Short Thrillers

Even a city that boasts three hundred days of sunshine a year has its sudden, often violent storms—and writers have long taken advantage of that metaphor. Renowned authors Katherine Anne Porter, Jack Kerouac, Stephen King, Rex Burns, Robert Greer, Michael Connelly, and Kali Fajardo-Anstine—among many others—have brilliantly portrayed this picturesque but often merciless city. Today, Denver is home to a thriving literary scene, with writers of all stripes finding inspiration in its people and streets. The authors and stories featured in Denver Noir are no exception....

“Homecoming” takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham’s unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he’s not in the courtroom. He’s called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again—until now. Now Mack is back, and he’s leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned.

An outlaw private eye meets a woman who has a horribly-blackened eye and offers to do something about it. Unlicensed outlaw private eye Joe Beck stops off at bar in Trinidad, Colorado. Inside, he meets a woman named Brandi, a brunette bombshell who's working behind the bar. She's slim, tanned and attractive. She has it all. Except, her left eye is horribly blackened, something she admits to having been caused by the hand of an abusive ex-boyfriend. Beck offers to deal with the guy, no questions asked in a move that sees him sucked into the dealings of a couple of crooked cops and a local ...

What if Edgar Allan Poe's masterpieces happened in our world? Step into five chilling retellings that transport Poe's most terrifying tales into the 21st century, where ancient horrors take on frightening new forms. From sterile hospital corridors to corporate boardrooms, from contaminated mansions to digital graveyards, these stories prove that the human capacity for guilt, obsession, and revenge transcends any era. "The Monitor" - A night-shift nurse's paranoia spirals into murder, where the tell-tale heart becomes the relentless beeping of medical equipment, and guilt echoes through ...

In "The Cursed Village," Father Thomas O'Neill, a seasoned exorcist dispatched by the Vatican, arrives in the sleepy village of Western Thane, Hampshire. His presence disrupts the quaint tranquillity as villagers, wary and fearful, whisper rumours of a sinister force lurking nearby. A priest has been found dead, and Thomas is tasked with investigating the dark undercurrents of the community, which include missing young women and strange occurrences connected to the ominous Manor House on the hill. Amidst polite nods and forced smiles, Thomas senses the deep-seated fear that permeates the ...

Raised off the grid by survivalists, Mercy Kilpatrick believed in no greater safeguard than the backwoods of Oregon. Unforgiven by her father for abandoning the fold for the FBI, Mercy still holds to her past convictions. They’re in her blood. They’re her secrets—as guarded as her private survival retreat hidden away in the foothills. In a cabin near her hideaway, Mercy encounters a young girl whose grandmother is dying from multiple knife wounds.

Some things are best left alone…. When Charlie gets a text inviting her to play a game, her first instinct is to delete it. It’s obviously a scam because nothing in life comes for free. But her world is painfully dull, her future uninspiring. Surely, just looking can’t hurt… right? The rational side of her warns against it. Don’t fall for it. No one hands out opportunities like this. And yet, she goes ahead and clicks ‘yes’ and in that instant, her life veers off course in ways she never could have imagined. And once she’s in, there’s no way out...

'Fans of L J Ross and Elly Griffiths will love this.' A sinister and systematic crime – the hunt for a meticulous and elusive villain. Isobel McKenzie, a psychotherapist, discovers the body of a young woman along the banks of the Shannon. She has been raped and strangled. As the news spreads, other rape victims contact Isobel confidentially. Their stories are so shockingly similar that it is clear a serial rapist is at large. Garda Detective Inspector Eoin Ryan and Sergeant Alanna Finnegan are on the case. As Isobel shares the details of the unreported rapes with them, they realise that a...

Sticking their noses where they are most definitely not wanted. Despairing of their humans, these pets take it upon themselves to solve the cases they see as only cats and dogs can. Whether they sniff out the clues or fool the criminals into thinking they are harmless pets to be ignored, Rex, Amber, Buster, and more enjoy escapades a plenty in this fun collection of short stories. Grab your copy and be ready for the fur to fly! Includes: Police Dog - Day One Amber's Bust The Little Lost Dachshund Hell Cat Hell Hounds The Clown, the Witch, and the Cat The Case of the Missing Pasty

***A new beachside thriller novella written by bestselling author Vanessa Jones*** When Emma flees her past to Safety Cove, she settles in to finish writing her breakthrough book. She grows fond of the small beachside town, getting to know the neighbours, even the distressing ones that threaten her to leave. But when she finds something unspeakable in the shed, she realises that there is more than just heavy morning mist that hangs over the small town. There are secrets that, once uncovered, are dangerous to know. This is a short story/novella. Praise for The Tens - a gripping thriller ...

Reader's Favorite-5-Star Rating Perched above the ocean’s cliffs, Thornewood Manor stands as a decaying relic of the past. The manor casts a shadow of dread over the quaint town nestled at its feet and the name Jefferson Thornewood hangs in the air like a dark cloud, a reminder of the evil that once resided there. Each night, an eerie mist descends from the cliffs, slithering through the cobblestone streets like ghostly serpents, seeking an unwary soul. The Legend of Thornewood Manor beckons with a chilling promise—a tale that will send shivers down your spine and awaken the darkest ...

Sarah Booth just wants the perfect Christmas holiday. Even with the dissolution of her engagement, she refuses to lose her Christmas spirit. But when Theodora Prince - an ex classmate and current Pastor's wife - comes calling with a year-old case and cash upfront, Sarah Booth must find the truth about the boys who ruined last year's Christmas pageant in time to stop them from doing it again.

It's autumn in Painter's Mill, and 14-year-old Katie Burkholder has been tasked with picking apples in Zimmerman's Orchard with her brother. It's just another day filled with chores - until her best friend, Mattie, arrives to help. Somehow boredom transforms into fun and games whenever the girls are together. The innocent fun comes to an end when Billy Marquardt and his gang of friends interrupt. Katie is no prude, but she knows better than to associate with the older English boys.

★★★★★ "Keeps you thinking and on your toes! But watch out, the twist will get you every time!" - Reader review ___ Five riveting stories that remind us that fate can change our lives in a heartbeat! These intriguing tales encompass every evil deed from revenge to cold-blooded murder to human trafficking and yet never assume you know how they will end until you read the last page. Things are not always what they appear to be, especially when fate intervenes. Atonement: A serial killer is terrorizing the Dallas-Fort Worth area and wherever he strikes he leaves a strange memento ...

Acclaimed author Richard Prosch won the Western Writers of America Spur Award in 2016 for his short fiction. This volume of stories from old Wyoming and Nebraska brings the best of his westerns together under one cover for the first time. A wrecked wagon spells trouble for a Niobrara river man; the leader of a roadhouse band needs a tough man for a dangerous job; a gambler bets on the outcome of a western showdown; a pulp fiction character haunts a woman's memory of her husband. Old gunnies, laconic lawmen, John Coburn, Whit Branham, and a host of villains bring the action, humor and irony ...

The best-selling Extinction Cycle series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith first introduced listeners to a world ravaged by an engineered virus that turned men into monsters. Humanity's only hope was not a cure, but another bioweapon. When deployed it killed 90 percent of the infected, but the remaining 10 percent transformed into even more terrifying creatures called Variants. Here's a collection of Extinction Cycle short stories that explore the human spirit and the fight for survival in the face of overwhelming odds from some of the leading voices in the post-apocalyptic genre.

Christmas in Paris… What could possibly go wrong? Ava Sext, an amateur sleuth and transplanted Londoner who sells books from an outdoor stand that overlooks the Seine, has vowed that this Christmas will be the best Christmas ever. It has to be! It's her first Christmas in Paris as a Parisian. But when someone pushes a book dealer in the Seine at a Christmas Fair leaving him between life and death, Ava, with the help of her fellow bookseller, Henri DeAth, a former notary in a country where notaries are a powerful caste, sets out to solve the crime before someone else dies. A little Paris ...

A collection of horror/thriller stories with surprise endings to chill you and thrill you to the bone. The nightmares include: The CONDOM IN THE COFFIN: A wife finds a condom in the lining of her husband's coffin which triggers suspicions someone at the mortuary is a necrophiliac. THE LOOKER: Kidnappers abduct an unusually beautiful woman to harvest her organs for half a million dollars. THE BEAST OF SPOOKY HOLLOW: A freelance writer goes to his college reunion and decides a legendary beast devouring the locals there may be his ticket to a Pulitzer. THE ALIEN: A man struck by lightning ...

Nothing is as it seems. A man wakes in a dilapidated apartment, hooked to a strange machine, with a dead body in the next room—and no memory of who he is or how he got there. As he unravels the mystery of his identity over the next forty-eight hours, he discovers he may be one of the most influential figures of the twenty-first century. But the deeper he digs, the more he realizes that some truths are better left untouched.

A short ghost story from the best-selling author of Abbot's Keep. A photographer reluctantly agrees to take images of an abandoned manor house on the Dorset clifftops only to find the building is not completely empty.