The Golden Scorpion

Stephen Munro, a demobbed army officer, reconciles himself to taking a job as a footman to make ends meet. Employed at Wintringham Hall, the delightful but decaying Sussex country residence of the elderly Lady Susan Carey, his first task entails welcoming her eccentric guests to a weekend house-party, at which her bombastic nephew—who recognises Stephen from his former life—decides that an after-dinner séance would be more entertaining than bridge. Then Cicely disappears!

It's a rainy, uneventful evening in the Oddfellows' Arms until a man bursts into the pub, clearly unstable, and ranting about a body in Fennings' Mill. The police investigate and stumble upon a body-the face smeared with theatrical make-up and a false mustache pasted neatly over the lip. Once the national news descends, Inspector Faddiman calls in Inspector Littlejohn to help him uncover the dark, hidden secrets in this quiet, provincial town. Soon it becomes clear that a lot of people can't, and won't tell the truth.

When George Abbershaw is invited to Black Dudley Manor for the weekend, he has only one thing on his mind - proposing to Meggie Oliphant. Unfortunately for George, things don't quite go according to plan. A harmless game turns decidedly deadly and suspicions of murder take precedence over matrimony. Trapped in a remote country house with a murderer, George can see no way out. But Albert Campion can.

Father Brown is an eccentric priest with his own particular ways of dealing with crime. David Timson, having completed the whole of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon, a remarkable achievement, turns his hand to the genial but certainly not innocent priest! This collection contains a group of stories from the Innocence of Father Brown, told unabridged.

After her messy divorce, Angelina Bonaparte refuses to let any man hold her back. She’s even opened a private eye practice to help other victims of relationships gone sour. So when she crosses paths with a detective who believes a crime scene is no place for a woman, she sets out to change his mind.

D.I. Duncan McAdam is dispatched home to the Misty Isle. A body has been found buried in a remote location on the Waternish peninsula. Well-preserved in the peat, Isla Matheson—missing for the better part of two decades—is revealed to a shocked island community. A teenage runaway is dead...and no one is talking.

It had been a typical New Year's Eve party. But as midnight approaches, Mr. Satterthwaite - a keen observer of human nature - senses that the real drama of the evening is yet to unfold. And so it proves when a mysterious stranger knocks on the door. Who is this Mr. Quin? Mr. Satterthwaite's new friend is an enigma. He seems to appear and disappear almost like a trick of the light. In fact, the only consistent thing about him is that his presence is always an omen - sometimes good, but sometimes deadly....

Now available in one volume! The original Peyton Brooks mystery series box set! Get all eight of the popular Peyton Brooks' Mysteries in a single box set, including the prequel, Murder in the Painted Lady. The Peyton Brooks' Mystery series follows the career of San Francisco Homicide Detective Peyton Brooks and her partner Marco D'Angelo as they fight crime in the City by the Bay.

Cairo. December 1917. Following a tip-off from notorious spy Fredrick Fredricks, Fiona Figg and Kitty Lane of British Intelligence find themselves in the hustle and bustle of Egypt. But ancient mummies aren’t the only bodies buried in the tombs of Cairo. When a young French archeologist is found dead in a tomb in the desert with his head bashed in, and an undercover British agent goes missing, the threat moves closer to home. As they dig deeper, soon Fiona and Kitty uncover a treasure trove of suspects, including competing excavators, jealous husbands, secret lovers, and belligerent spies.

A week's holiday in a luxurious hotel is just what Scotland Yard's Superintendent Duncan Kincaid needs. But his vacation ends dramatically with the discovery of a dead body in the whirlpool bath. Despite a suspicious lack of cooperation from the local constabulary, Kincaid's keen sense of duty won't allow him to ignore the heinous crime, impelling him to send for his enthusiastic young assistant, Sergeant Gemma James. But the stakes are raised significantly when a second murder occurs....

Four in the morning, mid-December, and snow blankets St. Andrews School. Student Alex Gilbery and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in the ancient Pictish cemetery. The only suspects are the four young students stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later, police mount a cold case review. Among the unsolved murders they're examining is that of Rosie Duff. But someone else has his own idea of justice.

Here in one recording is every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally appearing in serial form, these famous stories are here presented in the order in which they were first published beginning in 1887. Included in this definitive, award-winning collection are four novels and 56 short stories, a total of 60 titles. The 56 short stories are aggregated into five named collections, just as they were originally published in book form.

First appearing in print in 1890, the character of Sherlock Holmes has now become synonymous worldwide with the concept of a super sleuth. His creator, Conan Doyle, imbued his detective hero with intellectual power, acute observational abilities, a penchant for deductive reasoning and a highly educated use of forensic skills. Indeed, Doyle created the first fictional private detective who used what we now recognize as modern scientific investigative techniques.

You are invited to a murder. That was how the invitations should have read when aged millionaire Hendrik Brass sent out his messages to six oddly assorted men and women who knew neither him nor each other. All arrived at the isolated Brass mansion, lured by the tantalizing promise of fabulous wealth. But from the moment the shining brass doors of the grotesquely constructed house swung shut behind them, they began to realize they had been enticed into playing parts in a monstrous joke - the joke of a twisted, brilliant mind…

Once, the Lamartine Hotel was a quiet refuge for New York’s stuffy fashionable set. But by the 1890s, fashion has moved uptown, and the lobby of the Lamartine has been overtaken by natty young sports, who pass their afternoons with billiards or shows of noisy derring-do. Their preferred damsel is Lila Williams, a delicate young telegraph operator whose shyness so charms them that they resolve to defend her against any ill-behaved characters. They are about to face their fiercest challenger, who rides in the gleaming armor of a millionaire.

Unexplained events are happening at Oxford these days. Several students have been attacked at night by some strange form of wild animal. It can scale walls with cat-like agility. Its arms are as thin and as strong as steel bands. And there is one student who conducts midnight studies in his room with certain Egyptian artifacts. The most significant of which is a 6'7" tall mummy.

Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; excitement essential. When Captain Hugh Drummond, DSO, MC placed that advertisement, he was looking for adventure. What he finds is an international plot headed by the greatest criminal mastermind in the world.

The never-before-told story behind the legend of Count Dracula! The story of the Count’s greatest love, Mina Harker, and the bloodthirsty vampire hunters whose cruel pursuit drove the master of the night to actions ever more ruthless. The Count Dracula sets the record straight.…

Breathless and painstakingly researched, this is a stunning debut mystery in which Sherlock Holmes unmasks Jack the Ripper. Lyndsay Faye perfectly captures all the color and syntax of Conan Doyle’s distinctive nineteenth-century London.

From the brilliant pen of Agatha Christie comes two novels featuring the beloved sleuthing duo: In the The Secret Adversary, Tommy and Tuppence decide to embark on a daring business scheme: Young Adventurers Ltd. But they get more than they bargained for when their first assignment for the sinister Mr. Whittington draws them into a diabolical conspiracy. Set during the dark days of World War II, Agatha Christie’s N or M? puts two most unlikely espionage agents, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, on the trail of a pair of Nazi spies who have murdered Britain’s top agent.

A classic of the horror genre, Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out pits the powers of good against the forces of evil as the Duc de Richelieu wrestles for the soul of his friend with the charming but deadly Satanist, Mocata. Mocata has the power to summon the forces of darkness and - as the Duc and his friends will find - is willing to call upon ever-increasing horror until thundering hooves herald the arrival of the Devil Himself.

The fiction world of today needs a “Saint” more than it ever did. For years now that scene has been dominated by the “anti-heroes"—those grim gray operators in a sunless sub-culture where global issues are worked out with totally unemotional pragmatism, those hapless uninspired puppets manipulated and expended by ruthlessly dedicated little brothers of Big Brother. It made morbidly fascinating narrative, but it never gave anyone a lift until it climaxed in the hyper-gadgeted parodies of 007 extravaganzas.

Sherlock Holmes is the greatest detective in literary history. For the first time since the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a new Holmes story has been sanctioned by his estate, whetting the appetites of fans everywhere. Information about the book will be revealed as deliberately as Holmes himself would unravel a knotty case, but bestselling novelist and Holmes expert Anthony Horowitz is sure to bring a compelling, atmospheric story to life.

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of The Amateur Cracksman, which is a collection of eight short stories featuring the famous gentleman thief Raffles. He's a prominent member of high society and a sporting hero and uses his position to commit jewelry thefts from his hosts. Raffles is the very definition of a loveable rogue.

London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright, and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of sixteen-year-old Billy Wood, posed by candlelight in a dark stifling attic room, he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle he sets out to solve the crime - but it is Wilde's unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian life, from society drawing rooms to the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in their investigation....

In the late seventies an extraordinary document came to light which for fifty years had been held on deposit by the bankers of the deceased John Herbert Watson MD - better known to devotees of Conan Doyle as Dr Watson. A continuous narrative in the doctor’s own hand, the story opens in the East End of London in 1888. Three women have been savagely murdered by Jack the Ripper.

A big, brilliant, spooky collection of classic and contemporary ghost stories that will make you hesitate before turning off that light.

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.

These four stories test Father Brown in many ways, creating headaches a plenty. However, Father Brown is nothing if not redoubtable and whilst Chesterton's stories are, in his own words, "very slight and improbable", his method is all his own. Bill Wallis captures perfectly the mood and tone of Father Brown in this collection.

The story begins with an investigation into some strange reports of an "opera ghost", legendary for making the great Paris opera performers ill-at-ease when they sit alone in their dressing rooms. Some allege to have seen the ghost in evening clothes moving about in the shadows. Nothing is done, however, until the disappearance of Christine during her triumphant performance.