes on hit men, porn kings, a gang of ex-cons, and the ghosts of his own checkered past, Woodrell's three seminal novels pit long-entrenched criminals against the hard line of the law, brother against brother, and two vastly different sons against a long-absent father.

Robert A. Heinlein's The Long Watch is a powerful and emotional science fiction short story that explores themes of duty, sacrifice, and the moral courage of an individual standing against tyranny. First published in 1949, this story is part of Heinlein's Future History series and remains one of his most poignant and enduring tales. The story follows Lieutenant John Dahlquist, a young officer in the Space Patrol, who finds himself in a critical moral dilemma.