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Crime, Thrillers and Mystery — page 10
514 public-domain crime, thrillers and mystery books, summarised. Page 10 of 11.
The Akkra case
Miriam Allen De Ford
A young girl’s mysterious death in a future society where murder is virtually extinct sparks a hunt for truth, eventually solved by a sister who looks to the forbidden past for answers.
The Crime of the Boulevard
Jules Claretie
A mysterious slit throat on a lively Paris avenue triggers an investigation where cutting-edge forensic science and old-fashioned detective work collide.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870
Various
This nineteenth-century periodical offers a sharp, satirical window into the post-Civil War American zeitgeist. It blends biting social commentary with irreverent literary parody, capturing a nation obsessed with industrial progress, scandalous news, and moral posturing.
A Question of Identity
Frank Riley
A legendary lawyer defends a seemingly guilty man by arguing that modern medical science has so radically transformed the defendant’s body that he is no longer the person who committed the crime.
Let 'Em Breathe Space!
Lester Del Rey
This gripping science fiction novella explores the claustrophobic nightmare of a long-haul space mission where the air supply is slowly failing and the crew’s sanity is unspooling. It is a stark, high-stakes drama that strips away the glamour of space travel to reveal the raw fragility of human cooperation under…
The curse of the Reckaviles
Walter S. (Walter Sidney) Masterman
A series of mysterious deaths and a generations-old family curse haunt a desolate coastal village, drawing an ambitious detective and a man with a dangerous secret into a web of murder and hidden identity.
The Trail of Death
H. (Henry) Bedford-Jones
This high-stakes adventure follows a man who accidentally stumbles into a web of international criminals, only to find himself entangled in a murderous plot involving a fortune in counterfeit American currency.
The Vault
Murray Leinster
A professional burglar breaks into a factory to crack a vault, only to find himself trapped in a nightmare of someone else’s making.
The Corner House
Fred M. (Fred Merrick) White
A woman of magnetic, dangerous charm orchestrates a web of deceit from a London townhouse, drawing a young doctor and a perceptive girl into a high-stakes game of shadows, motors, and murder.
Widger's Quotations from the Project Gutenberg Editions of Dumas' Celebrated Crimes
Alexandre Dumas
These chronicles of historical transgression document the dark side of human ambition, mapping the violent impulses that shaped European history long before the author achieved his later, legendary fame.
The long patrol
Albert M. (Albert McKune) Treynor
Deep in the snowy northern Rockies, a solitary mounted policeman stumbles upon a chilling murder and a mysterious woman running for her life.
More than skin deep
Erle Stanley Gardner
When an old merchant's safe is blown open and his clerk is murdered in a sleepy mountain town, a quiet local constable must outwit both a pompous judge and a flashy city detective.
Poison shadows
William Le Queux
A dark inheritance leads a young heiress and her physician lover into a labyrinth of mysterious tragedies and international intrigue.
The End of Her Honeymoon
Marie Belloc Lowndes
On the final evening of a joyous Parisian honeymoon, a young artist vanishes into the night, leaving his bewildered bride stranded in a strange city where even her hotel hosts deny he ever existed.
Judith Lee
Richard Marsh
Deafness in her family gave Judith Lee an extraordinary knack for lip-reading across any room, an skill that plunges her into London’s darkest, most unexpected criminal webs.
The Eel
Miriam Allen De Ford
An uncatchable master criminal known as The Eel finally meets his match in a sprawling, multi-world galactic bureaucracy, only to turn his trial into an impossible legal stalemate.
The three strings
Natalie Sumner Lincoln
A locked-room mystery unfolds in wartime Washington, where a corpse appears in a silent mansion and secrets are hidden in the lines of illicit chess problems.
Delayed Action
Charles V. De Vet
HOOK A man hunts a thief across a desolate, alien world, only to discover that the criminal is a ghost of his own forgotten past, trapped within a localized loop of space and time.
Eight Million Dollars From Mars!
Winston K. (Winston Kinney) Marks
A cold-blooded criminal believes he has engineered the perfect escape, only to find his own scientific precision turned against him in the silence of deep space.
The House in the Mist
Anna Katharine Green
A solitary traveler seeks refuge from a storm in a house of secrets, only to become an unwilling witness to a deadly inheritance.
Tiger Cat
David H. (David Henry) Keller
A traveler buys an Italian villa only to discover a terrifying secret hidden behind a cellar door. He must confront a beautiful, predatory woman who keeps men trapped in darkness.
Phantom of the Forest
Leroy Yerxa
The thin line between the hunter and the hunted blurs in the frozen wilderness, where a legendary buck exacts a violent toll on those who carry rifles into his domain.
The gallery gods
Murray Leinster
The man who murders a millionaire to achieve notoriety finds his greatest weapon—publicity—turned against him. When the papers refuse to report his crime, the resulting silence drives him to madness.
The murderer
Murray Leinster
The perpetrator of a cold-blooded murder returns to the scene of the crime, only to be paralyzed by the sensation that his victim is not quite finished with him.
The Red Chancellor
Magnay, William, Sir
An outsider stumbling into the heart of a continental conspiracy finds his curiosity quickly eclipsed by the urgent need to survive a ruthless Chancellor’s shadow.
Penny Nichols and the Black Imp
Joan Clark
An art competition turns into a high-stakes investigation when a priceless Rembrandt vanishes and an ambitious teenage amateur detective steps in to clear an innocent friend's name.
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 19, Vol. I, May 10, 1884
Various
This volume captures the Victorian spirit of curiosity, blending rigorous commercial analysis and medical wisdom with the sentimental narratives and quiet poetry that defined a mid-19th-century monthly miscellany.
Problem in solid
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
A three-dimensional photography inventor and a corrupt movie star collide in a brilliant murder trial where a man shoots his own duplicate and exploits the law of double jeopardy.
Sight Gag
Laurence M. Janifer
The hunter becomes the hunted when a man armed with sophisticated anti-psychic technology confronts a telepath who has been stripped of all conventional weapons, leaving only the power of his own mind to survive.
The Cruel Murder of Mina Miller
Unknown
A man marries a woman, promises her a life abroad, and within hours leaves her dead in the woods of New Jersey. This account traces the swift, grim unraveling of a crime that shocked the immigrant communities of 1881.
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
John De Courcy
A scarred, ape-like space captain finds his long-hardened heart shattered by a stowaway who resembles a lost love from his tragic, forgotten youth.
Larry Barlow's ambition
Edward Stratemeyer
Larry Barlow is a small-town youth with a singular dream: to leave his village and join the professional ranks of the New York City Fire Department. Through a mixture of mechanical ingenuity and physical bravery, he discovers that his path to success is obstructed by a duplicitous man who has stolen his father’s…
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870
Various
This seventeenth issue of a late-Victorian satirical weekly captures the frantic, witty, and often biting spirit of Gilded Age New York. It functions as both a literary laboratory and a sharp-eyed mirror held up to the political and social absurdities of 1870.
The Man Who Flew
Charles D. Cunningham
A telepathic detective takes on a rare murder case, only to realize the killer possesses a terrifying, physics-defying ability that threatens to consume his own mind.
The Substitute Prisoner
Max Marcin
A man’s mysterious death sets off a frantic, high-stakes game of shadows, pitting a dogged detective against a circle of suspects bound by secrets, love, and a desperate, dying man's final, elaborate deception.
Eddie
Frank Riley
The high-stakes world of Cold War espionage meets the dawn of the computing age in this sharp, cynical thriller. A reclusive engineer’s invention proves that machines can outthink human masters—and outrun their security failures.
The Thing in the Truck
Stephen Marlowe
The highway is a lonely place, but for one pair of truckers, a simple return load of potatoes leads to a terrifying encounter with an extraterrestrial presence that defies all logic.
The Impossible Pirate
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
HOOK A seasoned space-policeman is tasked with capturing a legendary pirate who commits the theoretically impossible. He soon learns that when evidence contradicts reality, the criminal is often an illusion.
The Happy Homicide
Frank Banta
Being on trial for murder is rarely a pleasant experience, but it becomes a uniquely peculiar affair when the prosecution ignores the defendant entirely to consult the recorded memories of the victim.
Formula for murder
Milton A. Rothman
The secret to committing the perfect murder lies not just in the act itself, but in the psychological manipulation required to ensure that the perpetrator is seen as a victim in need of a cure.
Lost over Greenland
Richard H. Stone
A young aviator faces the treacherous Arctic, battling sub-zero survival and the mystery of a missing hero in a high-stakes search through the frozen North.
The Expendables
Jim Harmon
A struggling scientist encounters a desperate gangster, leading to the creation of a device that can make anything—or anyone—simply cease to exist.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870
Various
A satirical weekly from post-Civil War New York, this periodical captures the raucous, biting, and opportunistic spirit of 1870s American journalism through a lens of relentless mockery.
The valley of ghosts
Edgar Wallace
This atmospheric mystery invites you into a quiet, suspicious corner of the English countryside where long-buried secrets begin to stir. It is a classic puzzle of identity, inheritance, and the lingering influence of the past.
Pink Ears
Murray Leinster
A sophisticated traveler reports a massive theft, yet his own physical tell—the flushed color of his ears—betrays a meticulously staged deception.
The Star Beast
Damon Knight
A brutal murder on a starship threatens the future of humanity, but the only witness is an inscrutable alien creature that communicates in mysteries. This tense science fiction puzzle explores the terrifying fragility of the human mind when confronted with the truly extraterrestrial.
Convict B 14: A Novel
R. K. (Rose Kirkpatrick) Weekes
A man’s past catches up to him in the shadow of war, leading him from a prison cell toward an unexpected quest for redemption.
Murderer's Base
William J. Brittain
A bitter, claustrophobic struggle unfolds on a desolate asteroid, where a failed murder attempt traps two space-service partners in a lethal game of cat and mouse.