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Best Mystery Books of All Time

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Best Mystery Books of All Time includes Ten Little Indians (2006), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008), The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Maltese Falcon.

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Ten Little Indians

by: Agatha Christie
release date: Jan 01, 2006
Ten Little Indians

One of the most famous and beloved mysteries from The Queen of Suspense—Agatha Christie—now a Lifetime TV movie.

"Ten . . ."
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U. N. Owen."

"Nine . . ."
At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.

"Eight . . ."
Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . as one by one . . . they begin to die.

"Seven . . ."
Which among them is the killer and will any of them survive?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by: Stieg Larsson
release date: Jan 01, 2008
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl in the Spider's Web, the new book in the Millennium Series, is available now!

Murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue combine into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.

Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

by: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles
At Baskerville Hall on the grim moors of Devonshire, a legendary curse has apparently claimed one more victim. Sir Charles Baskerville has been found dead. There are no signs of violence, but his face is hideously distorted with terror. Years earlier, a hound-like beast with blazing eyes and dripping jaws was reported to have torn out the throat of Hugo Baskerville. Has the spectral destroyer struck again? More important, is Sir Henry Baskerville, younger heir to the estate, now in danger?
Enter Sherlock Holmes, summoned to protect Sir Henry from the fate that has threatened the Baskerville family. As Holmes and Watson begin to investigate, a blood-chilling howl from the fog-shrouded edges of the great Grimpen Mire signals that the legendary hound of the Baskervilles is poised for yet another murderous attack.
The Hound of the Baskerville first appeared as a serial in The Strand Magazine in 1901. By the time of its publication in book form eight months later, this brilliantly plotted, richly atmospheric detective story had already achieved the status of a classic. It has often been called he best detective story ever written. It remains a thrilling tale of suspense, must reading for every lover of detective fiction.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

by: Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Queen of Mystery has come to Harper Collins! Agatha Christie, the acknowledged mistress of suspense—creator of indomitable sleuth Miss Marple, meticulous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and so many other unforgettable characters—brings her entire oeuvre of ingenious whodunits, locked room mysteries, and perplexing puzzles to Harper Paperbacks…including the unforgettable Hercule Poirot classic, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, one of her own ten favorite novels.

The Maltese Falcon

by: Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon
A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

The Da Vinci Code

by: Dan Brown
release date: Mar 31, 2009
The Da Vinci Code

PREMIUM MASS MARKET EDITION

 

#1 Worldwide Bestseller—More Than 80 Million Copies Sold

 

As millions of readers around the globe have already discovered, The Da Vinci Code is a reading experience unlike any other. Simultaneously lightning-paced, intelligent, and intricately layered with remarkable research and detail, Dan Brown's novel is a thrilling masterpiece—from its opening pages to its stunning conclusion.

Gone Girl

by: Gillian Flynn
Gone Girl

THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? 

Other List with This Book:

The Woman in White

by: Wilkie Collins, Matthew Sweet, Matthew Sweet
The Woman in White
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his "charming" friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. 

Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Moonstone

by: Wilkie Collins, Sandra Kemp
The Moonstone
"When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else."

The Moonstone, a yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple and believed to bring bad luck to its owner, is bequeathed to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night the priceless stone is stolen again and when Sergeant Cuff is brought in to investigate the crime, he soon realizes that no one in Rachel's household is above suspicion. Hailed by T. S. Eliot as "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels," The Moonstone is a marvellously taut and intricate tale of mystery, in which facts and memory can prove treacherous and not everyone is as they first appear.

Sandra Kemp's introduction examines The Moonstone as a work of Victorian sensation fiction and an early example of the detective genre, and discusses the technique of multiple narrators, the role of opium, and Collins's sources and autobiographical references.

The Daughter of Time

by: Josephine Tey, Robert Barnard
The Daughter of Time
Voted greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990, Josephine Tey recreates one of history's most famous—and vicious—crimes in her classic bestselling novel, a must read for connoisseurs of fiction, now with a new introduction by Robert Barnard.

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains—a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England's throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower.

The Daughter of Time is an ingeniously plotted, beautifully written, and suspenseful tale, a supreme achievement from one of mystery writing's most gifted masters.

The Postman Always Rings Twice

by: James M. Cain
The Postman Always Rings Twice
An amoral young tramp.  A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband.  A problem that has only one grisly solution--a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve.

First published in 1934 and banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside, and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

by: Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been recognized as the first modern detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". Two works that share some similarities predate Poe's stories, including Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1819) by E.T.A. Hoffman and Zadig (1747) by Voltaire

Detective

by: Roderick Thorp
Detective
Joe Leland, a private eye, investigates a young widow's husband's suicide. He finds himself caught up in a bizarre situation where unpleasant elements from his own past, including a case that nearly ended his career, are brought to light. This was the subject of a famous Frank Sinatra film.

The A.B.C. Murders

by: Agatha Christie
The A.B.C. Murders
The Queen of Mystery has come to Harper Collins! Agatha Christie, the acknowledged mistress of suspense—creator of indomitable sleuth Miss Marple, meticulous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and so many other unforgettable characters—brings her entire oeuvre of ingenious whodunits, locked room mysteries, and perplexing puzzles to Harper Paperbacks…including The A.B.C. Murders, which sets Hercule Poirot on the trail of a serial killer.

Strangers on a Train

by: Patricia Highsmith
Strangers on a Train

"For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith." ―Time

The world of Patricia Highsmith has always been filled with ordinary people, all of whom are capable of very ordinary crimes. This theme was present from the beginning, when her debut, Strangers on a Train, galvanized the reading public. Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. "Some people are better off dead," Bruno remarks, "like your wife and my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.

The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith on a prolific career of noir fiction, proving her a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

Gaudy Night

by: Dorothy L. Sayers
Gaudy Night

“Gaudy Night stands out even among Miss Sayers's novels. And Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself.”
—Times Literary Supplement

The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction's most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers's work, praising her “great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail.” The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night is now back in print with an introduction by Elizabeth George, herself a crime fiction master. Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet's alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.

A Coffin for Dimitrios

by: Eric Ambler
A Coffin for Dimitrios
A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel with a penchant for British crime novels leads mystery writer Charles Latimer into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers throughout the Balkans in the years between the world wars. Hoping that the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, will inspire a plot for his next novel, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of assassination, espionage, drugs, and treachery.

Red Dragon

by: Thomas Harris
Red Dragon
A second family has been massacred by the terrifying serial killer the press has christened ?The Tooth Fairy.? Special Agent Jack Crawford turns to the one man who can help restart a failed investigation?Will Graham. Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement. Now, Graham must turn to Lecter for help.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

by: John le Carré
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carré's career worldwide

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service—with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.

Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.

A Dark-Adapted Eye

by: Ruth Rendell, Barbara Vine
A Dark-Adapted Eye
The award-winning author and acclaimed mistress of suspense delves deeply into the heart of a family to uncover the circumstances that lead to murder more than thirty years ago. The story of a family's long-buried secret past is revealed--and the deadly consequences. Mystery Guild Selection. Doubleday Alternate.

Rebecca

by: Daphne Du Maurier
Rebecca

With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten—a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife—the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.

This special edition of Rebecca includes excerpts from Daphne du Maurier's The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories, an essay on the real Manderley, du Maurier's original epilogue to the book, and more.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

by: Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl in the Spider's Web, the new book in the Millennium Series, is available now!

Part blistering espionage thriller, part riveting police procedural, and part piercing exposé on social injustice, The Girl Who Played with Fire is a masterful, endlessly satisfying novel.
 
Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander's innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Nine Tailors

by: Dorothy L. Sayers
The Nine Tailors

The Nine Tailors is Dorothy L. Sayers's finest mystery, featuring Lord Peter Whimsey, and a classic of the genre.

 

The nine tellerstrokes from the belfry of an ancient country church toll out the death of an unknown man and call the famous Lord Peter Whimsey to investigate the good and evil that lurks in every person. Steeped in the atmosphere of a quiet parish in the strange, flat fen-country of East Anglia, this is a tale of suspense, character, and mood by an author critics and readers rate as one of the great masters of the mystery novel.

A Simple Plan

by: Scott Smith
A Simple Plan
Two brothers and their friend stumble upon the wreckage of a plane–the pilot is dead and his duffle bag contains four million dollars in cash. In order to hide, keep, and share the fortune, these ordinary men all agree to a simple plan.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his famous detective. Venture back in time to Victorian London to join literature's greatest detective team the brilliant Sherlock Holmes and his devoted assistant, Dr. Watson as they investigate a dozen of their best-known cases. Originally published in 1892, this is the first and best collection of stories about the legendary sleuth. It's also the least expensive edition available. Featured tales include several of the author's personal favorites: "A Scandal in Bohemia" in which a king is blackmailed by a former lover and Holmes matches wits with the only woman to attract his open admiration plus "The Speckled Band," "The Red-Headed League," and "The Five Orange Pips." Additional mysteries include "The Blue Carbuncle," "The Engineer s Thumb," "The Beryl Coronet," "The Copper Beeches," and four others.

Hollow Man

by: John Dickson Carr
Hollow Man
Book by Carr , John Dickson

Dracula

by: Bram Stoker
Dracula
During a business visit to Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania, a young English solicitor finds himself at the center of a series of horrifying incidents. Jonathan Harker is attacked by three phantom women, observes the Count's transformation from human to bat form, and discovers puncture wounds on his own neck that seem to have been made by teeth. Harker returns home upon his escape from Dracula's grim fortress, but a friend's strange malady — involving sleepwalking, inexplicable blood loss, and mysterious throat wounds — initiates a frantic vampire hunt. The popularity of Bram Stoker's 1897 horror romance is as deathless as any vampire.  Its supernatural appeal has spawned a host of film and stage adaptations, and more than a century after its initial publication, it continues to hold readers spellbound.

The Snowman

by: Raymond Briggs
The Snowman
Illus. in full color. A wordless story. The pictures have "the hazy softness of air in snow. A little boy rushes out into the wintry day to build a snowman, which comes alive in his dreams that night. The experience is one that neither he nor young 'readers' will ever regret or forget."--(starred) Booklist.  

Eye of the Beholder

by: Marc Behm
Eye of the Beholder
The Woman. She's beautiful, and seductive, and as shifting as a shadow. Her name, her appearance, and her victims are forever changing. There is only one constant in the woman's life: her chilling motive. . . .

The Eye. A private investigator, driven and obsessed. A desperate loner with secrets of his own. His job? To follow the woman. But catching her is the last thing on his mind. He likes to watch. And the closer he gets, the more dangerous his fantasy becomes. . . .

Sandrine's Case

by: Thomas H. Cook
Sandrine's Case
Shortlisted for the 2014 Edgar Award and Barry Award for Best Novel

Thomas H. Cook is peerless in finding the humanity behind crime. In one of his greatest novels yet, a man explores unspools the history of his fractured relationship with his wife, as he stands trial for her murder.

Samuel Madison always wondered why Sandrine chose him. He was a meek, stuffy doctorate student; she a brilliant bohemian with limitless imagination. On the surface, their relationship seemed tranquil: jobs at the same liberal arts college, a precocious young daughter, and a home filled with art and literature. And then one night Sandrine is found dead in their bedroom from an overdose of pain medication and alcohol, and Samuel is accused of poisoning her.

As secrets about their often tumultuous marriage come to light in the courtroom, Samuel must face a town convinced of his guilt, a daughter whose faith in her father has been shaken to its core, and the truth about his wife, who never ceased being a mystery to him. Sandrine's Case is a powerful novel about the evil that can lurk within the heart of a seemingly ordinary man, and whether love can be reawakened even after death.
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