Classic Fiction

A sparkling return to the Golden Age of Crime Fiction, where even the most fiendish of mysteries can be unlocked by a keen eye and a sharp mind... 1938, London. Ambitious lawyer Edmund Ibbs has got his teeth into the case of a lifetime – defending the young woman accused of shooting her husband in the infamous ‘Ferris Wheel Murder’...

I should be very much happier if she were dead. Edward Powell lives with his Aunt Mildred in the Welsh town of Lywll. His aunt thinks Lywll is an idyllic place to live, but Edward loathes the countryside — and thinks the company even worse. In fact, Edward has decided to murder his aunt. A darkly humorous depiction of fraught...

After battling for justice, at great personal risk, in his first recorded case, Sergeant Caleb Cluff made a swift return to duty in The Methods of Sergeant Cluff. The story opens one wet and windy night, with the discovery of a young woman's corpse, lying face down on the cobblestones of a passageway in the Yorkshire town of Gunnarshaw. The...

Tokyo, 1869. It is the dawn of the Meiji era in Japan, but the scars of the bloody recent civil war are yet to heal. The new regime struggles to keep the peace as old scores are settled and dangerous new ideas flood into the country from the West. A new police force promises to bring order to this land...

The detective's role is simple: to catch the culprit. Yet behind each casual observation lies a learned mind, trained on finding the key to the mystery. Crimes, whatever their form, are often best solved through deliberations of logic—preferably amid complicated gadgetry and a pile of hefty scientific volumes. The detectives in this collection are masters of scientific deduction, whether they...

Four men were due to fly to Dublin. When disaster struck and the plane went down over the Irish Sea, only three of them were on board. With the identities of the flyers scattered to the winds, the police turn to the patchy account of the Wade family, whose memory of their past few days must hold the key to...

From the author of the bestselling Follet Valley cosy crime series - over 200,000 copies sold in all formats. Supported by a major publicity and marketing campaign, Ian often appears on national TV/radio programmes such as BBC2's House of Games, Mastermind, and BBC R2's The Sara Cox Show, among others.

Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted...

As the thick, autumnal fog chokes the capital, within the fire-lit lounge of London's notorious Brimstone Club a bizarre tale is being spun for Inspector Bencolin and his friend Jeff Marle. A member of the club has been sent a model of a tiny gallows, and the word is that the folkloric hangman Jack Ketch has been stalking the streets...

From the Queen of Crime, all of her spookiest and most macabre stories collected in one volume, including her earliest published story, 'The Wife of the Kenite', which is exclusive to this collection. ‘From behind the curtains there still sounded the terrible high long-drawn scream – such a scream as Raoul had never heard. It died away with a horrible...

Love at first sight turns into newlywed bliss for former librarian Aurora Teagarden - until violence cuts the honeymoon short... Roe has never been happier than she's been since she met her fiancé, wealthy businessman Martin Bartell. Despite their differences in age and background, he seems to know exactly what she wants - like the Julius House. Roe has always...

The classic literal-metaphorical journey – Guardian A classic meditation on artistic creation and the quest for spiritual transcendence from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Siddhartha In the aftermath of the Great War, a band of artists embarks on a journey traversing space and time. Each is on a different quest, but all are united in a vow of secrecy. Years...

Based on a true story, The Jew’s Beech centres on two brutal murders in rural Westphalia – the first of a local forester and the second of a Jewish moneylender near a beech tree – and the impact these events have on the life of Friedrich Mergel, a local herdsman with a turbulent family history. A prototype of the murder...

With their courageous and engaging critique of Communism in the 1950s, these critically acclaimed Slovak classics demask one of the founding myths of modern Slovakia. The Hours and the Minutes was first published in Bratislava in 1956, the year of Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech," in which the Soviet leader formally acknowledged Stalin's tyranny and opened the way for political reform...

Dr James Earle and his wife live in comfortable seclusion near the Hog's Back, a ridge in the North Downs in the beautiful Surrey countryside. When Dr Earle disappears from his cottage, Inspector French is called in to investigate. At first, he suspects a simple domestic intrigue and begins to uncover a web of romantic entanglements beneath the couple's peaceful...

A fascinating and witty collection of stories, giving great insight into sixteenth-century France. In the early 1500s, five men and five women find themselves trapped by floods and compelled to take refuge in an abbey high in the Pyrenees. When told they must wait days for a bridge to be repaired, they are inspired—by recalling Boccaccio's Decameron—to pass the time...

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Gentleman Burglar by Sam Siciliano transports readers to a thrilling quest alongside the legendary detective. Sherlock Holmes and his cousin, Vernier, have been hired by the Baron of Creuse to find the legendary lost treasure of the kings of France. Trekking from La Belle Époque Paris to a chateau in the rural...

A brand-new Sherlock Holmes mystery from acclaimed Sherlockian author David Stuart Davies, featuring the return of the sinister Moriarty gang... When Professor James Moriarty plunged over the Reichenbach Falls, the world believed that Sherlock Holmes was also dead. Three years later, Holmes has returned, but so, too, has a deadly threat. With Moriarty's criminal empire still very much alive, Holmes...

Through the double clamour of Big Ben and the shrill sound of the bell rang a revolver shot. A financier is found shot in the House of Commons. Suspecting foul play, Robert West, a parliamentary private secretary, takes on the role of amateur sleuth. Used to turning a blind eye to covert dealings, West must now uncover the shocking secret...

Half fairy tale and half historical account of a revolution that never was, Owen King's The Curator is full of sly humour, sensuality, and strangeness - Holly Black From Sunday Times bestselling author Owen King comes a Dickensian fantasy of illusion and charm where cats are revered as religious figures, thieves are noble, scholars are revolutionaries, and conjurers the most...

The purpose, the illusion, the spirit of a waxworks. It is an atmosphere of death. It is soundless and motionless... Do you see? Last night, Mademoiselle Duchene was seen heading into the Gallery of Horrors at the Musee Augustin waxworks, alive. Today, she was found in the Seine, murdered. The museum's proprietor, long perturbed by the unnatural vitality of his...

Never, even in his most optimistic moments, had he visualised a scene of this nature - himself in one arm-chair, a police officer in another, and between them - a mystery. The Reverend Dodd, vicar of the quiet Cornish village of Boscawen, spends his evenings reading detective stories by the fireside; heaven forbid that the shadow of any real crime...

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in 1887's A Study in Scarlet, a true icon of literature was born. Since then, their humble address at 221B Baker Street has become almost as famous as the great detective himself, with the incredible popularity of Sherlock Holmes's adventures never wavering over the last 130...

A complete collection of Oscar Wilde's dazzling fairytales. Celebrated as the writer of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde is equally beloved for his fairy tales, written 'partly for children and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy'. With warmth, tenderness and quiet wit, these fables have...

[Belloc Lowndes] brings to the making of a mystery a literary sense and an imagination that puts life into the tale and into the readers. The Observer An enigmatic young woman named Laura Dousland stands on trial for murder, accused of poisoning her elderly husband Fordish. It seems clear that the poison was delivered in a flask of Chianti with...

Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, twenty-nine pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on their long road, their host suggests that they regale each other with stories, with the teller of the best tale set to earn a free supper. The pilgrims correspond to all sections of medieval society, from the crusading knight to the...

The text is accompanied by a detailed introduction, a pronunciation and explanation key for the novel's main characters, and greatly revised and expanded explanatory annotations. Contexts presents a wealth of background and source materials relating to The Brothers Karamazov, to Dostoevsky's own experiences, to current events, and to observations on a changing society. Included are the correspondence of influential literary...

A sinister case of deadly poisoned chocolates from Sodbury Cross's high street shop haunts the group of friends and relatives assembled at Bellegarde, among the orchards of 'peach-fancier' Marcus Chesney. To prove a point about how the sweets could have been poisoned under the nose of the shopkeeper, Chesney stages an elaborate memory game to test whether any of his...

A successful writer and a B-movie director seem like the perfect match in the Hollywood Hills. With him working to produce her novel for an upcoming film, the pair's recent marriage isn't the only way that they're connected. When the husband is found murdered on the wife's birthday, using a method of poisoning described in one of her books, Victoria...

Based on the popular Netflix series! In the early 20th century, esteemed writer Maurice Leblanc created Arsène Lupin, a French Sherlock Holmes-type who became known as the gentleman thief. Lupin's exploits, in pursuit of the rich, have been documented in more than twenty stories and books, as well as in film. In January 2021, Netflix released a major hit in...

Chekhov was without doubt one of the greatest observers of human nature in all its untidy complexity. His short stories, written throughout his life and newly translated for this essential collection, are exquisite masterpieces in miniature. Here are tales offering a glimpse of beauty, the memory of a mistaken kiss, daydreams of adultery, a lifetime of marital neglect, the frailty...

The 1939 Arsenal side is firing on all cylinders and celebrating a string of victories. They appear unstoppable, but the Trojans—a side of amateurs who are on a winning streak of their own—may be about to silence the Gunners. Moments into the second half, the whistle blows, but not for a goal or penalty. One of the Trojans has collapsed...

A classic collection of mystery stories: With skillful plotting laced with tongue-in-cheek humour, Allingham never ceases to intrigue and surprise (Daily Mail). This volume offers eighteen delightful mysteries from the Queen of Crime that will baffle the most ingenious of armchair detectives—and even, at times, the imperturbable sleuth Albert Campion himself. Enjoy one of England's great golden-era writers at her...

A strange encounter with a little girl named Claudia and a dead toad sparks elderly detective fiction fan Rachel Murdock's obsessive curiosity, and she winds up renting the house next door just to see how things play out. But soon after she and her cat Samantha move in, Rachel realises they've landed right in the middle of a deadly love...

LARGE PRINT EDITION. This edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes contains twelve short stories that introduce the reader to the iconic detective and his sidekick, Dr. Watson. Sherlock Holmes is a mysterious person. Extremely observant, highly intelligent, and yet emotionally unstable, Holmes' reputation as a detective is unparalleled. Beyond his proclivity for forensic science, Sherlock Holmes is a gifted...

Discover the first adventures of the most iconic detective of all time. This quintessential collection includes many of the famous cases that made the legendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction's most popular creations. Set against the foggy backdrop of London and the English countryside, each story unravels an exciting new mystery, from mistaken identity and ominous omens to counterfeit currency...

A fine, exclusive edition of one of literature’s most beloved stories. Featuring an intricate laser-cut jacket with foil stamping, this stunning, giftable first edition is one of just 10,000 copies ever to be printed! In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a thirteen-year-old boy, Huck, is in search of adventure on the beautiful shores of the Mississippi River before the Civil...

On a cold winter's afternoon, Alberta Mansbridge waits at a table set with teacups for eight, musing over her guests. The ex-jailbird Barry, the nephew and his ghastly new flibbertijibbet of a wife, the Italian playboy, the old friend with whom she had so recently fallen out... Alberta returns upstairs to get herself ready. When the guests arrive, the door...

A rollicking tale of the 1970s Detroit criminal underworld from legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard. Swag follows 'The Ten Golden Rules for Successful Armed Robbery'. If rigidly adhered to, these rules will catapult two trainee robbers—Frank and Stick—into Detroit's criminal elite. But for how long can they maintain the Rules' austere discipline as the lurid, fun temptations pile up?

Following a mysterious explosion, the offices of Excelsior Joinery Company are no more; the three directors are killed, and the peace of a quiet town in Surrey lies in ruins. When the supposed cause of an ignited gas leak is dismissed and the presence of dynamite is revealed, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is summoned to the scene. Beneath the...

Then I felt his warm hand grow cold, it was as if he had been reminded of death. He wasn't looking at me any more, but obliquely, across the restaurant. I turned round. Sarah has been receiving threatening anonymous letters, seemingly from a former lover. Just one day after revealing this information to her co-worker Nancy, Sarah is found shot...

The death was an odd one, it was true; but there was after all no very clear reason to assume it was anything but natural. In the winter of 1942, England lies cold and dark in the wartime blackout. One bleak evening, Councillor Grayling steps off the 6.12 from Euston, carrying GBP120 in cash, and oblivious to the fate that...

Brilliant. The Times One of Upson's most evocative novels. Guardian September 1939: The worries of war follow Josephine Tey to Hollywood, where a different sort of battle is raging on the set of Hitchcock's Rebecca. Little does Josephine realise that the man she has befriended in Hollywood is the perpetrator of a shocking act of violence and is being sought...

1889. The First Terror. At a boys' prep school in the Kent marshes, a pupil is found drowned in a pond. Could this be the fulfilment of a witch's curse from four hundred years earlier? 1890. The Second Terror. A wealthy man dies of a heart attack at his London townhouse. Was he really frightened to death by ghosts? 1894....

March 1895. Hilary Term at Oxford. In the newly built extension to the University Galleries, Professor Quantock has put the finishing touches to a wondrous computational device which, he claims, is capable of analytical thought to rival that of the cleverest men alive. Indeed, his so-called Thinking Engine seems equal to Sherlock Holmes himself in its deductive powers. To prove...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Odin comes a brand new Sherlock Holmes mystery in which Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson must infiltrate a mysterious cult to save a woman's life. It is 1895, and Sherlock Holmes's new client is a High Court judge, whose free-spirited daughter has disappeared without a trace. Holmes and Watson...

A serene walking holiday in the Lake District becomes a far more sinister excursion for Dr Watson when disappearances and murders start occurring in the small town of Wermeholt. Local legends, rumours of large slithering reptiles, and spooked palaeontologists have the denizens paranoid and terrified. It is up to Watson and his inbound companion Sherlock Holmes to uncover the truth...

From the author of Sherlock Holmes & The Christmas Demon, another beautifully presented seasonal mystery. 1889. The First Terror. At a boys' prep school in the Kent marshes, a pupil is found drowned in a pond. Could this be the fulfilment of a witch's curse from four hundred years earlier? 1890. The Second Terror. A wealthy man dies of a...

Ted Lyte, an amateur thief, has chosen an isolated house by the coast for his first robbery. But Haven House is no ordinary country home. While hunting for silverware to steal, Ted stumbles upon a locked room containing seven dead bodies. Detective Inspector Kendall takes on the case with the help of passing yachtsman Thomas Hazeldean. The search for the...

"The detective story is a game between two players, the author... and the reader." - Ronald Knox From the squash court to the golf links, the football pitch to the swimming pool and the race course to the cricket square, no court, grounds, stadium or stand is safe from skullduggery. Entering the arena where sport clashes with crime, this spirited...

He could feel it in the blackness, a difference in atmosphere, a sense of evil, of things hidden. Amy Snowden, in middle age, has long since settled into a lonely life in the Yorkshire town of Gunnarshaw, until—to her neighbours' surprise—she suddenly marries a much younger man. Months later, Amy is found dead, apparently by her own hand, and her...

‘My friend Ellingham has persuaded me to reveal to the public the astounding features of the Reisby case. As a study in criminal aberration it is, he tells me, of particular interest, while in singularity of horror and in perversity of ingenious method it is probably unique.’ 1913. John Farringdale, with his cousin Eric Foster, visits the famous archaeologist Tolgen...

Scandalize My Name opens with a haunting image: Caroline stares out at the restless traffic, her mind plagued by the memory of Ivan Sweet's pale, cold face and the malevolent storm behind his dead brown eyes. On the eve of Elaine Southey's 21st birthday, Ivan Sweet is discovered dead in his basement flat in the Southeys' historic north London home....

THE NEW NOVEL FROM ONE OF THE UK'S FAVOURITE CRIME WRITERS WITH OVER 1.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD. THE NEW NOVEL FROM ONE OF THE UK'S FAVOURITE CRIME WRITERS WITH OVER 1.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD. Readers can't get enough of Geraldine Steel: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Cannot recommend this series enough' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'A cracking series!' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'The Geraldine Steel series just gets better and...

THE FIRST AURORA TEAGARDEN MYSTERY - NOW A HALLMARK MOVIES & MYSTERY ORIGINAL STARRING CANDACE CAMERON BURE! No. 1 New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris introduces a librarian whose bookish bent for murder gets her involved in a real-life killing spree... Lawrenceton, Georgia, may be a growing suburb of Atlanta, but it's still a small town...

Quick Curtain is a witty detective story, originally published in 1934. It is one among many books that enjoyed brief popularity during the "Golden Age of murder" between the two world wars but subsequently fell out of sight. The author, Alan Melville, was a successful playwright and man of the theatre, and he uses his knowledge of backstage life to...

The pride of high-ranking Mr Darcy and the prejudice of middle-class Elizabeth Bennet conduct an absorbing dance through the rigid social hierarchies of early-nineteenth-century England, with the passion of the two unlikely lovers growing as their union seems ever more improbable.

"Now tell us about your crime novel. Take my advice and don't try to be intellectual over it. What the public likes is blood." The Surrays and their five children form a prolific writing machine, with scores of treatises, reviews, and crime thrillers published under their family name. Following a rare convergence of the whole household at their Oxfordshire home,...

Powerful and impressive ... there is a fine inevitability in the plot structure which gives it true tragic quality - Dorothy L. Sayers Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith presents a captivating journey into the dark psychology of a murderer. Adrian Gray was born in May 1862 and met his death through violence, at the hands of one of...

Poppy Done to Death, the eighth book in bestselling author Charlaine Harris's compelling mystery series, features Aurora 'Roe' Teagarden, who must use all of her southern wiles to investigate a murder within her own family. Not just any woman in Lawrenceton, Georgia, gets to be a member of the Uppity Women Book Club. But Roe's stepsister-in-law, Poppy, has climbed her...

Three previously unpublished stories by the master of tense set-ups. These three stories—Picket Line, 'Chick Killer', and 'Ice Man'—show Elmore Leonard at his most terse and harsh, able to conjure up a sense of profound unease and injustice in just a few words. The main story Picket Line describes a tense stand-off between migrant workers in Texas, police, and labour...

When Chief Inspector Pel receives a letter from an old friend, it becomes a sign of all hell breaking loose. Two murders are committed and a suspicious robbery takes place. What is the connection between the letter, the robbery and the murder? An international plot begins to unravel and Pel is called in to pick up the pieces. Moody, sharp-tongued...

Chief Inspector Pel has been kidnapped. Or is he being held for ransom, traded for the release of prisoners, or has he perhaps been murdered? He is, in any event, missing. To make matters worse, the press report the escape of the notorious Poltergeist from a high-security prison. Just when things can't get more desperate, a fantastic robbery from the...

A murderer is identified by a team of oxen. A dead man rises from a watery grave to indict his killer. A phantom hearse gliding through Melbourne's slums foretells violent death. A seamstress turns detective to avenge her friend's homicide. A locked-tent mystery. Such are the themes of Mary Fortune's ingenious and dramatic crime stories. Between 1865 and 1910, she...

For fans of Cottonmouths by Kelly J. Ford comes Negative Girl—an evocative, moody, neo-noir thriller that explores obsession and people dying across America's forgotten spaces. Martin Wade lived hard in his youth, but unlike many of his former bandmates and roadie friends, he didn't die young. Instead, he hit the recovery path, cleaned up his life, and became a private...

The horror on the train, great though it may turn out to be, will not compare with the horror that exists here, in this house. On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid...

Mysterious and Horrific Stories is a collection of Gothic tales by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Although he is more widely known today for his novella Carmilla (1872), which influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and remains an important work of early vampire fiction, Le Fanu was also an influential figure in mid-nineteenth century Irish literature as a writer and editor for...

'Full of twists, the emphasis is on comedy . . . but the extraordinary Holmes can pull the heartstrings too.' THE TIMES The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts is a luxurious, clandestine college dedicated to the fine art of murder where earnest students study how best to "delete" their most deserving victim. Who hasn't wondered for a split second...

'So great ... it's criminal' - SAGA 'With Cecily Gayford in charge, we are on safe ground' - DAILY MAIL From beneath the beach umbrella, all might seem idyllic - children playing, sunbathers relaxing, ice slowly melting in a cocktail glass. But look a little closer, and all is not as it seems... In these classic crime stories of midsummer...

For most of us, a summer holiday is an opportunity to escape from it all: to lounge on warm sands or sip a cool drink in the shade of a city square. But, as the characters in this murderously good collection of classic crime stories discover to their cost... trouble has a nasty habit of finding you out. From a...

"I should imagine this was murder, too, because it would be very difficult to build yourself into a heap of sandbags and then die..." In the blackout conditions of a wintry London night, amateur sleuth Agnes Kinghof and a young air-raid warden have stumbled upon a corpse stowed in the walls of their street's bomb shelter. As the police begin...

Murder of a Lady is set in Duchlan Castle, a gloomy and forbidding place in the Scottish Highlands. Late one night, the body of Mary Gregor, sister of the laird of Duchlan, is discovered in the castle. She has been stabbed to death in her bedroom, which is locked from within and the windows are barred. The only tiny clue...

When Dr Raymond Ferens moves to a practice at Milham in the Moor in North Devon, he and his wife are enchanted with the beautiful hilltop village lying so close to moor and sky. At first, they see only its charm, but soon they begin to uncover its secrets - envy, hatred, and malice. Everyone says that Sister Monica, warden...

When two newlyweds discover that a corpse has been buried in the basement of their new home, a gruelling case begins to trace the identity of the victim. With all avenues of investigation approaching exhaustion, a tenuous piece of evidence offers a chance for Chief Inspector Moresby and leads him to the amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham, who has recently been...

Midwinter. As snow falls softly outside and frost sparkles on tree branches, it's time to curl up before a roaring fire, wrap your hands around a steaming mug of mulled wine, and forget your worries for now. But as the temperature drops outside, malice is sharpening its claws ... and murder walks abroad. In these classic stories of mystery and...

It's the middle of summer. On Cornish sea-fronts, happy children grip melting ice-creams. In the south of France, sunlight filters through leaves as families picnic in the shade. And in the fashionable resorts of the Mediterranean, the beautiful people sun themselves on picture-postcard beaches. And in those long, hot summer nights... murder walks abroad. Away from familiar surroundings, and as...

It's the height of summer. As the heat shimmers on the streets and ice cream melts onto sticky fingers, tempers begin to rise and old grudges surface. From Cornish beaches to the French Riviera, it's not just a holiday that's on people's minds ... it's murder. In these ten classic stories from writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Cyril Hare...

The murder of the gardener at Camden-sur-Mer is a break in routine for Angela Benbow and Caledonia Wingate's retirement community. For those far-from-over-the-hill senior sleuths, Angela Benbow and Caledonia Wingate, the murder of the gardener at posh Camden-sur-Mer retirement complex is a delightful break in their rather dull routine. Unfortunately, a bad-tempered police officer warns the ladies to stick to...

London, 1945. The capital is shrouded in the darkness of the blackout, and mystery abounds in the parks after dusk. During a stroll through Regent's Park, Bruce Mallaig witnesses two men acting suspiciously around a footbridge. In a matter of moments, one of them has been murdered; Mallaig's view of the assailant is but a brief glimpse of a ghastly...

As the nights draw in and the old year slips away, the haunting season begins. Twigs scrape at windowpanes in the darkness, mysterious footprints are found in the snow, and all sorts of mysteries, monsters, and nastiness are in the offing. Bringing together ten classic tales of mystery, murder, and mayhem from the greatest writers in the genre, Murder by...