Showing results by publisher "Bookstream Audiobooks" in Thriller & Suspense

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy pale blue "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, attempting the perfect crime, complete with dismembering the body in the bathtub and hiding it under the floorboards.

"The Premature Burial" is a horror short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1844 in The Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. Its main character expresses fear about being buried alive. This fear was common in this period and Poe was taking advantage of the public interest. In "The Premature Burial", the first-person unnamed narrator describes his struggle with "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy", a condition where he randomly falls into a death-like trance. This leads to his fear of being buried alive.

"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. An unnamed narrator suffering with alcoholism has a strong affection for pets, until he perversely turns to abusing them. In a drunken rage, he hangs his beloved black cat from a tree. He soon finds another black cat but develops a hatred for it as well. When he attempts to kill it with an axe, his wife stops him – and the narrator murders her instead, concealing the body behind a brick wall. But the cat, accidentally walled in with the corpse, alerts the police with its shrieking cry.

"The Oval Portrait" is a horror short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, involving the disturbing circumstances of a portrait in a château. It is one of his shortest stories, filling only two pages in its initial publication in 1842. The tale begins with an injured narrator seeking refuge in an abandoned mansion in the Apennines. The narrator spends his time admiring the paintings that decorate the strangely shaped room and reading through a reference book, found on a pillow, that describes them.

"The Blue Cross" is a short story by G. K. Chesterton. It was the first Father Brown short story and also introduces the characters Flambeau and Valentin. It is unique among the Father Brown mysteries in that it does not follow the actions of the Father himself, but rather those of Valentin.

'I think that love is best left to the young,' Donna said. 'I expect that one day it will be viewed by psychiatrists as a mental health problem rather than anything wonderful or spiritual.

Most people seem to consider Nina Monkman to be a self-assured, confident young woman, but I have known her long enough to realise that this is not quite the truth.

Samuel Miller discovered the photograph tucked away in the back of his father's wallet. The hospital had given it to him along with the other items the old man had been carrying when he had been admitted.

The Restaurant San Martín in Mendoza did not appear to have changed at all in its ninety-five-year history. It was still richly decorated and plushly upholstered in a hopelessly antique style, and Ernesto Galman revered it.

'I am sure that a professional gentleman such as yourself could afford to rent rooms like this as a single tenant?' The landlord smiled at Komensk ingratiatingly. 'We could come to an arrangement so that I wouldn't have to find another occupant to share with you?

There was a time before the Great War when Petropol was the most fashionable resort in the Crimea. If you arrived by steamer, you would have disembarked onto a stone jetty that extended a long grey arm into the oily smooth waters of the Black Sea.

What is it about dealers in rare books and manuscripts? One would have to go a long way to meet one who was not a little strange, and Enoch Stapleton was no exception to the rule.

Edward Clarke was staring out of the window of his bookshop, a cigarette held delicately between his long, thin fingers, his unshaven chin slightly upraised.

Three weeks after I had arrived in Nairobi in January 1976 my father wrote to me. I took it to be a sign that he was reconciled to the fact that his only son had decided to join a theatre company in what he called 'the back of beyond'.

I knew Lord Charles Purefoy in the 1970s, but then so did everyone. I had also known him in the 1960s when we were at school together, and in the same house.

Tonya matched her pace to that of the sedately departing steam train. She opened the last door of the last carriage with the nonchalance of a seasoned commuter and stepped aboard.

"Mrs. Taylor?" The greeting came from a woman sitting in a ponderous wingback chair by the front door. Because of the paperwork on her lap she could not immediately stand.

The past doesn't always stay where it should. It is as though somebody, or something, is forever trying to bring it painfully into the present. Flavian Bennett is trying to leave his past behind when he goes to work in his father's bookshop in Paris. But a curious customer, Reginald Hopper, is desperate to resurrect his own murky origins. Hopper believes that a rare and mysterious book, The Dark Return of Time, may be the key to what happened before he arrived in Paris. In this quiet thriller by R.B. Russell, the futures - and pasts - of these two men will soon cross.

I awoke this morning in what appeared to be a strange house and I lay between unfamiliar sheets trying to remember exactly where I might be. I was not especially worried at first.

The Mystery of the Sea, a mystery novel by Bram Stoker, was originally published in 1902. Stoker is best known for his 1897 novel Dracula, but The Mystery of the Sea contains many of the same compelling elements. It tells the story of an Englishman living in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who meets and falls in love with an American heiress. She is involved with the intrigues of the Spanish-American War, and a complex plot involving second sight, kidnapping, and secret codes unfolds over the course of the novel.