Showing titles in Anthologies & Short Stories

Alden McCausland and his mother are what they call “accident rich”; thanks to an unexpected life-insurance policy payout and a winning Big Maine Millions scratcher, Alden and his Ma are able to spend their summers down by Lake Abenaki, idly drinking their days away in a three-room cabin with an old dock and a lick of a beach. Across the lake, they can see what “real rich” looks like: the Massimo family’s Twelve Pines Camp, the big white mansion with guest house and tennis court that Alden’s Ma says is paid for by “ill-gotten gains” courtesy of Massimo Construction.

Sara Linton, medical examiner in the small town of Heartsdale, GA, is called out to an apparent suicide on the local college campus. The mutilated body provides little in the way of clues - and the college authorities are eager to avoid a scandal - but for Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, things don't add up. Two more suspicious suicides follow, and a young woman is brutally attacked. For Sara, the violence strikes far too close to home.

Of the real-life serial killers whose gruesome acts have been splashed across headlines, none has reached the mythical status of Jack the Ripper. In the Ripper's wake, terror swept through the streets of London's East End in the fall of 1888. As quickly as his nightmarish reign came, Saucy Jack vanished without a trace - leaving future generations to speculate upon his identity and whereabouts. He was diabolical in a way never seen before - a killer who taunted the police, came up with his own legendary monikers, and, ultimately, got away with his heinous crimes.

Once he was called the Sphinx, a man so inscrutable that neither his adversaries nor fellow intelligence operatives could predict his next move. Now a contract agent with a secret mission, Jonathan Wyatt has gone rogue. For eight years he's been scheming to kill two Federal agents, whom he blames for the loss of his career. But as Wyatt prepares for a final confrontation, he makes a discovery that stretches back to the horrors of World War II, to Martin Bormann and Eva Braun and to a fortune in lost gold.

In a daring and chilling debut, Brad Thor draws us into a sinister labyrinth of political intrigue and international terrorism, serving up an explosive cocktail of unrelenting action and a shattering climax, as one man is pushed to the edge.

On the snow-covered slopes of Utah, the unthinkable has just become a nightmarish reality. Thirty Secret Service agents have been viciously executed, and the vacationing president of the United States has been kidnapped.

Featuring North America's foremost thriller authors, Thriller is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are 32 of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous, to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.

In this classic collection of four novellas, the grand master takes you on irresistible journeys into the far reaches of horror, heartache and hope. 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' is the story of two men convicted of murder - one guilty, one innocent - who form the perfect partnership as they dream up a scheme to escape from prison. In 'Apt Pupil' a golden schoolboy entices an old man with a past to join in a dreadful union.

Everyone’s favorite snarky, dangerous, idealistic, relentless covert operative is back, and this time he’s brought friends. Joe Ledger: Unstoppable presents original short stories about Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences by some of New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry’s "friends in the industry." Buckle up for powerful, exciting, and nail-biting adventures.

An imprisoned man is certain that his supposed murder victim is very much alive... a female driver is pursued relentlessly by a menacing figure in another vehicle... a young artist gets the biggest break of her career... a restless beauty manages the perfect birthday celebration... an escaped Iraqi on Saddam Hussein's death list pays an involuntary visit to his homeland... How will they react? How would you? "Twelve Red Herrings" is the third collection of irresistible short stories from master storyteller, Jeffrey Archer.

In this tense, riveting mind game, New York Times bestselling novelist Nelson DeMille delivers a suspenseful short story in the tradition of his classic military novels The General's Daughter and Word of Honor. A band of soldiers in its last month of service in Vietnam goes out on a patrol through enemy territory with a female sniper in its path. Recounting the mission in shattering and sometimes gruesome detail, DeMille creates a concise masterpiece of moody suspense.

Go on vacation with Allison Brennan’s Lucy Kincaid, where she saves a man from drowning, only to discover he is in far greater danger on land. Meet Roxanne St. Claire’s “bullet catcher” - bodyguard Donovan Rush - who may have met his match in the sexually charged “Diamond Drop.” Debut author William Simon shows us what happens when the president's granddaughter is kidnapped. And Lee Child’s pitch-perfect “I Heard a Romantic Story” puts a whole new spin on Love Is Murder.

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

From Jeffery Deaver's tale of international terrorism to Lisa Jackson's dysfunctional family in the California wine country to Ridley Pearson's horrifying serial killer, this collection has something for everyone. Twenty-three best-selling and hot new authors in the genre have submitted original stories to make up this unforgettable blockbuster.

A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore.

In his first collection of short fiction, New York Times best-selling author John Connolly offers a selection of dark, daring, and utterly haunting tales. Here are lost lovers and missing children, predatory demons, and vengeful ghosts.

An alarming telephone call, in which the phrases “it’s life and death” and “the table with the yellow irises” are whispered, causes Hercule Poirot to rush to the luxuriant restaurant Jardin des Cygnes, desperate to stop an impending murder and find the person behind the voice on the phone. After bumping into an old acquaintance, he is invited to join a dinner party in full swing. But, just as the dancing and champagne are overflowing, a morbid announcement is made and the lights go out.

Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified - but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London Hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman?

The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper's Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door.

When a heart attack sends Penn's father, Tom Cage, to the ER, Tom begs that his son be brought to his side to hear a dying declaration. But when Penn arrives, Tom denies ever making the request - keeping his secrets for another day. The emergency hurls Penn back to a chilling case in Houston, where he worked in a DA's office known as the "death factory", which sent more killers to death row than any other in America.

Edited by number-one New York Times best-selling author David Baldacci and including stories by Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, and more, this one-of-a-kind anthology pulls together the most-beloved characters from the best and most popular thriller series today. Worlds collide! In an unprecedented collaboration, 23 of the world’s best-selling and most critically acclaimed thriller writers have paired their series characters - such as Harry Bosch, Jack Reacher, and Lincoln Rhyme - in an 11-story anthology curated by the International Thriller Writers (ITW).