Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Thriller & Suspense

Midnight. Some call it the witching hour. Others call it the devil’s hour. Here in the graveyard, midnight is a very special time. It is a time when ghostly spirits are at their strongest, when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest. Legend has it, that while most of the world is asleep, the lack of prayers allow the spirits to communicate under the cover of darkness, among the headstones, their whispers rustling in the leaves of the old oak trees. But if you’re here in the graveyard, you can tell yourself it’s just the wind....

The Beetle tells the tale of an evil, ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different forms, both male and female, as well as morphing into a beetle - a figure that induces terror in its victims.

Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American writer, most well-known for her mystery novels. She was often called the American Agatha Christie, though her first novel, The Circular Staircase, was published years before Christie's. The Circular Staircase is as complex a mystery as anyone could wish for, full of twists and turns, mysterious intruders, a murder and kidnapping, bank failure, all revolving around the sinister staircase itself.

The Man Within is Graham Greene's first published novel (1929). The story is set on England's South Coast and concerns Francis Andrews, who reluctantly became embroiled with a gang of smugglers. The novel opens with Andrews desperately fleeing over the downs and eventually reaching an isolated cottage. He finds it's the home of a young woman, Elizabeth, who is alone and recently bereaved of her guardian, protector, and possible abuser.

Armed with Victorian etiquette, a fully loaded walking stick, and a dead husband, Beatrice Knight arrives in colonial Kenya desperate for a pot of tea and a pinch of cinnamon. But she'll need more than that if she's to unravel the mystery of the Ghosts of Tsavo without being eaten in the process. All this while surviving the machinations of her best friend's dashing godfather and the efforts of her safari guide to feed her to any lion willing to drag her away. What is a ghost-chasing widow to do?

Dorothy Scarborough was an academic and author who had a particular interest in the supernatural. The following collection, first published in 1921, features stories that have a strong comical or satirical focus.

Over a 25-year period, author Maurice Leblanc wrote of the exploits of gentleman thief and master of disguise Arsène Lupin, to the delight of readers on the continent and elsewhere. Often referred to as France's version of Sherlock Holmes, Lupin in this early appearance is wrongfully accused of the death of a prominent German millionaire with nefarious plans. The thief and the mysterious killer find themselves in a race to find an incriminating bundle of letters that, in the wrong hands, could change the political map of the world.

Abraham Snow heads to Hawaii with his grandfather, Archer, in town, for a visit with his old friend, and former undercover operative partner, Samson Brooks, and his brother, Walker Brooks, a former CIA officer. The Brooks brothers now work together as P.I./fugitive recovery consultants. Snow gets caught up in their latest case and finds himself in deadly danger in unfamiliar surroundings when an old enemy shows up with vengeance on his mind.

What follows a wedding? A honeymoon, of course. The beginning of a happily-ever-after future in which Ivy and Mac will travel the country in their motorhome searching for the perfect place to settle down and live. No more dead bodies. No more murders. Instead, here they are on a detour to an old dinosaur park, and Ivy is up to her possum-gray hair in ghost goats, deteriorating dinosaurs, and… what else? A dead body, of course.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase—a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns. She is found savagely murdered, and she will not be the last to die.

Conrad builds his story from the inside out, revealing a world of conspirators, police, fanatics, and bystanders whose inner lives are as explosive as any bomb they carry. Each figure—Mr. Verloc, torn between indolence and obligation; Winnie, holding a family together with quiet ferocity; the vulnerable Stevie; and the coldly obsessive Professor—is drawn with psychological depth that turns this political thriller into a devastating human drama.

This gripping thriller takes listeners on an adrenaline-filled journey through the shadowy world of sabotage in 1942 America. Ric Dymond is an inexperienced young FBI agent on a mission to bring a covert and deadly sabotage plot hatched by the German Abwehr to justice. Ric is forced to go undercover and rely on his wits and intuition to uncover the unknown saboteurs, aware that another uncover agent was brutally murdered. But the mission is further complicated when Ric meets an old flame, throwing his resolve and focus into question.

Dig Me No Grave was first published in Weird Tales in February 1937. It was also published as John Grimlan's Debt. This is one of eight stories by Howard featuring Professor John Kirowan, an Irish aristocrat and seeker of arcane knowledge, and his associate John Conrad. This story relates to their investigation of the death of a mysterious and sinister hermit, John Grimlan.

The Leech was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting, without consciousness, across the vast emptiness of space. A planet claimed it, with other stellar debris, and the leech fell, still dead—seeming within its tough spore case. One speck of dust among many, fell to the Earth. Nourishment soaked in, permeating the spore case. It grew—and began to feed.

Sir John Waveney has inherited Waveney Hall. A veteran of the Great War himself, his inheritance has come because of the deaths in action of his two distant cousins, leaving him as the next male heir. He hopes to make the acquaintance of his two remaining cousins, Lady Jenifer Marr and Anne Belinda. But Lady Marr proves very vague about her twin sister's whereabouts. Is she traveling with a friend or (as has been intimated) has she been incarcerated in a mental institution? No one seems to actually know, and several people seem bent on frustrating John's attempts to find her.

Two children savagely stoned to death in the California desert. Top employees of a U.S. defense contractor dying at an alarming rate. A cryptic message sent by a strange, secretive source warns the contractor’s products have been corrupted and could be used against the U.S. Armed Forces. They all seem to be connected. But how? Only two men on earth are capable of putting it all together; those men are Jack Wilder and Jeff Bradshaw, two of the greatest special operations forces soldiers who have ever lived.

Rachel Rainsford should be excited. She was on a train traveling across the US to a well-paid position as an old lady's companion. But after several hours spent with the man who hired her and is accompanying her on her journey, she's having doubts. His manner seems strange, and she may have acted too hastily in accepting a job so far from home. Meanwhile, in the parlor car, Chan Prescott overhears two men concocting a plan to abduct a young woman. When her name is mentioned, Chan recognizes it as the daughter of a former beloved teacher.

Dorian Gray does get what he wished for in trading places with Basil Hallward's portrait of him. Yes, eternal youth spells quite a different picture for one who falls under its spell.

Commander Walter Topham, assigned as an attaché in Japan, is requested by the Secretary of State to deliver a sealed secret document via the Berlin embassy en route to Japan. Topham agrees to travel to Japan via Berlin. He meets and falls in love with the Countess de Ouro Preto on the steamer voyage, not knowing she is part of a conspiracy. He is drugged on the sea journey and attacked while traveling by train to Berlin by plotters who want to prevent the document from reaching Berlin.

Meeting the love of her life in a McDonald's Drive-Thru wasn't how Millie ever imagined it, and yet there he was. The whirlwind romance should have been the start of the rest of their lives, the eventual wedding the stepping stone to their new life in New York City. And yet for Marcus and Millie, fate had other ideas. In one split second, her life comes crashing down when Marcus is taken in a tragic accident, leaving Millie the heir to one of the most successful companies in the city.