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

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.

Jane is broke, she's just lost her job and her landlady has kicked her out. When an amorous young man approaches her on a park bench it soon becomes clear that he has mistaken her for her cousin Renata. Their mothers were identical twins and even though Jane has never met her, Renata's fiance insists they too are identical. He's desperate. It seems Renata sleepwalked into a meeting of her father's friends and overheard their criminal plans. She's lied about hearing anything but they doubt her story and are holding her prisoner.

A brilliant short story demonstrating how a truly balanced set of dilemmas can allow a reader to conclude two different endings. In this case a young man is faced with two doors. One holds a door with a ferocious tiger. The other? A beautiful lady whom he would immediately marry. The struggle comes not so much in defining a choice, but the reasons that brought the young man to the choice, and who helps him make the choice.

Six months ago, Mia Rhodes was a Seattle office manager, toiling away from nine to five and spending her weekends managing her online political competition, Ameritocracy. Now, that competition is spreading across the American political landscape, making Mia a celebrity and giving Ameritocracy a real shot at upending the two-party system in the 2020 election. But as the final voting draws near, Mia is betrayed by one of the people she trusts most, throwing Ameritocracy into disarray, and possibly ending her dream of changing American politics forever.

In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay struggles to thwart an assassination plot designed to hasten war between Britain and Germany. Later he is plucked from the trenches first, in Greenmantle, to frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world; and then, in Mr. Standfast, to undertake a vital secret mission against a German spy ring operating among pacifist elements in England. After the war, his adventures continue in The Three Hostages; and then in The Island of Sheep, when an old oath to protect the son of a friend from his days in Africa draws him into new danger.

A strange woman becomes a guest of the house of Laura and her father by devious means. Disappearances, nocturnal wanderings, sickness, and death ensue, and no one knows what is behind it all.

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....

Letty is a delicate girl who is forced to move from lush Virginia to desolate West Texas in the 1880s. The numbing blizzards, the howling sand storms, and the loneliness of the prairie all combine to undo her nerves. But it is the wind itself, a demon personified, that eventually drives her over the brink of madness.

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.

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?

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.

"Mistress of the Dark Pool" by Russell Gray is a captivating short story with elements of horror, sex, and suspense. First published in 1940 in the magazine Terror Tales. The story follows a young couple seeking solitude in the mountains, only to encounter a peculiar dog with human-like eyes. As the plot unfolds, they discover a local woman rumored to be a witch, and their encounter with her takes a dark turn.

Lewis Ingraham is cold. He’s lost his wife to cancer, his executive career, his once sure grip on the world around him. All that he can hold on to is his beautiful daughter Jay, a brilliant student who has become a struggling single mother. But he sees that even Jay is starting to slip away from him, in favor of Stephen, her self-important boyfriend. This time Lewis is going to fight back. But when Lewis takes out his fury on Stephen, he ignites a chain reaction of violence. Now winter is bearing down on Minnesota.

Abraham Snow is back in action and this one starts off with a bang. It started out as a routine security job. Then, a blast from the past walked out of the shadows. When Thomas Hunt, an old friend from his Army days asks for his help in stopping a bomber from attacking a conference, Snow finds himself caught between an obligation to family, duty, and country. Which will he choose? And who is Charles Pope and what does he have planned for everyone’s favorite former undercover operative turned p.i.? The hunt is on in SNOW HUNT.

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.