Showing results by publisher "Audioliterature" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

"Ben-Hur" is a historical novel by Lew Wallace, a story of a hero named Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman who was falsely accused of an attempted assassination and enslaved by the Romans. Judah first encounters Jesus, who offers him a drink of water and encouragement, as Judah is being marched to a galley to be a slave. Their lives continue to intersect as the story unfolds. Judah survives his ordeal as a galley slave, after befriending and saving the commander of his ship, who later adopts him.

"The Club of Queer Trades" is a collection of stories by G. K. Chesterton first published in 1905. Each story in the collection is centered on a person who is making his living by some novel and extraordinary means (a "queer trade", using the word "queer" in the sense of "peculiar"). To gain admittance one must have invented a unique means of earning a living and the subsequent trade being the main source of income.

"Lady Molly of Scotland Yard" is a collection of short stories about Molly Robertson-Kirk, an early fictional female detective. First published in 1910, Orczy's female detective was the precursor of the lay sleuth who relies on brains rather than brawn. As well as being one of the first novels to feature a female detective as the main character, Orczy's outstandingly successful police officer preceded her real life female counterparts by a decade.

"The Door of the Unreal" (1920) is an early werewolf novel by Gerald Biss. From the Foreword: "As to my subject, which policy forbids me even to hint at in my foreword, I can only say that it is one common to the folk-lore of all Eastern and European countries, and found in the annals of America itself, if to a lesser degree. That of itself forbids light dismissal of the matter as beyond the bounds of credulity, and in the Near East it was accepted as a fact, at any rate, up to 1914, and since then the horrors of war and the worse horrors of Bolshevism have taught us that nothing is too ghoulish to be true.

"Fantomas" (1911) is a crime novel by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre. Fantomas was introduced a few years after Arsène Lupin, another well-known thief. But whereas Lupin draws the line at murder, Fantomas has no such qualms and is shown as a sociopath who enjoys killing in a sadistic fashion. He is totally ruthless, gives no mercy, and is loyal to none, not even his own children. He is a master of disguise, always appearing under an assumed identity, often that of a person whom he has murdered.

Max Carrados is a blind detective who makes use of his remaining senses in such a way that his blindness is often not immediately apparent to others. Carrados enjoys the excitement of revealing his explanations of mysteries through powers of perception, which in his case are heightened in positive compensation for his visual impairment. The Max Carrados stories appeared alongside Sherlock Holmes in the Strand Magazine, in which they often had top billing, and frequently outsold his eminent contemporary at the time.

"The Dunwich Horror" takes place in a fictional town in Massachusetts, its main hero being the distinctly not ordinarily human Wilbur, a product of a deformed albino mother and an unknown father. Strange events surround his birth and precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. Locals shun him and his family, and animals fear and despise him (due to his odor). All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft.

"The Silent Bullet" is a collection of 12 detective short stories by Arthur B. Reeve, featuring Craig Kennedy and Walter Jameson - the American Holmes and Watson. Excerpt from the book: "It has always seemed strange to me that no one has ever endowed a professorship in criminal science in any of our large universities." "Why should there be a chair in criminal science?" I remarked argumentatively, settling back in my chair. "I've done my turn at police headquarters reporting, and I can tell you, Craig, it’s no place for a college professor. Crime is just crime.

"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1892) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a collection of twelve short stories. The stories are related in first-person narrative from Watson's point of view. In general the stories in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holme"s identify, and try to correct, social injustices. Holmes is portrayed as offering a new, fairer sense of justice.

In 1916, on an isolated country estate just outside London, Captain Chris Baldry, a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia, comes home to the three women who have shaped his life. Will these three strong and devoted women help him regain his memory and his sense of purpose and send him back to the front; or will he descend further into the catacombs of oblivion?

A detective and suspense tale absolutely filled with goosebumps atmosphere. A small mysterious town, peculiar inhabitants with their secrets. A lonely, odd house called "The Locks", that a stranger moves into. A single light in a single room of the strange house strangely lit up every night... What is the key to all of these elements? Is there one? Can the mystery of "The Locks" be unlocked?

"The Man in Lower Ten" is a mystery by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Excerpt from the book: McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding.

"The Exploits of Juve" (1911) is a crime novel by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre. Juve, the French police detective is always after Fantomas, a sociopath who enjoys killing in a sadistic fashion. He is totally ruthless, gives no mercy, and is loyal to none, not even his own children. He is a master of disguise, always appearing under an assumed identity, often that of a person whom he has murdered.

"The Uttermost Farthing" is a mystery by R. Austin Freeman. Excerpt: Humphrey Challoner was a great savant spoiled by untimely wealth. When I knew him he had lapsed into a mere dilettante; at least, so I thought at the time, though subsequent revelations showed him in a rather different light. He had some reputation as a criminal anthropologist and had formerly been well known as a comparative anatomist, but when I made his acquaintance, he seemed to be occupied chiefly in making endless additions to the specimens in his private museum.

A. J. Raffles is an 'amateur cracksman' and a gentleman-thief who with his wit and ingenuity befools everyone to get what he wants. Raffles is an antihero. Although a thief, he never steals from his hosts, he helps old friends in trouble. Additionally, the recognition of the problems of the distribution of wealth is a recurrent subtext throughout the stories.

"The First Violin" (1877) is Jessie Fothergill's third novel. It was written in Düsseldorf and tells the story of an English girl who rejects the attentions of the rich farmer for the strange attractions of a German. The story was refused by two publishers because it dealt with an affair by a married woman. Excerpt: The door was opened. Jane held it open and said nothing (a trifling habit of hers, which used to cause me much annoyance), and a tall woman walked slowly into the room.

"The Bat" is a Broadway play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood first produced in 1920. The plot relates how wealthy spinster Cornelia Van Gorder and her guests uncover a mystery at their rented summer home while being stalked by an enigmatic, costumed criminal known as "The Bat". The story takes place in an old mansion, where people look for hidden loot while a caped killer (The Bat) murders them one by one.

A Royal Northwest Canadian Mounty always gets the job done. Or does he? Will David Carrigan catch Black Roger Audemard and escape his captors as they traverse thousands of miles of Northern rivers and forests? This is a classic, escapist adventure action saga by James Oliver Curwood, with all the right ingredients - suspense, atmosphere, action, good characters and romance!

A fascinating piece of work by Charles A. Siringo, put together with stories from eye witnesses, and written by someone who actually met and knew "Billy the Kid". The listener gets an earful of intriguing and riveting historical information about the short and violent life of the famous gunslinger as well as a whiff of another legendary Western figure - the Sheriff that captured the Kid, Pat Garrett.

"The Eye of Osiris" (1911) is a novel by R. Austin Freeman. Dr. John Thorndyke, a medical jurispractitioner bases his solutions on his method of collecting all possible data (including dust and pond weed) and making inferences from them before looking at any of the protagonists and motives in the crimes. It is this method which gave rise to one of Freeman's most ingenious inventions, the inverted detective story, where the criminal act is described first and the interest lies in Thorndyke's subsequent unraveling of it.